Universal Postal Service as a Business Opportunity

The chapter discusses universal service as a source of potential business opportunities for postal operators. Starting from the assumption that the postal sector could contribute to the human-centric digitalization promoted by the European Union (EU), while, at the same time, digitalization could offer promising business opportunities for the diversification of revenues needed by the postal operators, the chapter presents an exploratory analysis based on the combination of data on digitalization and postal development in the EU. In addition, two case studies are presented to illustrate alternative uses of universal service assets for the provision of additional services.