Competitive Market Review: 2005

Proposals for tackling barriers to entry in postal services
Contents: Summary i 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Postcomm’s statutory duties 1 1.2 Postcomm’s vision and regulatory strategy 2 1.3 Purpose and structure of this document 2 1.4 Process so far 3 1.5 How to respond 4 1.6 Confidentiality of responses 5 2. General overview of the UK postal market 6 2.1 Introduction 6 2.2 Overview of the UK postal sector 6 2.3 The size of the UK letter market 7 2.4 Characteristics of mail 8 3. Development of competition in the UK letter market 11 3.2 Market entry to date 12 3.3 Market volumes 2004/05 16 3.4 Market revenues 2004/05 17 3.5 Latest developments 17 3.6 Prospects for entry 20 3.7 International experience 21 3.8 Summary 22 4. Royal Mail’s performance 23 4.1 Introduction 23 4.2 Universal Service 23 4.3 Financial performance 24 4.4 Quality of Service performance 31 4.5 Summary 37 5: Customer awareness and behaviour 38 5.1 2005 business customer survey 38 5.2 Key results of the 2005 survey 39 5.3 Postcomm’s response 44 6. Stakeholder Views 46 6.1 Introduction 46
6.2 Summary 47 7. Barriers to the development of effective competition 48 7.1 Introduction 48 7.2 Barriers to the development of effective competition 48 7.3 Other Key Concerns 64 7.4 Summary 70 Annex 1: Stakeholder views 71 Annex 2: Postcomm’s review of the exclusive relationship between Royal Mail and Post Office Limited 92 Annex 3: Postcomm’s process for complaints of anti-competitive behaviour under Part 4 of Royal Mail’s licence 96 Annex 4: Access determination process 99 Annex 5. Prospects for entry 101
P:LibraryPostalPostComm Formal DocumentsCompetitive_Market_Review_Nov_2005.pdf