Deutsche Post AG to Introduce E-mail Services

[Berlin] German postal service Deutsche Post AG has introduced a new, free e-mail service.
Chairman of the Board Klaus Zumwinkel wants to establish a new address
standard with this measure, that will be “just as obvious as the classic
postal address,” he said.

The project “ePOST” should
allocate customers a secure digital address to use for their whole life and
aims to bring the specialized competence of the Deutsche Post online.
In addition to the standard freemail, the net service will also offer services
such as WAP and the sending of SMS short messages. Furthermore, the Deutsche
Post will offer an absence notification service and automatic mail
forwarding. To ensure secure and confidential communication, encoding by
means of digital signatures is also being discussed.

The Deutsche Post already offers the possibility, via its trust center, to
achieve legally binding signatures through the Internet according to the German
signature law, but have had limited success so far. There’s also a charge for
this service.