rpw3%rigden.wpd@sgi.com (Rob Warnock) (02/23/90)
In article <3846@accuvax.nwu.edu> Colin Plumb <ccplumb@lion.waterloo.edu> writes: +--------------- | Some people I know are doing some work for Bell Canada and Bell is | hooking them up to a system called "Envoy 100". (It's a billable | expense and Bell wants it very much, so whether it's useful isn't an | issue.) When I first heard of it, I thought it was just a voice mail | system, but apparenly you can use it to send mail or couriered | messages and do all sorts of neat tricks. The user needs a modem. | | The odds are good I'm going to be taching them something about how to | use it. Has anyone on TELECOM had any experience with this thing? | What exactly is it/are there any gotchas? +--------------- It's just a commercial e-mail service. Happens to be run (indirectly) by the Canadian government. Fees are charged for connect time, kilocharacters sent/read, disk storage, and monthly service fee. It's not cheap. It has a rather primitive command/help system, and a very primitive editor for composing messages. (Nothing at all approximating "termcap", nor indeed any screen-oriented functions. Strictly glass TTY.) It is partitioned up into disjoint user groups (although there is a syntax for talking to people in other groups); that's because it's largely marketed as private (closed) e-mail for companies/groups that don't already have computer-based e-mail. It provides a tree-structure of bulletin-boards within a given user community for posting USENET-style (you send mail to a BBS "user name"), plus normal user-to-user unicast mail. You get notification of new mail on login for yourself and for any BBS's in your user group. It can be accessed in Canada by direct dial (various numbers), or in Canada via Datapac, or in the US via Telenet (0302039400100). Has automatic password aging, which makes for fun if you're trying to run a "gateway" (well, a program to poll a couple of accounts for their mail). Has a tiny bit of support for "batched" input, presumably for those who compose their messages offline on a PC. However, it *does* seem to be plugged into most of the X.400-like gateways, and with the right magic you can (they say -- I've never gotten it to work) send a message to, say, AT&T Mail, or some of the other commercial nets. And the administration of a user community can be pretty much delegated to your group's designated net administrator, who can add/modify/delete individual accounts within the group, add/delete/rearrange the bulletin-board structure, and who gets all the bills. The biggest "gotchas" to watch out for are the overall costs (they can mount up fast if a sudden flurry of traffic occurs some month), the delayed billing cycle (you don't see what you've spent for several months), and the fact that messages are *not* automatically deleted after you read them unless you say "PURGE UNFILED", which leaves a gathering pile of *very* expensive disk bits. You can also rack up connect time if you read stuff on-line, with the built-in "---more---" prompts. Fortunately, you can say "READ!" which will dump all your new messages out with no paginator (hopefully to be captured in your terminal emulator's log file), and log off quickly (*after* remembering to "PURGE UNFILED"). Composing on-line can be expensive iff you are a bad typist and need to spend a lot of time in their editor. But all in all, not terrible, and certainly usable by people with nothing but a dumb terminal. (But then, so are ATTmail and MCImail.) I use it *only* because a group of which I'm a member happened to pick it as an "interim solution" to staying in touch -- "interim" for several years now. (Yes, we should switch to UUCP-based news, but a goodly number of the members are still terminal-only users scattered in fairly isolated locations. Telenet's "local" access ports are a winner for this population.) Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311
sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) (02/26/90)
In article <4300@accuvax.nwu.edu> "Robert P. Warnock" <rigden!rpw3@eddie.mit. edu> writes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 124, Message 6 of 11 >| hooking them up to a system called "Envoy 100". (It's a billable >It's just a commercial e-mail service. Happens to be run (indirectly) >by the Canadian government. Fees are charged for connect time, Very indirectly. It's run by a company called Telecom Canada. Which in turn is owned by the government. The Canadian Telco's are involved as well. Telecom Canada is apparantly being put on the block by the government (as of last Tuesday's federal budget). >in fairly isolated locations. Telenet's "local" access ports are a >winner for this population. Envoy was originally a clone of Telenet's Telemail. I havn't used it in a number of years, but don't imagine they have re-implemented it from scratch. I did use both it and Telemail from 1982 to about 1985. It was ok but pricey. Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca ubc-cs!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532(voice) 604-939-4768(fax)
sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) (02/28/90)
In article <4366@accuvax.nwu.edu> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 128, Message 8 of 12 }>It's just a commercial e-mail service. Happens to be run (indirectly) }>by the Canadian government. Fees are charged for connect time, }Very indirectly. It's run by a company called Telecom Canada. Which in }turn is owned by the government. The Canadian Telco's are involved as }well. }Telecom Canada is apparantly being put on the block by the government }(as of last Tuesday's federal budget). Who is this guy anyway, was he asleep at the keyboard again? To set the record straight, Telecom Canada is not owned by the Canadian Government; but is jointly owned by all of the Canadian Telco's: Alberta Government Telephones, BC Tel, Bell Canada, Island Tel, Manitoba Telephone System, Maritime Tel&Tel, NBTel, Newfoundland Telephone, SaskTel and Telesat Canada [from the back of my Datapac Directory, 1984]. The company that *is* owned by the Government is Telesat Canada, and it is being put on the block, no details yet. Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca ubc-cs!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532 (voice) 604-939-4768 (fax)
calwa@uunet.uu.net (Kevin Chapman) (02/28/90)
In article <4366@accuvax.nwu.edu> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes: !In article <4300@accuvax.nwu.edu> "Robert P. Warnock" <rigden!rpw3@eddie.mit. !edu> writes: !!| hooking them up to a system called "Envoy 100". (It's a billable !! It's just a commercial e-mail service. Happens to be run (indirectly) !! by the Canadian government. Fees are charged for connect time, ! Very indirectly. It's run by a company called Telecom Canada. Which in ! turn is owned by the government. The Canadian Telco's are involved as ! well. Telecom Canada is owned by Canada's telcos, and NOT the federal government. ! Telecom Canada is apparantly being put on the block by the government ! (as of last Tuesday's federal budget). The government is selling its 49.99% share of TeleSAT Canada... FYI, the remaining shareholders of TeleSat are: Alberta Gov't Tel 4.66% * Bell Canada 24.59 * BC Telephone 5.49 * Canadian National Railway 3.74 Canadian Pacific 3.74 Island Tel 0.79 * Manitoba Telephone System 1.66 * Maritime Telephone/Telegraph 1.22 * New Brunswick Telephone 1.32 * Newfoundland Telephone 0.49 * Ontario Northland 0.24 Quebec Telephone 0.99 * Sask Tel 1.66 * (* = member of Telecom Canada) I obtained these figures from TeleSat's PR office this morning. By the way, I was told about 32% of the shares are owned by Telecom Canada member companies (but not Telecom Canada itself), but that figure doesn't seem right - it should be more like 42%. Toodles, Kevin Chapman (613) 763-8230 uunet!bnrgate!bcarh13!calwa