Danish law requires everyone to have access to postal services for letters. Therefore another private company, DAO, will provide postal delivery to everyone in Denmark and the ability for everyone in Denmark to send letters from DAO service points (in shops, etc).
A significant subsidy is being provided to DAO to enable a universal delivery service.
DAO will be the national postal service for international treaty (UPU) purposes, enabling letter and small parcel post between Denmark and other countries according to UPU agreements.
Ownership by states doesn't make it a public service. It makes it a company whose shareholders happen to be governments. It still operates under corporate law, not administrative law, and it was explicitly removed from being a state service.
Calling that "not really private" is just rhetorical framing, not a legal or operational distinction.
I'm using it in the legal/operational sense relevant to whether a government service was withdrawn (agency vs company, public law vs company law). By that definition, it's a private company.
You're using it in a shareholder-ownership sense. That's a valid perspective, but it's a different question than the one being discussed here.
> Danes can still send a love letter or a Christmas card in 2026, but only through a private company.
> They must either drop it at a shop, or pay extra to have it collected from home, which is available online or via an app.
> By law, Danes must always be able to send a letter. If a private company stops delivering them, the government must step in with a new provider.
Activities like letter writing might get gentrified, with private businesses charging a premium for delivery.
They still can-send and receive letters but sending letters now requiring going to a shop and handing them over. Previously, you could buy a set of stamps and envelopes (possibly prepaid ones) put your letter into an envelope and drop it to a nearby postage box. (the red mailboxes article is mentioning)
Meanwhile for the receiving end it is the same, the letters will get dropped to your mailbox. If those require signature or receipt validation, you probably need to go to a nearby postal office to collect them if you were not at home at the time of delivery.
Only bummer is that a private company is handling all these mailing operations. Hence, prices are going to substantially increase in order to keep the profits high enough.
Edit: I asked an LLM, which told me that we can still send letters to Denmark from abroad, but that Danes themselves will have to go to the new private contractor to send outgoing mail (instead of using their postal service). The private contractor will apparently still do regular residential and business delivery, including for mail that originates outside of Denmark.
In my experience the Danish postal service for correct delivery of letters has been subpar in relation to American postal service (of course my American experience is from decades ago).
And yeah, elderly and digitalization is not always working well. Where I live the average age is ~80, and people need assistance to use the laundry machine.
The booking system for the public facilities such as laundry services is a piece of paper.