Telefónica Germany

A clear rating improvement and a rise of an impressive 127 points in the 2018 connect network test serve as confirmation that Telefónica Deutschland has massively improved the quality of its O₂ network throughout Germany this year. This leap forward for the O₂ network would have been even more substantial without the more stringent measurement criteria applied this year. The company is the only German operator to have improved its result. Thanks to extensive quality improvements, the O₂ network significantly reduced the gap to the competitors in this year’s network test. It recently received a “good” rating in the network test by specialist magazine CHIP, which described the O₂ network as having made a “quantum leap”. The continued expansion of the network is already in full swing.

A clear “good” rating for the O₂ network, leaping up almost an entire point in comparison to the previous year (from 3.1 to 2.2): The results of the current, Germany-wide CHIP network test clearly show that Telefónica Deutschland has made huge improvements to network quality for its customers thanks to its extensive network measures. The specialist magazine CHIP even referred to it as a “quantum leap”. The O₂ network was also rated as good to very good in the sub-categories Internet, voice and LTE network as well as in multiple major cities. At the same time, Telefónica Deutschland announced more improvements to network quality in the year to come.

Telefónica Deutschland successfully moved ahead with the modernisation and expansion of its O₂ mobile network in 2018. The network integration of O₂ and E-Plus has made particularly good progress, with network quality improving in many areas. This has been confirmed by current measurements from network testing specialist P3 for major cities such as Cologne and Leipzig. Customers in increasing numbers of cities and regions can now benefit from a new and improved O₂ network thanks to the network integration, which is now in its final stages across all of Germany.

Telefónica Deutschland is having more than 1,500 mobile base stations connected to GasLINE’s high-performance network infrastructure in order to prepare it for the future technology 5G and for new digital applications. The two companies have already been cooperating successfully for several years on fibre-optic connections for mobile base stations and in the backbone field, and they have now signed a contract for another extensive expansion programme.

SZ-Interview with Markus Haas in the edition from 12.11.2018 CEO Markus Haas spoke with Süddeutsche Zeitung about the next 5G wireless communications generation, areas without coverage, and the lack of a European digitalisation policy. This post contains excerpts of that interview. The full text appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 12 November 2018.[…]

Telefónica Deutschland is launching a partnership with vitroconnect GmbH. As a first step, Telefónica Deutschland will use the network-operator-independent platform of vitroconnect GmbH to gain access to EWE TEL GmbH’s access network. EWE TEL GmbH has a particularly strong presence in Lower Saxony, with high-performance broadband connections. With this partnership, Telefónica Deutschland is continuing to expand its position as a national fixed network provider in Germany and will be able to offer potential new customers fast VDSL connections of up to 100 Mbit/s in even more areas. It will also give many existing o2 DSL customers the option to switch to faster VDSL tariffs. The first customers have already been connected successfully.

We are currently having a lively debate, and rightly so, about the 5G frequency awards and the expansion of wireless networks in Germany. The demands for equal treatment of urban and rural areas are also legitimate. However, what matters is that we look very closely at needs, possibilities, and goals. Only if we carefully consider the frequency awards and infrastructure expansion, and provide a framework that promotes investment, can Germany be a global leader in 5G. Telefónica Deutschland is making a specific proposal for this.

Telefónica Deutschland continued the positive development of the first half of the year during the third quarter. Adjusted for special and regulatory effects, operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) rose by 6 percent in the first nine months to EUR 1.42 billion. This was primarily due to synergies from the E-Plus merger and the continued positive development of the company’s mobile service revenue. Before regulatory effects, it increased by 0.5 percent year-on-year to EUR 3.97 billion. Overall, revenue remained stable. Mobile data consumption increased by half in the first nine months, mainly due to strong demand for O₂ Free tariffs with large data volumes and the acquisition of 233,000 additional contract customers in the third quarter. Because of the positive business development and due to the faster-than-expected realization of synergies from network consolidation, the company is narrowing its outlook for 2018 and now expects a slightly positive development of adjusted OIBDA. In line with its dividend promise, Telefónica Deutschland is also proposing to increase shareholder remuneration for the current fiscal year by one cent to EUR 0.27 per share.

Telefónica Deutschland is consistently continuing the comprehensive expansion of its LTE network. In the third quarter of 2018 alone, Telefónica Deutschland installed nearly 2,000 new LTE stations and upgraded existing locations with additional LTE capacities. In total, the O₂ network has already been expanded by around 5,000 LTE stations this year. By way of comparison, the area newly supplied with LTE is significantly larger than the federal state of Hesse. The company is thus fulfilling its announcement not only to further densify its LTE network in cities, but also to rapidly expand its LTE network in rural areas so that more and more customers can surf the O₂ network in more and more locations at faster speeds.

In the course of digitization, companies are generating great amounts of data. At the same time, the importance of data protection is rising as a result of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This raises the question of how companies can use Big Data in a legally compliant manner and in the interests of their customers. Telefónica NEXT sees the anonymization of data as an opportunity for the data economy. Therefore, the corporate start-up developed a TÜV-certified anonymization process. Analyses from anonymized mobile network data currently support traffic planning in Germany among others. Telefónica NEXT now also offers this procedure to other companies for their data, for example from the banking or insurance sector.

The coming weeks will see the political course being set for the development of the future mobile broadband infrastructure in Germany. Depending on the framework conditions for the forthcoming 5G frequency allocation, Germany can either take a giant leap towards digitisation through investments by the three network providers – or it can miss out on an enormous opportunity.

Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica Deutschland are joining forces to accelerate the expansion of their mobile networks. The two companies have agreed to connect at least 5,000 Telefónica Deutschland mobile network sites in total to Telekom’s high-performance fibre-optic infrastructure in the long term. In turn, Deutsche Telekom can directly leverage the synergy effects from this to expand its own network. This cooperation is not just remarkable because of its size. It is also ground-breaking in terms of the future 5G communication standard and new digital applications.

Fixed Wireless Access enables rapid broadband development | Trials with 20 households will start in November 2018

At an after-work talk, CEO Markus Haas spoke to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag about spending his leisure time in the mountains and why there is currently such a heated debate about current and future mobile network coverage in Germany.

In an interview with the German newspaper "Tagesspiegel", Telefónica Deutschland CEO Markus Haas talks about the challenges of the digital infrastructure in Germany as well as the planned allocation rules for the new mobile standard 5G.

Telefónica Deutschland has successfully implemented the voice standard Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) within its national LTE network. Technically speaking, the new voice standard is a further development of AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband): O₂ customers in the LTE network can now make calls in excellent Full HD voice quality. With EVS, telephone calls are transmitted much more clearly and naturally than before – EVS transmits the audible frequency range at up to 16,000 Hertz instead of up to 7,000 Hertz as used to be the case. As a result, EVS means conversations are perceived as clearer, more understandable and therefore more natural. Another advantage is that the new codec allows background noise to be suppressed better than before. EVS significantly improves the sound image compared to previous mobile calls.

Unlimited browsing at home and on the go with O₂ my All in One

Speaking with the Handelsblatt business newspaper, CEO Markus Haas stated that legislators need to focus on boosting spending to expand infrastructure in the future. He expressed his opposition to forcing network operators to sign fair pricing agreements with service providers and explained that a fourth network would not help improve coverage in Germany. This post contains excerpts of that interview. You can find the complete interview online and in the print issue of Handelsblatt from 13 August 2018.

Effective 1 January 2019, Telefónica Deutschland and MediaMarktSaturn Deutschland will extend their successful sales cooperation by another five years. In addition, both partners intend to expand their existing cooperation, in particular in the online segment. The two companies have now signed the corresponding agreement.

No other network operator is better than O₂ when it comes to providing customers in Munich with LTE - this is the result of a recent network test for mobile communications coverage in the Bavarian state capital by specialist magazine connect. Overall, the new O₂ network in Munich achieved a “good” rating (830 points), having significantly improved in terms of network quality compared to the last nationwide network test in 2017 (result “sufficient”).