Belgium Ends 19th-Century Telegram Service (bbc.com)

Belgium's telegram service is about to stop. From a report: One hundred and seventy-one years after the first electrical message was transmitted down a line running alongside the railway between Brussels and Antwerp the final dispatch will be sent and received on 29 December. The fact that this 19th-Century technology is still up and running in the age of Instagram and Snapchat may seem rather odd -- especially when you consider that the UK, which invented the telegram in the 1830s, abandoned it as long ago as 1982. The United States followed suit in 2006 and even India, which had been by far the world's biggest market for the telegram, finally closed its system down in 2013.

Comments

Fake News Detected

[jrmcferren]

"The United States followed suit in 2006..."

While in 2006 Western Union stopped handling telegrams, the business was sold not discontinued.

There are two companies providing this service. International Telegram took over the Western Union Service, but American Telegram is another company in the business.

The official time stamp on a telegram is valid in court for purposes of contract law regardless of delivery method, in fact cancelling time share agreements is a common use of telegrams.

Like paging, the telegram business is healthy but smaller than it once was. The service has evolved significantly with classic and contemporary entry and delivery methods.

Telegrams can be delivered in one or more methods:

- Traditional Hand Delivery
- Postal Delivery
- Telephone (an operator calls and reads the telegram to you)
- Fax (the telegram is transmitted to your fax machine).
- Email: Yes, even email delivery of a telegram is available. Telegrams, even if delivered by email are kept on file by the telegraph (Morse isn't used BTW) for legal verification purposes.

Still alive

[enriquevagu]

That's funny, because telegrams are still alive in Spain. They still charge per words.

As mentioned in previous comments, telegrams are still alive in many parts of the world (including the US, despite what's in the article) and they are used for legal reasons, in cases in which registered delivery is required.

Re: Stop

[houghi]

As somebody living in Belgium and having used telegram service, morse has nothing to do with it. What we did was send an email asking them to deliver a telegram. They prited it out and deliverd it, minus the headers and what not. For birthdays you could even buy cards that would go with it it was billed to the phonebill.

Think of it as what you see in mivies where they have to hand over a soupena by hand. The underlaying protocol didnot matter. Sono morse code, but boring TCP/IP.