News & Events

May 14, 2008

Postal News – Postal System in the United Arab Emirates

In parts of Dubai the formal addressing system is: sector number, community number, street number and building number. In common practice, an address consists of: street number, building number and community name although the order may vary.

In older parts of Dubai there are no street or sector addresses. Location is identified via building name and a landmark, which may vary as well. A person not familiar with Dubai may be unable to find his/her destination.

For example:

City Tower 2
Suite 803
Opposite Emirates Hotel
Sheikh Zayed Road
Dubai
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Address with P.O. Box:
Deira Main Post Office
P.O. Box 99999
Dubai
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES


History of the postal system in the UAE
A post office of British India was opened August 1909. It used the stamps of India on mail, with postmark "Dubai Persian Gulf", until India's independence in 1947, then stamps of Pakistan until March 1948. When Pakistan came into existence, the British government set up a postal administration for Eastern Arabia and used overprinted British stamps until 1961, when Dubai issued its own stamps.

The Dubai Post Department took over the postal service in 1963 and the following day it issued a series of stamps depicting sea life, views of Dubai, and Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The emirate discovered that stamp collectors were willing to give money for colored labels with "Dubai" printed on them, and by the time the postal system was merged with those of other emirates in mid-1972, it had issued over 400 stamps. Few of them ever saw usage on mail.

May 6, 2008

Database Release May 2008

This monthly database update covers 54 countries and territories served by 28 databases. Among others, addresses for Montenegro, Serbia, Thailand and Western Sahara have been updated.

Montenegro declared its independency from Serbia in 2006. Due to a technical requirement, the postal data for Montenegro are still covered by the Serbian database. The Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are used in both countries. Customers, who want to validate their addresses in both alphabets, can work with AddressDoctor. AddressDoctor can process addresses in 40 different character sets with the help of its automatic transliteration.

Western Sahara is a territory at the Atlantic coast of North West Africa. It is served partially by the Moroccan Post. The database was expanded by some localities. Also, provinces have been added. Western Sahara has no postal code system.

Thailand was updated with the newest data. The database was expanded by post box postal codes. Furthermore, exonyms for Bangkok have also been included.