ABSTRACT
Letter mail was not only the first network industry to raise to universal coverage, but also the network industry most severely disrupted by digitalization, the internet and, in particular by electronic mail. Email was one of the early applications of ARPANET, and the killer application as the internet went mainstream in the 1990s. Web mail companies such as Hotmail were early examples of venture capital investing in creative founders in Silicon Valley that would monetize on the creation of new network effects on the data layer. They did not invest in infrastructure, but they created new and massive network effects on top of the internet, which was mostly built on top of the infrastructure of the traditional telecom carriers. Email substitutes letter mail, which has decreased volumes at a 4 per cent rate over the last 15 years.
