Abstract :
The discussion is confined to the business sector on the grounds that this is where the most immediate interest lies. The author concentrates on growth for the public-network/licensed-service-provider sector for inland messaging only, whilst bearing in mind that for large companies some 75-80% of communication is internal. Some broad assumptions are made about the general trends for the four services involved and these are: (a) postal services are declining to the advantage of electronic messaging (EM) services; (b) telex is declining to the advantage of E-mail and fax; (c) fax is growing at the expense of telex and postal services; and (d) electronic mail (E-mail) is initially growing relatively slowly and is waiting for the general availability of X.400 services to increase inter-network communication
