The Royal Mail this week entered the Internet age with a demonstration of its £2 million Genesis project which is backed by 22 major companies.

Acorn, AT&T, BT, Compaq, IBM,Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are among companies backing the infrastructure which will bring the Royal Mail, Parcelforce, Post Office Counters and Subscription Services to televisions, telephones, PCs and mall-based kiosks in the future.

The plans are at an early stage, but The Post Office is confident it will offer new network-based services to the public and businesses: "We are blazing a trail that will enable us rapidly to put into place some of the biggest, futuristic concepts in the history of the Post Office," said Dr Duncan Hine, Post Office director of technology.

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