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Alas poor snail-mail, we knew you well

When email first came along I, like many others, saw very little use for it.

Of course email first appeared long before the internet was a ubiquitous network connecting almost every corner of the planet. The first email systems were limited to specific networks and sometimes even just specific computers.

While it was useful for leaving notes addressed to others in your department or even those who used the same machine with a different login, it was certainly no threat to the might and power of the Post Office.

Despite numerous attempts to broaden the reach of various email systems, it remained largely an "internal" communications mechanism. Even standards such as X400, which sought to standardise methods of addressing and delivering emails didn't really change much.

And then the internet arrived and now, just a few years later, the Post Office's snail-mail service is under real threat.

Now it costs virtually nothing to send your messages around the world and you can even attach pictures, sound recordings, video or other data.

Even better, although airmail can cut the time to deliver a hand-written communication to the other side of the world from weeks to days, email can deliver your message in minutes or seconds.

A huge percentage of both personal and business communications have now been switched to email, leaving the world's postal services with a huge infrastructure to handle a dwindling stream of letters.

To see what this is doing to profitability one only has to look at what's in store for NZers who use the postal system. The cost of sending a regular letter is set to rise to $0.60 later this year -- largely due to falling volumes.

What's more, I doubt things will get any better for regular letter-mail -- as we continue to embrace email, instant-messaging, SMS and social networking.

Whereas, just a decade or two ago, many people had pen-friends that they stayed in touch with via mail -- they now just go to each other's FaceBook pages to maintain that contact.

As our population ages, even that last bastion of the postal service -- getting a card with a $20 note in it from grandma for Christmas will be gone. Replaced instead by an email and a deposit into junior's bank account via internet banking.

Yep, we're about to reach the point where even the oldest members of society are Net-savvy and opt for email over snail-mail.

I wonder if we'll still even have a postal service as we now know it, in another decade's time?

However, all is not lost for the Post Office -- there is one part of their business which really is booming...

I'm talking about the shipment of parcels, both around the country and around the world.

The very internet boom that has effectively ankle-tapped their letter-based mail business is proving a bonanza for the shipment of parcels containing products purchased online. You see, while email can replace snail mail, there's simply no substitute for the Post Office's physical infrastructure and services when it comes to delivering that MP3 player you bought from a Chinese wholesale website for $20.

Unfortunately, if my experiences are anything to go by, the Post Office may be about to drop the ball there too. It's now much cheaper to use some courier services than to use good old parcel-mail to have items delivered around NZ. Many of the Kiwi companies I deal with opt to use a low-cost courier service in preference to the postal service. The prices are lower and the service is generally better (so they tell me).

So maybe, just maybe, the postal service really is past its "best-by" date.

What do you think?

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