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British Telecom is to link up Britain's 542 further education colleges to their own national email network from the start of next year. The initiative follows a successful six-month trial with 80 colleges. The initiative will enable the Association for Colleges and the National Association for Information Technology in Further Education to communicate with principals, lecturers and chairs of governors.

Network features will include bulletin board and file transfer and windows based software. Connection will be via Campus Connect which is used to link examination bodies with their centres and includes links to the Joint Academic Network (Janet) database. Next week's AfC annual conference, co-sponsored by BT, will highlight the initiative.