BONN (dpa-AFX) - The Federal Network Agency is considering forcing Deutsche Post to raise certain prices for business customer mail. Proceedings have been initiated against Deutsche Post InHaus Services GmbH (DPIHS) because of possible price dumping, the Bonn-based agency announced Tuesday. DPIHS is a subsidiary of the Bonn-based group and provides "consolidation services". This means, for example, that it collects insurance letters and advertising letters from companies, stamps and sorts them. The letters are later delivered by Deutsche Post letter carriers - this area of work is not at issue in the proceedings.

The supervisory authority suspects that the Deutsche Post subsidiary is charging prices that are too low. It is suspected that the charges "fall short of the costs of efficient service provision and thus contain discounts that unfairly impair the competitive opportunities of other companies in a market for postal services," the authority says. The regulator is now examining more than 2,000 individual charges by DPIHS, with around 250 of the postal subsidiary's customers affected.

The company now has the opportunity to comment. In two months, the 12 procedures, which are based on the DPIHS service centers, must be completed. Then the network agency could impose a cease-and-desist order and the Post subsidiary would have to raise its prices.

A Post spokesman said they had taken note of the initiation of the proceedings. "We will of course provide the authority with all the necessary documents and demonstrate that Deutsche Post InHaus Service GmbH's charges do not violate the Postal Act."

Deutsche Post does an estimated 85 percent of its mail business with larger corporate customers, with the rest coming from private customers and small businesses that buy ordinary stamps to send mail. Government regulations apply to the level of this postage, but not to corporate customer postage.

Although the volume of mail has been shrinking for a long time in the digital age, the niche market is still considered to be quite lucrative. Swiss Post has small competitors here, but they have a hard time competing with the market leader. Should the Post have to raise said consolidation prices, this could improve the position of competitors.

"We have long expressed doubts about the legality of the pricing of Deutsche Post and its subsidiary," says Walther Otremba of the Bundesverband Briefdienste (BBD), which represents the interests of postal competitors. These include, for example, the regionally active companies Citypost from Hanover, PostModern from Dresden and Pin AG from Berlin. "With rock-bottom margins for their consolidation services, the Post Group has long tried, unfortunately in part successfully, to eliminate annoying competition from alternative providers and thus restore their old monopoly position," says the association chairman./wdw/DP/ngu