Three months on, e-post catches people's fancy

PATNA: During the countdown to the winding up of telegraph service in the middle of July, India Post launched a hi-tech and modern e-post service which, though similar to the telegraph service, goes with the generation Y-style.

The service was launched in the last week of April. In the last two months since its launch, Bihar postal department has send over 4,000 individual retail e-posts and more than 6,000 bulk e-posts for corporate houses.

"E-post is the replacement of telegram but in a more modern way. Similar to telegram, the message would travel from the sending post office to recipient post office electronically and from the recipient post office, the postman would deliver the e-post to the addressee. With e-post it is possible to send post anywhere across the world," said Anil Kumar, marketing director, India Post, Bihar.

Indeed, there will be some major differences between the erstwhile telegram service and the e-post service. For telegrams, one had to shell out money for every word, but in e-post the customer is given an A-4 size paper which one can use in any way one wants. One can write on it in any language, any font and size, and can also attach photographs to it. The cost of this one A-4 page is just Rs 10. "The customer can send any message on this page or a picture in just Rs 10, which was never possible with the telegram," said Kumar.

Those sending bulk e-post have to shell out just Rs 6 for each page. Sending a single A-4 page message to more than 50 destinations would be categorized under the bulk category.

Those who do not wish to go to post office every time they have to send e-post, can buy an e-post card and can login to India post website www.indiapost.gov.in, where, after going to the e-post zone and giving their e-post card number, they would be able to send their e-post to the desired post office which would further forward the message to the addressee. The e-post cards are available in the price bracket of Rs 100 to Rs 5,000. However the e-post cards cannot be recharged, once your e-post is exhausted you have to buy a new one.

An e-post is an accountable article, so the sender can track it on India Post website. Out of the total 9,641 post offices in the state, 1,046 would provide this service. "This is part of our aim to connect urban and rural people through a digital device," said Kumar.

Source : http://www.blogger.com