Press Releases Telefónica Germany

Be it for major events, construction measures or crises caused by severe weather: O₂ Telefónica is now on the road throughout Germany with 60 new mobile radio stations. This enables the company to quickly and flexibly provide O₂ customers with additional 4G/2G capacities as well as powerful 5G on 3.6 GHz exactly where more network is needed.

Mallik Rao (Yelamate Mallikarjuna Rao) has been confirmed as Chief Technology & Information Officer (CTIO) of O₂ Telefónica for an additional three years. The Supervisory Board of Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG has extended his contract, which was originally set to expire at the end of 2022, until Dec. 31st, 2025.

Telefónica Deutschland has confirmed its strong momentum from the record year 2021 and again grew dynamically in the opening quarter of 2022. The operating momentum accelerated further in the process. The number of contract lines in mobile communications increased by 287,000 and was thus above the prior-year figure of 220,000.

O₂ Telefónica reduced CO₂ emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 97 percent in 2021 compared to the reference year 2015, emitting only 6,266 tons of CO₂. By comparison, annual CO₂ emissions per capita in Germany are around 11.6 tons. In the same period, electricity consumption per byte fell by 78 percent. The company is thus making great strides toward its target of being net-CO₂-neutral by 2025 at the latest.

On its 20th birthday, O₂ looks back on an impressive success story. From the Homezone to the convergent tariff for all networks: Since its launch in May 2002, the brand has stood for freedom, self-determination, innovative strength and customer orientation. With this strategic orientation, O₂ has shaped the telecommunications market time and again and will continue to be a fair and high-price pioneer in the market in the future. For all its customers and those who want to become customers, O₂ is celebrating its birthday with attractive offers in all areas - mobile telephony, Internet@Home and hardware.

Together with Flink, O₂ is launching the first SIM card delivery service of a network operator in Germany. As of now, the starter packages O₂ my Prepaid S and M can be ordered in Berlin and Munich via the food delivery service Flink.

The telecommunications brand O₂ celebrates its 20th birthday on 1 May and looks back on an impressive success story. The core brand of O₂ Telefónica has repeatedly shaped the telecoms market in this country with innovative products. And now, on the occasion of its 20th birthday, it is doing so with the O₂ Grow promotional tariff.

O₂ is significantly expanding its gigabit fixed network coverage: From 3 May 2022, O₂ will market internet speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s to over 22 million cable households. On the occasion of its 20th birthday, the core brand of O₂ / Telefónica Deutschland thus demonstrates once again that it has evolved from a pure mobile communications brand to a comprehensive telecommunications brand.

Since the end of 2020, O₂ has been implementing its own fixed broadband products on Vodafone Germany's cable fiber network on the basis of a wholesale agreement. At the time, the agreement was the first cable wholesale agreement in the German market and is currently exclusive to O₂. As a result, the Telefónica brand reaches around 24 million households nationwide. This makes cable access a central access route for the company's "Internet for the home" offerings alongside VDSL, fiber optics and fixed-network replacement products based on mobile communications.

The telecommunications provider O₂ Telefónica has reached an important milestone in its nationwide 5G network expansion offensive: currently, around 10,000 5G antennas are transmitting in the O₂ network. This means that O₂ is providing 5G to more than a third of the population.

IT requirements for smart cities and public administration are continuously increasing. This involves, for example, coping with increased data traffic or the seamless system integration of wireless sensors. To drive the digitalization of the public sector, Dataport is commissioning the first private 5G standalone campus network in Hamburg for its new 5G test lab.

Digitization in the healthcare sector is necessary. The corona pandemic has made this visible in many places. To drive digitization forward in its own hospital, Helios Park-Klinikum Leipzig has been operating the first private 5G standalone campus network in a hospital in Germany since December 2021. The 5G standalone campus network designed and built by O₂ Telefónica acts as a digitalization turbo. With the deployment of the government-funded 5G campus network, the hospital operator expects a boost in efficiency and innovation.

The German mobile network operators are implementing further initiatives to improve mobile coverage in rural areas. As part of their grey spots initiatives, the operators had each bilaterally agreed to share the network technology of the operator previously active there alone at several thousand locations. Customers of O₂ Telefónica and its partner brands will be provided with 4G mobile reception at up to 2,000 additional locations this year via this and other cooperation agreements. This will enable an additional several 100,000 people to use the O₂ network where they live.

O₂ Telefónica is taking the management of business customer solutions to the cloud: the telecommunications provider is launching a new cloud-based IT platform for the future-proof management and billing of its digital office and telecommunications solutions in the business customer segment (B2B). For this, the company relies on state-of-the-art software from MATRIXX, a leading provider of 5G converged charging solutions, running on the Google Cloud. Business customers benefit from near real-time billing processes and an optimized billing overview.

O₂ Telefónica wants to create more transparency about its CO₂ emissions along the supply chain, meaning in Scope 3. To this end, the company will use The Climate Choice software platform and collect climate-focused data from around 1,000 suppliers. The top 40 suppliers will also be invited to carry out a software-driven climate rating in order to uncover potentials for decarbonisation and to identify tailor-made fields of action.

Telefónica Deutschland closed 2021 as a record year. The company confirmed its strong momentum and again significantly improved operationally and financially compared to the previous year. In terms of revenue and customer development, Telefónica Deutschland achieved new records. Revenue increased by 3.1% to EUR 7.765 billion and was driven by a 3.5% increase in mobile service revenue to EUR 5.492 billion.

At today’s meeting, the Supervisory Board of Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG approved the appointment of Markus Haas as the company’s CEO for a further three-year term until 31 December 2025. His current contract is valid until 31 December 2022. Markus Haas has been CEO of Telefónica Deutschland since January 2017 and leads the seven-member Management Board.

O₂ Telefónica is the first German network operator connecting an Open RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) from Nokia to a mobile communications cluster in its own commercial live network. In the coming months, the artificial intelligence of the RIC will independently optimize the mobile network for customers in the Hellersdorf district of Berlin.

In an interview at the start of the year with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, CEO Markus Haas talks about digital opportunities for a new German government, ways to speed up network expansion and the benefits of 5G.

As the first German network operator, O₂ / Telefónica has activated the first mini-radio cells with innovative Open RAN technology (ORAN) in Munich. In addition to the very well developed O₂ network, this will provide all O₂ customers with even more capacity and higher bandwidths at busy locations in the future. The installation of pure 5G Open RAN mini radio cells ("5G standalone") will follow later in the year.

O₂ / Telefónica Germany continues to improve in the relevant ESG ratings by Sustainalytics and EcoVadis. The company performs particularly well in the environmental and ethical categories, confirming its pioneering role in sustainability management in the telecommunications industry.

With immediate effect, O₂ customers as well as interested new customers in numerous regions of Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony can book faster fixed network connections. To this end, O₂ / Telefónica Deutschland has added another strong regional partner to its already leading internet at home availability.

The year 2022 starts directly with data fireworks at O₂ / Telefónica Deutschland: In the first hour of the new year, customers sent more mobile data through the O₂ network than ever before on New Year's Eve, with around 382,000 gigabytes. This represents an increase of 35 percent compared with the prior-year period (283,000 GB data volume). Traditionally, customers send many congratulations via instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp or via social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook, especially in the first hour of the new year. With a total of 13.5 million phone calls, more calls were also made in the hour after midnight than in the previous year.

A mobile communications era is coming to an end: O₂ / Telefónica will shut down the last 3G sites in the O₂ mobile network on 30 December, sealing the end of UMTS (3G) in Germany. The freed-up frequencies at 2,100 MHz, which O₂ previously used for 3G, will be used entirely for the faster and more efficient 4G standard.