Nowadays, letters are increasingly being sent electronically rather than delivered by the postman. Four in ten people in Germany no longer send any (paper) letters at all. This is one of the findings of a representative public opinion survey commissioned by the German Bundestag and carried out by TAB as part of the TA project ‘Postal Services and Modern Information and Communication Technologies’. According to the respondents, the volume of private letter post will continue to fall in future. This continues a trend seen in recent years. Model calculations for the period up to 2020 indicated an average annual decline in letter volumes in Germany of between 1.4% and 3.4%. Against this backdrop, the German Bundestag raised the question of the future of the universal postal service, which guarantees a nationwide postal service providing the same quality of service to all regions: Under what conditions can this service be maintained in the face of increasing e-substitution and a further decline in letter volumes? What options for adaptation are available? As short-term slumps in letter volumes are not expected, but rather medium-term declines, there is time to thoroughly prepare the necessary adjustments and discuss them extensively with stakeholders, involving academia and the public. On the one hand, political options for action are available within the existing framework of European legislation; on the other hand, new regulatory models for a universal service must also be discussed, one that encompasses and interrelates physical, electronic and hybrid forms of communication.