This kind of service does have at least one very valuable niche application - armed forces personnel on active deployment. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, British troops received hundreds of thousands of letters every month through the e-bluey service. Letters could be sent via email (including attachments) and were printed as close as possible to the recipient. It greatly reduced logistics costs and improved speed of delivery, often facilitating next-day delivery to extremely remote Forward Operating Bases.
Why didn’t the service personnel have access to their e-mail?
I was in Afghanistan for a different country. It was my job to keep the satellite communications working, including so people could send emails to their friends and family.
>Why didn’t the service personnel have access to their e-mail?
Because they weren't in one of the larger bases that had satellite internet. Combat troops in the wilds of Helmand might go weeks without seeing a fresh egg or a slice of bread. Satellite terminals circa 2002 were bulky, expensive bits of kit that just weren't that widely distributed, at least in the British armed forces.
Before long distance phone service was widespread, but local service was becoming common, people often sent a telegram over the phone.
Person in City A would phone the local telegraph office and dictate a message. It would be sent over the telegraph wires to the nearest telegraph office to the recipient in City B, where it would be written down by the operator. Then someone would phone the recipient and read the telegram over the phone to them.
This was in use at least into the late 1940's that I know of.
It would presumably be more secure to have the recipient receive them directly with a cell phone or satellite device. Printing them creates a literal paper trail and footsteps.
Besides mandatory censorship, I've heard in WW2 they just delayed all mail by 2 weeks intentionally. By that time all secret information is not relevant anyway.
Another interesting thing about WW2 mail - they would photograph letters onto microfilm, then reprint them on the other end to save valuable shipping capacity.
> Portable readers are plastic devices that fold for carrying; when open they project an image from microfiche on to a reflective screen. For example, with M. de Saint Rat, Atherton Seidell developed a simple, inexpensive ($2.00 in 1950), monocular microfilm viewing device, known as the "Seidell viewer", that was sold during the 1940s and 1950s.
Apparently that’s not what they really used for mail in WW2, though. This video shows how it was really done.
In the context of peer or near-peer conflicts, Ukraine has shown us many reasons why a cellphone or satphone can get you killed. Anything with a radio transmitter is a giant beacon announcing your location if your enemy has a half-competent ELINT operation. Allowing personal devices with internet access to be used in the field is a gargantuan COMINT risk, because it's basically inevitable that some idiot is going to post a geotagged photo of something sensitive on social media. Mail delivered through specific authorised channels can be monitored and censored much more easily than real-time communications.
FWIW smartphones are nearly universally used in Ukraine by both sides because too much useful stuff runs on them. Artillery calculators, for example.
Russians also use theirs for actual comms a fair bit because their equipment (like older tanks from storage) often lacks encrypted digital radios, or sometimes any working radios at all. Ukrainians invested heavily into DMR after the Donbas war in 2014-15 where they had similar troubles.
Why do you even need two way communication? Just have an encrypted signal with per device decryption keys. Kind of like how satellite tv works but for messages. You won’t have proof of delivery or a way to reply, but that’s a feature, not a bug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Forces_Post_Office#The...
It isn't an entirely novel idea - during the Second World War, mail was often sent to very remote destinations on microfilm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail