According to German government circles, the Federal government plans to sell its shares in Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom by the end of 2006. Financial minister Hans Eichel (SPD) has allowed for almost EUR15.5bn of revenue from privatisation; the biggest part of it is to be generated by the sale of Telekom and Deutsche Post shares.
Read MorePresentation at Rutgers 04 Cork by Luis Jimenez, Pitney Bowes. Progress report on study on e-substition
Ian Senior comments on presentation:
Jiminez’s paper is outstanding in its breadth and depth of approach to
>forecasting a future for mail.
>
>The main points remain:
>
>1) Each new communication medium that arrives has an impact that both
>increases the total amount of communication and, frequently, reduces for a
>while the volume and value of existing media but does not completely
>eliminate existing media. Thus cinema was supposed to kill off theatre; TV
>was supposed to kill off cinema; videos were supposed to reduce the amount
>of TV watched; transfer of files via the internet is currently predicted to
>kill off CDs etc. So far none of the threatened media has been killed off
>though their shares of the total communications market have changed. If
>the total market is growing, which it is, that helps them to survive.
>
>2) The Internet is already having a big impact on letters as a medium for
>one-to-one information. I write far more individual e-mails per day than I
>ever wrote individual letters per month. However, the impact of the
>Internet on direct mail advertising so far has not prevented the latter’s
>growth, in the UK at least.
>
>3) However, different technologies can kill off earlier technologies
>completely (e.g the fax killed off telex; e-mail is in the process of
>killing off faxes; audio cassettes and CDs have killed off vinyl; CD’s
>have killed off cassettes. The point in all these cases, including mail,
>comes down to the cost and convenience of the transmission per piece and,
>in the case of mail, the sales generated by the transmission. Spam is an
>example, akin to broadcasting radio and televition, in which the cost of
>sending literally millions of spam messages is no more than sending one.
>Hence, the tiniest response rate producing sales justifies spamming. This
>will change dramatically if ISPs were all to introduce charges for each
>e-mail sent.
>
>In conclusion Jiminez’s paper is an outstanding contribution but does not
>alter my view that the volume of mail pieces in the developed world will
>float slowly downwards over the next 5 years. Mail’s content will
>increasingly be direct marketing while one-to-one information bearing mail
>will largely migrate to the Internet. The advent of competition in
>providing mail services should reduce the cost to senders which in turn
>will encourage growth of volume.
P:LibraryRutgers 2004Jimenez Electronic Substitution for Mail.pdf
Read MoreFrench postal operator La Poste is cutting its Internet access rates in a bid to compete more effectively with strong rivals including France Telecom’s Wanadoo service. La Poste hopes to increase the subscriber base of the its service, which debuted in March of last year. As well as the price cuts for both broadband and narrowband services, La Poste is also making it easier for consumers to sign up for the service at any of its 14,000 branch offices rather than having to call a special phone number or go online. The price cuts cover both broadband and dial-up services of the post.
Read MoreNew research conducted for Royal Mail by the Henley Centre(1) shows consumers respond positively to marketing messages that accompany their phone bills.
The survey was created to look into consumer reactions to paper based communications with their telecoms providers, and has indicated a high level of consumer satisfaction with these organisations.
Read MorePost offices belonging to Romanian Post National Company (CNPR) will start providing Internet access services this year as well as possibility to pay invoices for taxes or other fees through their offices, said on Sunday the Minister of Communication and IT, Dan Nica. During a meeting with CNPR representatives Minister Nica said that Romanian Mail is planning to upgrade its equipments and thus it would have the necessary resources to provide such resources.
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