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In the US, recently a number of small overnight delivery services have consolidated into "regional" overnight carriers, thus offering delivery areas large enough to entice large shippers without requiring national coverage.

In California, for instance, there is Ontrac (http://www.ontrac.com/) which covers the six Western states, offering rates 40% below larger competitors. Amazon.com started using them last year, and has been steadily increasing usage. There are similar regional consolidations centered on New York and on Texas (http://www.ontrac.com/compprofileregionalcarriers.asp).

It appears that these were built by uniting a number of smaller local services by adding a "backbone" to them, don't know on what financial terms.

London certainly has a large number of very good delivery services operating within the M25, mostly on-demand (and fairly expensive). Some of these could perhaps be consolidated similarly, and likewise in other regions.

FWIW, my first-hand experience in the UK is that none of the national carriers (not even UPS and FedEx!) is nearly as good as UPS and FedEx in America; the Royal Mail is just about as bad as the wretched US Postal Service. So there is likely a business opportunity here.