Member countries and their designated operators are keen to explore the possibilities of .post following last week’s announcement that the technical platform is up and running.
Poste Italiane has already set up its .post site (www.posteitaliane.post) and has plans for future services branded with the .post suffix. The Italian operator is teaming up with the Netherlands’ PostNL to look at developing cross-border e-commerce on the platform.
Poste Italiane is also trialling a postal registered electronic mail service with China and Macau Posts.
The .post platform extends the physical postal network into cyberspace, enabling the community to offer trusted and secure postal e-services.
To showcase the possibilities on .post, the Postal Technology Centre (PTC), the UPU’s technical arm, has created a global track and trace application which, eventually will enable customers to track the items they have ordered until final delivery.
Using the electronic data that the world’s Posts exchange on the UPU’s Post*Net network and other interconnected networks managed by external partners, participating Posts could benefit from a comprehensive end-to-end track and trace system.
The project is in its infancy but has great potential as Posts sign up, according to Harald Weyerich, director of the PTC, which manages the UPU’s interconnectivity solutions.
Future plans
With the .post infrastructure now available to UPU member countries, the ball is in this community’s court following the adoption of a Congress resolution that gave the green light to the project’s continued development.
Malaysia has also pledged 100,000 USD to the project. Earlier this year, Poste Italiane donated 500,000 EUR to getting .post off the ground.
A .post user-group is expected to be set up at the next Postal Operations Council in April 2013 to oversee the future development and management of the top-level domain.
Member countries will be able to join the group for a fee and help shape the future of .post.This will bring the funding of .post in line with other user-funded groups, such as the EMS and Telematics Cooperatives.
In the interim, a committee headed by Italy is ensuring work continues.
In 2009, the UPU became the first United Nations agency to be granted a sponsored top-level domain.