As part of the European Postal Service Directive (PSD), Member States must guarantee that the density of access points to the universal postal service fulfills users’ needs. To this end, Member States typically impose density requirements which constrain the Universal Service Provider (USP) to design its postal network in a way that ensures that postal services are accessible to all citizens, regardless of where they reside. These requirements impose significant costs on USPs who identify them as a primary driver of the net cost of the Universal Service Obligation (USO), (Copenhagen Economics, Main developments in the postal sector (2017-2021). Study for the European Commission, Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs, 2022). In this paper, we develop an economic approach to assess the size of the gap between the network design that would have prevailed absent the USO density requirement and any USO density requirement.