Posten Bring “positive” about reform of Norway’s postal law
Posten Bring has submitted its consultation response to a proposal for a new postal law. The company supports the proposed change to delivering letters to mailboxes one day a week, combined with the fact that recipients who want more frequent delivery can choose to have letters delivered to a post office.
It is also pointed out that a change must include a national doorstep service to avoid significantly weakening the national preparedness capacity. Posten Bring warns against several of the intrusive measures that have been proposed in the parcel market and fears that they will cause the industry to experience increased bureaucracy, increased costs, unpredictability, less innovation and weakened competition.
“We are positive about a reform of the letter distribution. We are now facing a very large restructuring and it is very important that we develop good solutions through it to meet today’s and tomorrow’s societal challenges. Our serviced letter network is the only physical channel that reaches all households every week. The introduction of a national doorstep service, to all residents over 75 years of age, creates social value while providing predictable and strengthened total preparedness in every nook and cranny across the country. At the same time, it is important that a modernized postal law does not unnecessarily intervene in markets that are currently well-functioning and characterized by strong competition. This applies in particular to commercial parcel services,” says Petter-Børre Furberg, CEO of Posten Bring.
The doorstep service as a trial scheme to strengthen preparedness
The doorstep service – with personal delivery of mail and information letters from the municipality to those over 75 – will be a socio-economically profitable offer that supplements letter delivery one day a week. At the same time, it will ensure that the postman network has a size and flexibility that constitutes a real national emergency capacity. Oslo Economics has assessed that the service has an annual effect equivalent to NOK 700 million with significant upside potential. Posten Bring recommends that the doorstep service be introduced as a three-year national trial at the same time as the transition to a new letter delivery system. This gives the authorities sufficient time and basis to assess the full-scale effects of the service before making a restructuring decision with irreversible emergency consequences. A transition to letter delivery one day a week together with a three-year national trial of the doorstep service could already in 2027/28 provide a full-year reform effect for the state of about NOK 1 billion.
Posten Bring points out in its response to the consultation that the preparedness capacity and the risk of a sharp reduction in the only nationwide physical channel to people’s homes have not been sufficiently assessed for impact. The risk lies primarily in the fact that it is the local presence and local knowledge of the postmen that are now being reduced and difficult to replace. Through a three-year national trial of the doorstep delivery scheme, a systematic evaluation can be carried out by relevant professional communities with a focus on the preparedness value of such a channel as redundancy for digital channels, the provision of necessary goods such as medicine, water and food to target groups that cannot meet their own needs, status checks on residents in addition to the ordinary provision of information.
New legislation will intervene in the parcel market
Posten Bring is very skeptical that the new Postal Act proposes several intrusive market regulation measures in a parcel market that is characterized by strong and well-functioning competition with local, national and international players. The services are well regulated by the Road Freight Act and general competition legislation, and Posten Bring’s network is open to all players on commercial terms already today. Neither needs have been identified nor has the consequences of moving these services from a regulation that has worked well for several decades been assessed to a new intrusive regulation under the Postal Act been assessed. Posten Bring believes that the proposed expanded regulation will lead to increased bureaucracy, increased prices and less innovation. This will in turn be detrimental to customers and users of the services. The proposed regulation should therefore be set aside. New legislation with such intrusive regulation requires a thorough and real needs and impact assessment before such regulation can be considered.
The amendments to the Postal Act should be limited to measures that support the restructuring of letter delivery and the introduction of a nationwide doorstep service as a three-year pilot project to realize the reform effects and safeguard national preparedness considerations. The restructuring should be implemented as quickly as possible so that the cost savings on the state budget are realized without unnecessary delays. This assumes that an amendment to the law is adopted by the Storting in the spring session of 2026. If the amendment to the law is not adopted then, there could be a delay of at least one year, and a potential cost saving of around one billion is lost. Other amendments to the law should be set aside or postponed until they have been more thoroughly examined.
