A model for predicting growth in electronic messaging

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