Swiss Post to experiment with delivering mail via drone

The payphone has largely become a thing of the past, and soon the days of having your mail delivered by a person on a bike could be history.

Switzerland’s postal service is to start testing deliveries by drone, a spokesman revealed on Sunday.

"We will make tests this summer," spokesman Bernhard Buerki said.

"For a logistics specialist like Swiss Post, that could be interesting."

Mr Buerki said the experiment is being undertaken in order to explore more efficient ways to deliver mail to mountainous regions of Switzerland notoriously difficult to reach by road.

In March it was revealed the Canadian arm of online retail giant Amazon was testing plans for delivering packages by the small, unmanned aircraft in a secret testing site in British Columbia.