Asia Times: E-solution to Bhutan's mail problem


	March 29, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

E-solution to Bhutan's mail problem
By Alexandre Casella

Bhutan, a country more known for its concern with the preservation of its social environment than for the promotion of consumerism, will soon have one of the most advanced postal systems in Asia.

The project, a joint venture between the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Universal Postal Union, aims to bring e-mail and e-post using traditional post offices to the developing world.

The tiny landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, with just 2 million people wedged between China and India, will be a test bed for this innovative project. Handicapped by a limited transport infrastructure and by its mountainous terrain, providing postal services is an uphill task in Bhutan, and letters can take up to eight days to be delivered from one mountain district to another.

The ITU project, which will be implemented on the ground by Bhutan Telecom and Bhutan Post, will provide for e-mail distribution through a combination of traditional post offices and electronic communications.

"The post office, more than any other institution, has a communicative presence in people's lives," said Thomas Leavy, director general of Universal Postal Union. "If every letter in Bhutan can be guaranteed to be sent from post office to post office electronically and then home delivered by the local post office within two days, it would constitute a revolution in letter writing and message exchange," he added.

The project will provide that Bhutan Post issue free unique e-post addresses for every household or even every person with proper identification. The e-post address will be the equivalent of an e-mail address that will also include in a coded form the postal address that identifies every household.

Once an e-post address has been obtained, a person should be able to walk into any post office and send a message to the recipient. The message will be sent by electronic means to the post office nearest the recipients' location, where it will be printed and then delivered to the local home by the mailman. Since of the printing of the message is done at the local post office near the place of delivery, the message will reach its destination within the time it takes for local delivery of mail.

As for the software to be used, it will be both in English and the official language, Dzongkha, though only 7 percent of the beneficiaries speak only Dzongkha; 59 percent use English and 89 percent use both as a language of correspondence.

Initially, Bhutan Post and Bhutan Telecom, acting as joint national executing agencies, will establish transmitting kiosks in 38 postal offices. Twenty of these will be community mail centers located in isolated mountain areas. These centers, which cater to the postal needs of a village, are often run by a local teacher, government employee or simply a literate person. They represent about one-third of all the post offices in the country and will be connected to the local telephone exchanges.

While the system is currently in the early implementing stage, it is envisaged that in the future it will be expanded to include medical information, banking services and current market prices of agricultural products. In the long term, it should open the door to private Internet access in a country where DrukNet, the current sole Internet Service Provider, claims a total of some 16 connections with about 500 users.

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