Post licence must stick to the letter of the law
Bit of a hiccup in the onward march of competition in the postal industry. Postcomm, the independent regulator, has discovered that the legislation establishing a framework for competition requires companies to be licensed for collecting outbound international mail, but not for carrying it.
As a result, a short-term licence is being hurriedly issued to G3 Worldwide Mail, a TNT Post Group subsidiary, which runs an international mail service that no one previously thought needed to be licensed.
The regulator is also expected to issue two further short-term licences to TNT shortly, to legalise niche service contracts the company has with banking and financial services customers. These licences were expected.
The licences, on which Postcomm is consulting, mark an important moment – they will be the first issued to any company other than Consignia, which runs the Royal Mail and Parcelforce services. But they do not represent any increase in the level of competition in the postal sector.
Postcomm has been talking to all the big commercial players and European post offices, but none has so far indicated it wants to compete head on with Consignia. Postcomm is expected to issue a consultation document this month setting out options for achieving its goal of a fully competitive market.
* Never let it be said that the technology sector has lost all its optimists. Redundancies at UK manufacturing facilities owned by Compaq, Motorola and Phillips appear to have done little to damp bullishness in some quarters. Indeed, the website www.i-resign.com has launched a feature to allow bosses and staff to calculate on their mobile phones their tax and national insurance liability at each pay rise.
The service is also being aimed at job interviewees, negotiating on pay. “The decision to play hardball or roll over may depend on such timely information,” the site organisers warn. But with gloomy forecasts of semi-conductor sales and warnings of further job losses, there may be an even a more useful development: calculating the take-home value of redundancy packages.
