Deutsche Telekom and partners including TNT Post Germany will finally launch their De-Maildigital mail service on August 31, kicking off full-scale competition to Deutsche Post’s
E-Postbrief service which launched two years ago.The German telecoms group announced today that De-Mail, which incorporates the ‘DE’ abbreviationfor ‘Deutschland’ (Germany), will start nationwide at the end of August parallel to the IFAconsumer electronics fair in Berlin where it will be heavily promoted with special offers.
Deutsche Post launched its E-Postbrief two years ago to become the first provider of secureelectronic e-mails in Germany but the take-up has been disappointing, according to Germanmedia.
More than one million people have already reserved a De-Mail address and the first two namedcorporate senders are the retail bank Targobank and Allianz, the leading German insurance group.Deutsche Telekom claimed the overall number of companies intending to use De-Mail “is already inthe tens of thousands”.
De-Mail will be offered not only by Deutsche Telekom but also by 1&1 Internet, an internetservices company that runs popular portals such as web.de and gmx.de. There will also be a hybridmail solution with De-Mail items printed by Telekom and then delivered by TNT PostGermany.
Telekom CEO René Obermann said: “De-Mail brings us a step closer to the gigabit society.Combining the benefits of the internet with those of written communication, De-Mail is convenient,secure and legally binding.”
Highlighting the “great market potential”, Deutsche Telekom predicted that by 2018, De-Mailmight well replace 29% of the 17.5 billion letters and 39% of the 5.4 billion faxes sent in Germanyevery year. The encrypted electronic mail service was secure, available everywhere 24/7 and reducedpostage, paper and printing costs, it stressed.
Jürgen Lieberknecht, Board Member for Marketing & Product Management at Targobank, committedthe bank to using the new service. “We intend to communicate securely with our customers viaDe-Mail, sending them documents for example that until now we have had to send by postal mail forsecurity reasons. Regular e-mail is not secure enough for that. De-Mail closes that gap.”
Dr. Alexander Vollert, Member of the Board of Allianz Deutschland, added: “De-Mail is asignificant new channel for legally binding electronic communication. De-Mail replaces the physicalsignature, which was often essential in the past, making it a genuine alternative to letters andfaxes signed in person. That saves our customers time and money and speeds up our electronicprocessing considerably. We therefore see De-Mail as another important element in the digitizationof our customer relationships.”
To launch the service, Deutsche Telekom is making promotional offers. Private customers will beable to send up to 50 De-Mails per month free of charge in the introductory phase until December31, 2012. After that, three standard De-Mails per month will be free of charge and any additionalDe-Mails will cost 39 euro cents.
Small and medium-sized enterprises will be able to send 50 standard De-Mails per month free ofcharge for as long as six months if they book the De-Mail service by December 31, 2012. There arealso special offers for corporate customers in the introductory phase. If they sign up during theintroductory phase, their monthly fee will be waived for the first six months.
Telekom explained that De-Mail customers have to register in person for the service and can doso at locations such as the 750 Telekom Shops and many Hermes parcel shops across the country.
