To Post or not to Post

Recently I’ve become rather concerned about what is going to happen to the postal service if the Royal Mail loses its postal monopoly. How are the other companies offering delivery services going to work? The Royal Mail has dedicated postmen who know the area and potentially deliver to every house in the land. What will happen if say two houses on one street of a hundred houses are sent mail by another delivery agency. Will it be economically viable for that company to send out a post man for just two houses? Magnify this across the whole country and in particular the outlying rural areas and we may have a situation where deliveries only take place two or three times a week. Will this mean that we may eventually have to pay for a delivery to take place from a company that is not Royal Mail? At the moment the cost of delivery is paid by the sender when they buy a stamp. If sending mail to a remote Scottish Island is going to cost twice as much as it does now the sender will stay with Royal Mail, so what is the point anyway? I know it can work with parcels, there are plenty of delivery firms, catalogue couriers etc. but how will it affect our daily postal deliveries? The powers that be say that Royal Mail will still be required to provide a daily collection and delivery service in the new market but how long will they be able to sustain that under the threat of competition? Perhaps I am worrying unduly but having seen the fiasco on the rail service since that was denationalized and going through the bizarre notion of getting gas from electricity or water companies and telephone services from the supermarket my aged brain has gone into panic scenario overdrive.