Italy's Universal Service
Continuing our series of articles looking at how other countries have adapted their Universal Service over time. This series continues after we submitted our proposal to Ofcom for reform of the Universal Service. In the fifth in the series, we look at Italy.
Case study: The Universal Service in Italy
The Italian government allowed Poste Italiane – Royal Mail’s equivalent – to introduce a five-day optimised service.
Poste Italiane has a target of 80 per cent delivery, arriving within one to three days depending on the region. This means service varies across the country, given the different delivery speeds dependant on the rurality of the area.
Before this change, prior to 2015, the standard practice was to deliver mail every working day (typically five days a week) to all recipients. This model aimed to provide consistent and frequent mail delivery to meet the needs of the population.
As postal volumes declined and user preferences shifted, maintaining daily delivery became financially challenging for Poste Italiane.
The 2015 Stability Law addressed these challenges by introducing measures to ensure the financial sustainability of the universal postal service. The law recognised the need to adapt to changing user needs and optimise costs.
To support the change, the Italian government provided a €1.3bn (£1.1bn) state subsidy across four years, between 2020 and 2024, for Poste Italiane. And its obligation to deliver to residents across the country ends in 2026.
Italy is joined by France, Australia and Belgium - with Germany under consideration - in tackling structural letter decline by “optimising” delivery i.e. delivering every day, but not to every address every day.
What is clear is that countries have utilised optimised delivery to promote sustainability and reduce the cost of providing the Universal Service.
In our own proposal, we have said all non-First Class letter deliveries, including Second Class, would be delivered every other weekday. Meanwhile, the delivery speed of standard bulk business mail (used by large mail shippers for bulk mailings such as bills and statements) would be aligned to Second Class, so they arrive within three weekdays instead of two currently.
As optimised delivery has been implemented in some countries, it has led to an increase in the cost of priority mail. The price of priority letters in Italy increased from €0.80 to €2.80 in 2015, to reflect growing costs.
Have your say
Visit myroyalmail.com/universalservice to share your feedback and ask questions around our own proposal, which you can read here.
Catch up on others in this series:
