The combined strength of the UMTS networks:

National roaming activated for all O2 and E-Plus customers

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With immediate effect, customers in the O2 and E-Plus network benefit from a very good UMTS network. This week, Telefónica Deutschland completed its technical large-scale project as planned, with national roaming between the UMTS networks of O2 and E-Plus having been activated. By consequence, Telefónica now offers the densest UMTS coverage in urban regions, expanding it further in rural areas. The combined UMTS network infrastructure now reaches around 90 percent of the population in Germany.
Since starting the network consolidation at the end of March, Telefónica Deutschland has gradually activated regions for national roaming. By now, all customers in Germany have been enabled automatically and have been informed accordingly by a text message. They now benefit from the combined strength of the O2 and E-Plus network and can make use of an even better experience for mobile data applications. Customers in Berlin, for instance, have reported that they can now use faster UMTS-based internet access on the underground in their area.

Telefónica’s goal: The best network experience for all customers

“We are thrilled to have successfully accomplished a great logistical and technical challenge by making national roaming available to all our customers,” says Markus Haas, Chief Operating Officer of Telefónica Deutschland. “It is our aim to provide our customers with the best network experience in the German market. Successfully implementing national roaming is an important step in this direction.” The increased data usage via UMTS, with faster data rates of up to 42 Mbit/s, shows how much national roaming has improved the network experience of several million customers on a daily basis. In total, Telefónica customers already transmit around 60 terabytes of data via national roaming every day. The O2 portal for network coverage gives a graphical impression of the current status of the O2 and E-Plus UMTS network coverage.

Expansion of network capacities: Also in the 4G segments

In order to increase the network experience for customers not only for mobile data usage via UMTS, Telefónica Deutschland is also continuously driving forward the LTE network expansion. The company is anticipating a nationwide LTE coverage rate of over 75 percent by the end of this year. With O2 LTE, customers today reach download rates of up to 50 Mbit/s and upload rates up to 25 Mbit/s. Over the next five years, Telefónica Deutschland will have carried out its vision of a fully integrated, mobile high-speed network.