MCI Mail

MCI Mail was a commercial email service that was operated by MCI Communications Corp. from 1983 to 2003. The service was one of the first commercial email services in the United States.

The MCI Mail service was launched on September 23, 1983, in Washington, D.C., during a press conference that was hosted by MCI's founder and Chairman, William G. McGowan. MCI Mail was the first commercial email service to use the internet. The service was officially decommissioned by MCI at 11:59 p.m. ET on June 30, 2003.

The service initially allowed users to send electronic text-based messages to other MCI Mail users. MCI Mail also supported read receipts and charge codes, allowing for cost accounting for email.

Later, the service was expanded so that users could send messages to non-MCI Mail users, including users on other public messaging services, such as AT&T Mail, CompuServe, and SprintMail.

Eventually, a gateway to the Internet was also provided. MCI Mail users were assigned an email address of either their MCI Mail ID @mcimail.com (e.g. 218-0241@mcimail.com), their user name @mcimail.com (e.g. bsmith@mcimail.com), or their formal name @mcimail.com (e.g. Bob_Smith@mcimail.com).

Several email software products were developed to facilitate email handling from a PC. These included Lotus Express, Norton Commander's MCI Mail utility, MailRoom from Sierra Solutions, Emma, and MCI's own MCI Mail Express and Express Lite. The email facility in Microsoft Bob also used MCI Mail.

Messages destined to postal addresses were laser printed at an MCI Mail print site, placed in an envelope and mailed via the U.S. Postal Service. The cost was $1 to $2 per page. The service was attractive because there were few affordable letter-quality laser printers available to consumers at the time. Most consumers could only afford low quality dot matrix printers, which were not suitable for business correspondence. It also saved a trip to the post office.

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