steve@dartvax.UUCP (10/14/83)
If you want direct access to ECOM, you have to establish an account with
them (ie USPS) and you have to be certified. Establishing an account is
no more difficult than any other bureaucratic procedure. As to certi-
fication, the following is from the ECOM User's Guide.
Before new customers can transmit messages to a
Serving Post Office (SPO), their message preparation
and submission procedures must be certified through
the E-COM Test Center (TC). Test messages are
submitted by the user over telecommunication lines,
received by the USPS, processed and analysed by
the TC staff. The resulting printed messages
(if any) and a recommended correction list are
then forwarded to the customer. (Test letters
are not mailed and will not be delivered.)
When a group of test messages is found to be error
free, the Office of E-COM Operations (OEO)
issues a certification notice... After certi-
fication, the customer is assigned a confidential
access code by the E-COM Management Operations
Center (MOC) and may then access the system with
live mail.
Messages for E-COM have to be formatted into a series of blocks
(group headers, message headers, address blocks, text blocks, etc.).
These are all described in gory detail in the same E-COM Users' Guide.
It's official name is "Handbook DM-501. It says you can order copies
on form - correction Form - 1286, Request for USPS Directives, from your
Regional Administrative Branch.
steve campbell
...decvax!dartvax!stevefair@ucbvax.UUCP (10/16/83)
According to one of our customers who is in the process of putting
together an interface to E-COM, the 200 minimum is no longer there
(or rather, they are offering a service for single letters).
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA
{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation