our commitment
to europe
Our goal is clear: we want to become the leading European telecommunica-tions provider. To make that happen, we rely on integrated networks, close cooperation with our partners, and products that delight our customers. We want to be the preferred provider for consumers and business customers alike.
We already consider ourselves the most European telecommunications provider. Europe accounts for 75 percent of our corporate value. It’s home to 80 percent of our employees. That’s reason enough to take responsibility and invest in Europe’s digital future.
at least 50 percent of Europe will have LTE network coverage.
all countries where we operate a fi xed network will migrate to IP: Germany, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Romania, and Hungary.
by the end of 2017,
by 2018,
in january 2014,
we switched our network in Macedonia over to full IP. Why? Here’s an example: IP customers in Macedonia can already order a broadband fi xed-network line using their smart-phones. They press a button and the line is there. Since December the same has been true for Slovakia.
Deutsche Telekom. The 2014 fi nancial year.
By 2017, we anticipate we’ll have around
ten million
We are the fi rst network operator in Europe to switch over
will enable our mobile subsidiaries in Eastern Europe to off er business and multinational customers cross-border voice and data services, virtual private networks, and cloud services thanks to an extensive regional optical fi ber network and data centers.
the acquisition of gts
an entire
country to IP.
TV customers across Europe.
Deutsche Telekom. The 2014 fi nancial year.
a responsibility
for europe
Europe’s telecommunications industry is at a turning point. In areas such as semicon-ductor chips, terminal devices, and Internet services, the dominance of U.S. and Asian companies seems unassailable. And while telecommunications revenues are pointing clearly upwards in Asia and the U.S., in Europe they’re declining - despite the worldwide rise in data traffi c and the resulting investments in better and faster networks. Investment capacity across Europe has been weakened, particularly by regulatory policies that seek to bring prices down.
To maintain Europe’s ability to shape its own digital destiny, we need a fresh approach to regulation. Governments need to put in place uniformly high data protection standards which also apply to non-European providers that plan to do business here. To encourage investment in network expansion, regulation has to focus on more than just low con-sumer prices. Finally, with more than 200 carriers and 28 national regulatory authorities this market is exceptionally fragmented and urgently requires consolidation. Now is the time to prepare Europe’s infrastructure for the challenges of the future. A uniform set of competition rules has to be adopted for all providers that operate in Europe.
Deutsche Telekom wants to broaden its horizons. We want to develop new business models for as many countries as possible. To this end, we are developing a network for Europe that puts customers’ needs fi rst, no matter where in Europe they are.
Open platforms are one way to keep value creation in Europe and then to strengthen it. To enable them, companies need to overcome what is o en still a silo approach. They need to work with partners. We’ve recognized this and are working to promote open technol-ogy standards. This will help start-ups to grow up fast and start shaping Europe’s digital industry.
As a European provider, Deutsche Telekom wants to take responsibility for shaping the European market: on behalf of its employees, on behalf of Europe as a place of business, and on behalf of society at large.
Europe is currently witnessing one of the biggest technology projects ever to take place on the continent, comparable only to a complete overhaul of its railway lines: Deutsche Telekom is gradually replacing its existing networks with a pan-European, fully Internet Protocol-based network. We want to off er our consumers and business customers ex-cellent network coverage wherever they happen to be. For this, we need an integrated fi xed-network and mobile infrastructure that speaks one single language – IP. IP is the standard language for data transmission through networks such as the Inter-net. Devices such as TVs, phones, cell phones and PCs but also fridges, alarm systems and cars will be connected to the Internet and can exchange data via IP. All communi-cation devices such as smartphones, tablets, and landline phones can be contacted using a single phone number.
Businesses can set up video conferences or make calls from Outlook themselves. Consumers can use their smartphones to take pictures of their kids and send them to their grandparents’ TV miles away.
Thanks to IP, Deutsche Telekom will be able to launch new products and services much faster than today, giving it a sharper competitive edge. We’ll use our future pan-European network to develop new business models for as many countries as possible. In other words, we’ll no longer have to introduce new technologies in each market individually – which is currently much more eff ort since the countries still have their own special systems. And last but not least, disruptions in the network can be more easily found and resolved.
the network
of the future
Experts believe that by 2017, worldwide IP traffi c will rise by 71 percent to 82 million terabyte – two terabyte is already equivalent to one million songs. To meet the enormous demand for more bandwidth, we’re creat-ing an intelligent mix of technologies.
For instance, the most recent addition to our portfolio is a hybrid router that unifi es LTE, Wi-Fi, and fi xed networks, combining speeds of up to 100 Mbps from the fi xed network with up to 150 Mbps of mobile band-width.
The device allows Deutsche Telekom to off er higher speeds even in rural regions. It’s a step towards bridging the gap between urban and rural regions and tying customers over until the optical fi ber networks have been fully rolled out in the next few years.
