SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Locations providing Post Office Box service are classified as competitive or market dominant and assigned to fee groups based upon the Post Office location and other criteria. Competitive fee groups provide more services than market dominant ones and have somewhat higher fees. Competitive Post Office Box service includes several enhancements such as: electronic notification of the receipt of mail, use of an alternate street address format, signature on file for delivery of certain accountable mail, and additional hours of access and/or earlier availability of mail in some locations.

On July 21, 2022, the Postal Regulatory Commission issued Order No. 6234, approving the Postal Service's request to expand the Postal Regulatory Commission's previous five-mile criterion for assessing competitiveness by an additional three miles, extending the mileage range from five miles to eight miles.^[1] The transfer originally covered 297 Post Office Box service locations, each of which was listed in the Postal Service's original Request.^[2] The Postal Service likewise provided notice of its intent to transfer these 297 locations in the Federal Register at the time of the Request.^[3]

The Postal Service hereby provides further notice that Post Office Box service for locations within eight miles of a competitor will be reassigned from market dominant fee groups to competitive fee groups effective January 22, 2023.

This notice also updates the Request list to exclude 6 locations from the originally proposed list of 297 which, upon further review, were found to have limited or no public access. There are no other changes to the original list. The remaining 291 locations are the same and are still properly classified as competitive based on their proximity to a private sector competitor within eight miles.

Documents pertinent to this request are available at http://www.prc.gov, Docket No. MC2022-46. Communications are being sent to the identified Postmasters of the locations; and PO Box customers in the identified 291 Post Office locations will receive an email and/or letter notifying them that their PO Boxes are now competitive locations and include the additional services. Additional internal and external communications will be sent as well. A list of affected locations, with the associated ZIP Codes, is provided in the Appendix to this notice.

Appendix

Transfer of Additional Post Office Box Locations to Competitive Fee Group—ZIP Code Listing

The following is a revised list of the locations the Postal Service intends to transfer based on the eight-mile criterion established in Order No. 6234. The list is sorted by ZIP Code in ascending numerical order with geographical breaks and headers. As indicated by the column headings, this list provides the ZIP Code of the affected PO Boxes (ZIP), the office name of the location (OFFICE NAME), the city where the PO Boxes are located (CITY), the current market dominant fee group (CFG), and the new competitive fee group (NFG). Please note that there are more ZIP Codes than locations covered by the request, because some locations serve more than one ZIP Code. These locations can be identified whenever multiple ZIP Codes are listed for a single office name. ( printed page 75674)

87 FR 75673