German telecoms operator Deutsche Telekom will launch a new digital mail service called De-Mailwithin the next few months to take on Deutsche Post’s E-Postbrief product in a head-to-head battle
between the former sister companies.DT announced the launch of its new digital mail service, which will be provided in cooperationwith TNT Post Germany, the PostNL subsidiary, at the world’s largest ICT trade fair CeBit inHanover, northern Germany, yesterday.
Providing a competitive product to Deutsche Post’s E-Postbrief service, Telekom will offer bothprivate and business customers a comfortable, secure and confidential way to send and receivemessages and documents via De-Mail.
Niek Jan van Damme, Member of the Management Board at Deutsche Telekom, stressed the advantageof De-Mail compared to a traditional letter: “With De-Mail, we offer customers a more secure andverifiable way of shipping for important documents. In addition, De-Mail is comfortable andpractical. Our customers will be able to try it out soon.”
The new offering will go live during the second quarter of this year with a trial phase thatwill last until the end of August. During this period, private customers will be able to registerand set up a De-Mail account, as well as receive De-Mails free of charge.
After the trial phase, any private customer can send three De-Mails per month without an extracharge while every further De-Mail will cost €0.39 which is considerably cheaper than theE-Postbrief at a price of a traditional letter that costs €0.55.
The De-Mail service primarily targets businesses due to their high shipping volumes. Therefore,business customers will be able to profit from even lower shipping prices through attractivepackages or volume-dependent staggered bundles. Along with web-based De-Mail access, they can alsoaccess their mail systems through a gateway.
Before the trial phase starts, those interested in the service can reserve their preferredDe-Mail address via www.telekom.de/de-mail which more than a million peoplehave already made use of across Germany.
Reinhard Clemens, Telekom Executive Board and CEO of T-Systems, added: “The interest frombusiness and authorities in De-Mail is huge. With T-Systems, we have the expertise and the routineto integrate De-Mail in the existing IT systems of companies.”
For T-Systems’ corporate customers, Telekom already started offering the De-Mail service fromtoday onwards. This particular customer group will profit from special De-Mail service bundles withstaggered prices depending on volume. These also include the option of choosing between the purelydigital delivery and the hybrid solution which offers delivery per mail initially but afterwardsthe letter is printed out and delivered to the recipient physically via partner like TNT Post.Combining De-Mail and traditional postal letters enables Deutsche Telekom to take care of thecomplete correspondence of their corporate customers. They will receive access to De-Mail within afew days via central e-mail gateways.
Compared to Deutsche Post which launched its major project E-Postbrief in July 2010, DeutscheTelekom’s offer comes relatively late. In contrast to De-Mail, the E-Postbrief is available both inthe electronic and hybrid form for all customers.
Launched to compensate for the digital substitution of traditional physical mail, Deutsche Post’s e-letter is developing rather slowly with small mail volumes despite massive marketing and largeinvestments, according to recent German media reports.
Deutsche Post today presented new features and developments for the E-Postbrief at CeBit andalso highlighted the advantages of its electronic mail service. Ralph Wiegand, CEO E-Postbrief,stressed that Deutsche Post would not reduce the prices of its e-letter in response to the cheaperTelekom offer, saying that “the E-Postbrief is much more than just an encrypted e-mail from A to B”.
“We offer complete processes from one source with value-added services including, for example,responsible organisations certified by TÜV, the ‘Postident’ procedure, document processing as wellas delivery with the possibility of international shipping in future. No matter in which way youuse this system and the infrastructure across Germany, it costs €0.55 for private customers and weoffer discounts for business customers. I think this is fair pricing. I cannot say whether a securemail from A to B is worth €0.39,” Wiegand commented.
Deutsche Telekom, the privatised German telecoms company, has over 129 million mobile customers,34 million fixed-network lines and approximately 17 million broadband lines. It provides productsand services for fixed networks, mobile communications, the internet and other communicationstechnology.
