Press Releases

Budapest, March 2, 2015 17:00

• First services in three countries
• Group to invest more than EUR 6 billion in Europe-wide network expansion through 2018
• Up to 100,000 connections migrated to IP technology each week

Fixed-network transmission speed will rise to 500 Mbit per second

The launch has begun: Deutsche Telekom has connected the first three of ten countries for its new European network. Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia can draw products from a standardized platform. "We need more Europe and are laying the technological cornerstone for this today. With our European network and the cross-border infrastructure, we will be able to set the tone and not just dance to the beat of drummers from the US and Asia," said CEO Timotheus Hoettges at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. "We are the first multinational telecommunications company to be able to truly make use of the synergies that arise when the national companies work together. This is our master plan for the digitization of Europe."

Superior production model makes use of the cloud

The first product is a business customer service for virtual private networks called "Cloud VPN," available now. For consumers, television services and video game offerings will follow over the course of the year. "Instead of having ten factories in ten countries for ten solutions, we will have central production sites for everyone," said Claudia Nemat, Board Member for Europe and Technology. "Our national companies can draw standardized product building blocks from a central catalog and use these to put together offerings customized to suit the market situation in their own regions. This enables us to balance local diversity with an efficient production model. We began planning in 2013 and will continue on this path step by step to build central European network factories by 2020."

Consistent network integration on schedule

Deutsche Telekom will meet the prerequisites for this technological leadership by 2018 by expanding and transforming its infrastructure. It will invest more than EUR 6 billion into the further development of its networks through 2018. "We are consistently pursuing this path and, in the meantime, are migrating up to 100,000 customer lines across Europe to IP technology each week," said Nemat. "No other company is currently migrating more lines than Deutsche Telekom in Europe." More than eight million lines have already been migrated to IP technology across Europe, with five million in Germany alone. By the end of 2018, all Telekom networks will speak one language: IP. Accordingly, the Group will also be able to operate these networks centrally.

Fast mobile access almost everywhere

With top speeds of 300 Mbit per second, the Deutsche Telekom LTE network is already well equipped and fast. Further expansion in the European markets is ensuring that by 2018 around 95 percent of the population will be able to use high-speed LTE for mobile connectivity. By 2020, all DT radio masts in Europe will be equipped with LTE technology. DT is also a key driver of the global standardization of the next mobile generation – 5G – through its chairmanship of the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance.

New network technology for faster data traffic

By 2018, half of all households connected to the DT network in Europe will be able to surf the Internet via broadband connections at speeds of at least 100 Mbit per second. Speeds in the fixed-line network will reach up to 500 Mbit per second for around 12 percent of households in the coming years. Deutsche Telekom will achieve this primarily through the combination of fiber optic technology and new technologies such as "G.fast" and "Super Vectoring", which it will gradually deploy throughout Europe in connection with the infrastructure restructuring.

Hybrid technology for Europe

Hybrid technology provides an especially good customer experience. It bundles fixed-line and mobile access and can perform up to twice as well. Starting today, the first hybrid router will be available throughout Germany. As a next step, additional TV functions will be integrated into the router. Other European subsidiaries of the Group also plan to introduce the new router this year. The goal is to bring a total of 100,000 devices to market by the end of 2016.

About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 151 million mobile customers, 30 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2014). The Group provides fixed network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in more than 50 countries and has approximately 228,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 62.7 billion in the 2014 financial year – more than 60 percent of it outside Germany.