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From: jxh@certes.uucp (Jim Hickstein)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Email in Japan?
Message-ID: <14217@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 90 12:07:37 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 780, Message 2 of 13


Knowing the Moderator's feelings about extending electronic mail to
the masses, I thought this would be an appropriate place to ask: What
is available along these lines to my mother, who is a missionary in
Japan?  She is in a rural town about 100 miles north of Tokyo, but she
uses a computer every single day, and can type even faster than I do.
So, I figured the hard part is done. :-)

Furthermore, my employer's wide-area network has an appearance (?) in
Tokyo; a handful of Suns and VAXen with which I trade email traffic
and files routinely.  How do you get from a farm in Nishinasuno to
Teradyne in Tokyo?  Unfortunately, when asked about their local
connections, hoping to hear of UUCP hops to major Japanese companies
which are our customers, I heard a heart-rending tale of mail to a
friend at Sony going back through Boston and LA to arrive, several
hours later, 10 miles away on the other side of town.  How can I help
our Tokyo office to get better connected locally?  What kind of
standards are prevalent in Japan?  (Bell 212A?  V.22bis?  V.32?  PEP,
even? (I hope, I hope)) What about local loops away out in the sticks?
Are they obtainable?  Are they usable?  (This is why I want to use
PEP.)  What about commercial services such as the
much-talked-about-in-here-lately ATT-Mail and MCI-Mail?  Do they make
this easy?  Cheap?  What's availble for free?

What about third-party traffic on Amateur packet radio?  I mean, she's
out in the country, but this shouldn't be necessary.  When I call her
on the phone, we obviously are getting a fully digital channel on what
I assume is the latest cable (TAT-8?) that lands in Sacramento on my
end.  It's not like she has a wet party line between her and the toll
center that handles *those* calls: they sound better than most of the
calls I make to Minnesota!  (I love this business.)