CRAZY IDEA 101-3

When you sign up for cell phone service, you usually use the occasion to get the newest and sexiest of cell phone technologies at a service-provider subsidized rate. To get this subsidized cell phone price, though, you have to commit to staying with the cell phone service provider for a two year period. In other words, you trade your freedom to walk elsewhere for the lower phone price and the personal budgetary convenience.

What if the Postal Service were willing to partner with a provider that had an agreement with a consumer to scan and present electronically all the mail that was available for home delivery? The consumer would be able to view all of the mail on his computer screen, his home TV, or his cellular phone, and decide which mail he actually wanted to see in print. At his option, the consumer could print out this mail himself on his own home-based color printer. 

What also if the Postal Service and its private sector provider made the offer spicier by offering the consumer with access to lower, subsized prices for home-based color laser printers and inks, as long as the consumer were willing to subscribe to the service for a time-certain period not unlike that required by cellular phone service providers?

What kind of response would such a service evoke from a public, particularly a public that today is more used to getting and looking at other communication and information online? Would there be sufficient interest to test the concept?