Regulatory ruminations
Today was the second and final day of the 27th annual World Mail & Express Europe conference here in London. This morning, the conference was addressed by John Ivers, the Director Licensing Framework & Market Intelligence at the regulator Postcomm.
He spent quite a lot of time analysing the volume and composition of UK mail. He explained that, since 2001, the historic relationship between GDP growth and growth in overall mail volumes has broken down with actual declines in total volumes in the last two yrears. The UK has the second highest number of items posted per household in Europe and he speculated that the UK mail industry may now have reached maturity.
On the other hand, he insisted that decline in mail volume is "not a natural law" and that some parts of the market - such as business to consumer mail and fulfillment - are still growing. Drawing on research by Pitney Bowes, he argued that "Internet users receive more physical mail than those who do not use the Internet" (although those not on the Net tend to be older and poorer consumers).
Touching on the universal service obligation, he said that the USO should be "one evolving in scope and service to meet the changing needs of customers in an increasingly dynamic market" - which seems somewhat coded.
Finally looking more to the future, he referred to Postcomm's Strategy Review which was launched with a consultation document as long ago as August 2006. He said that an "Emerging Views" document would be published "around July". In the Q&A session, Postwatch Council member Roger Darlington expressed disappointment that submissions on the orginal discussion document on the review were required by 9 November 2006 and no new document would be available for eight months after those views were submitted.
Postcomm has a London Forum on 12 June and Postwatch would have expected the "Emerging Views" document to have been published before that event, so that public discussion could have begun at the Forum. After all in the Foreword to the original discussion document, Postcomm Chairman Nigel Stapleton stated: "Our plan is to provide feedback to this consultation as early as possible in 2007".
He spent quite a lot of time analysing the volume and composition of UK mail. He explained that, since 2001, the historic relationship between GDP growth and growth in overall mail volumes has broken down with actual declines in total volumes in the last two yrears. The UK has the second highest number of items posted per household in Europe and he speculated that the UK mail industry may now have reached maturity.
On the other hand, he insisted that decline in mail volume is "not a natural law" and that some parts of the market - such as business to consumer mail and fulfillment - are still growing. Drawing on research by Pitney Bowes, he argued that "Internet users receive more physical mail than those who do not use the Internet" (although those not on the Net tend to be older and poorer consumers).
Touching on the universal service obligation, he said that the USO should be "one evolving in scope and service to meet the changing needs of customers in an increasingly dynamic market" - which seems somewhat coded.
Finally looking more to the future, he referred to Postcomm's Strategy Review which was launched with a consultation document as long ago as August 2006. He said that an "Emerging Views" document would be published "around July". In the Q&A session, Postwatch Council member Roger Darlington expressed disappointment that submissions on the orginal discussion document on the review were required by 9 November 2006 and no new document would be available for eight months after those views were submitted.
Postcomm has a London Forum on 12 June and Postwatch would have expected the "Emerging Views" document to have been published before that event, so that public discussion could have begun at the Forum. After all in the Foreword to the original discussion document, Postcomm Chairman Nigel Stapleton stated: "Our plan is to provide feedback to this consultation as early as possible in 2007".
Labels: Postcomm
posted by Postwatch at 5:39 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home