WHOA, in the US, telegrams haven’t yet been blocked, and they have transformed into an insanely expensive elite legal service, monopolized by American Telegram and iTelegram (both successors of Western Union). An urgent cable costs $34.95 base plus $0.79 per word. Additionally, they officially charge a $20.00 surcharge for home delivery, $25.00 for sending on a weekend, and up to $200.00 if you dictate the text to a live operator. Even sending a regular e-mail through their service will set you back $14.95.
The main source of income is the emergency cancellation of commercial contracts under the federal “3-day rule.” By law, contracts are terminated the second a telegram is sent. Companies are required to recognize the timestamp of American Telegram, authorized by the FCC, which provides ironclad protection in court. For 100% legal force, the service cunningly imposes on clients a delivery report and an archive copy — at $12.95 for each checkbox.
Their rates still include astonishing rules: “a word” is considered any group of characters up to 7 signs (more than that counts as two words), and a fee of $10.00 is automatically imposed for text in any language other than English. Special “War Zone” rates for messages to soldiers still apply ($20.00 base + $0.89 per word) and international cablegrams to sea vessels are sent strictly at the “risk and peril of the sender” with no guarantee of response.
Imagine, to save money, entire code books were published in the early 20th century that replaced complex thoughts with a combination of letters that looked like a word (link in the comments). POTUS and SCOTUS are from there.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 