Author: Archive

The Postcomm announcement to bring forward the total liberalisation of the UK mail market, opening the Royal Mail to full competition earlier than previously announced, is brave but it does not necessarily mean that Royal Mail will immediately lose significant volumes of mail. Evidence in other markets, such as New Zealand and Sweden, where similar action has been taken, has led to little effective competition. If anything, the general public (who represent a minority of the market by volume) has ended up paying more and big business less as the incumbent gives discounts to volume senders and compensates for this by charging more for the standard letter. Notwithstanding this, our first class mail service is still one of the cheapest in Europe. Triangle feels that for the market to really open up there will need to be further stimulus to develop real competition, encourage new business models and ensure innovation. It can be done. A good example is the airline industry where deregulation has led to innovation such as the budget airlines and much cheaper and more widespread travel.

The decision to end the Royal Mail’s 350-year-old monopoly on delivering letters from next January has raised the prospect of rival firms installing different coloured post boxes alongside the traditional red ones.

Customers would then have to choose whether to put their card or letter into a red, yellow or possibly blue pillar box, depending how quickly they wanted it delivered and how much they had paid for a stamp.

But despite callers to radio phone-in programmes today being asked if they would be prepared to ditch the UK’s 115,000 Royal Mail boxes and entrust letters to a private firm, the reality is likely to be much different.