GMX AG: Overview

Scaling Up for Online Mail and Marketplaces
The global adoption of SMTP and POP3 technologies means access to e-mail is now available anywhere in the world as readily as a cup of coffeeand often in the same place.

This is just one example of how electronic communications have evolved into digital communications after almost a century of relatively little evolution or innovation. In becoming digital, electronic communications are undergoing massive change and new business opportunities are multiplying.

In the last twenty years, one of the lynchpins of global commercethe telex systemhas become a virtual dinosaur. The telephone and the fax machine, both apparently as settled as the motorcar, have lost millions upon millions of messages switched to electronic mail.

Both fax and phone systems are evolving furiously to stay current because digital messaging is now acquiring the legal and commercial frameworks required to become the preferred form of information exchange for both consumers and businesses.

As e-mail itself evolves, private and proprietary systems have become private and open, with the Web-browser and public-key encryption providing two of the three vital ingredients for super-fast global dissemination of any communications technology: ubiquity and privacy.

The third ingredient, perhaps the least well understood, is the notion of free services. Free software has been joined by free services, and free e-mail is the most prominent of all of these. It is well known that free unified messaging services are an established business proposition with evolving market models. What is not so well known is that not all free e-mail providers are American.

Free-Mail Hits Germany
GMX is the brainchild of German entrepreneur Karsten Schramm, who founded CubeNET, one of Germany�s first Internet Service Providers, in 1990.

Started literally in Schramm�s front room, CubeNET provided the platform on which, in 1998, Schramm and Co-Directors Eric Dolatre and Peter K�hnkow launched GMX AG. Initially designed to serve residents in the Munich area, GMX now offers its free e-mail service throughout Europe and beyond, to over seven million members.

GMX is a location- and provider-independent value-added service for everything to do with e-mail and messaging on the Internet. GMX creates a unique communication platform with a wealth of mechanisms that make everyday e-mail dealings considerably more convenient, independent and more secure.

GMX AG is unique in giving users a rich set of functions over and above an Internet e-mail address. Users have the option to create their own anti-spam lists to prevent junk e-mail. Mail forwarding is free, and a sophisticated mail-filtering system allows mail to be automatically managed according to user-designed rules.

GMX�s vision is to anticipate customer's requests, continuously adding new functionality, while expanding the service throughout Europe. Already e-mail with national domain addresses is available for Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Great Britain, France, Italy and Turkey.

Today GMX AG is the largest German e-mail and messaging service provider on the Internet with over 7.5 million members. It offers a range of services from free e-mail to consumers through chargeable professional applications. With over 402 million page impressions in November 2000, GMX is by far the busiest IVW-audited Internet service in Germany, and provides its commercial partners with an effective platform for one-to-one marketing.

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