In line with the strategic evolution of posts, IPC members have decided to close the UNEX Quality of Service measurement service at the end of December 2025. This closure has been completed and all systems and tools have been decommissioned. This page is kept for informational purpose only.

IPC’s UNEX™ system was used to measure international letter service performance for 36 postal operators with test mail sent from more than 50 countries on four continents. UNEX™ test letters and packets were posted in one country, passing through the world’s postal networks until delivered to the addressee in the destination country.

All of the UNEX™ test items contained a small Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tag. At specific reading points in postal facilities in origin and destination countries , the RFID tag transmited its identity, anonymously, from the processing facility to IPC’s global RFID Network Centre in Brussels.

The UNEX™ System used the RFID transmitted data, combined with the date of posting and receipt as communicated by the volunteer panellists, to calculate the transit time between specific points in the mail pipeline, allowing postal operators to manage the international mail pipeline in accordance with their delivery commitments to customers, regulators and postal partners. Postal operators could in this way identify where bottlenecks occured and where corrective actions were necessary .
UNEX™ provided measures on both end-to-end and domestic segments of the international mail pipeline, as shown in the figure below.

 

 

All parties involved in UNEX ™ respected the integrity of the test measurements IPC provided. The validity and independence of the data was guaranteed by external contractors for panel recruitment and management.

UNEX™ began in 1994 with just 18 postal operators in 18 countries in Europe who mandated IPC to run the UNEX™ system and measurement of their cross-border letter mail transit times. In December 2025, the last moment of the UNEX™ measurement, 36 postal operators worldwide were participating.