Sustainable growth of T-ISDN with double-digit growth in customer figures in 2002 - T-DSL boom continues - 311 million customers use Telekom Internet-Turbo - Successful year-end trading despite troubled economic situation - Product innovations secure demand and open up new customer segments T-Com , the Deutsche Telekom division responsible for fixed line networks, is starting 2003 with a positive résumé of the past financial year and excellent prospects for the future. "T-Com is well positioned and recorded a solid development over the past financial year. It thus remains the Group's highest-earning division", emphasized Josef Brauner, the Deutsche Telekom board member responsible for T-Com, in Bonn on Wednesday. Whilst the trade association BITKOM spoke recently of "the most difficult year in the history of the ITC industry", the core areas were able to demonstrate otherwise with their considerable growth rates.
T-ISDN also displayed strong growth in 2002. By the end of the year, the number of T-ISDN residential customers of the world's leading ISDN provider had grown by 13.3 percent to around 9.1 million. During the same period, sales of T-DSL lines were increased by 900,000 to more than 3.1 million customers. Deutsche Telekom subsequently ranks highest by a long way in ADSL technology in Europe.
T-Com achieved considerable sales successes in all product areas last year with the all-important year-end and Christmas sales well above average. T-DSL sales in the residential customer sector more than doubled in year-end trading compared with the average for the whole of 2002 . At the trading peak, sales of around 63,000 lines were reached in one week . At the end of the year, more than 27,000 customers per week opted for T-DSL Business, the complete offer for SME customers and more than 53,000 customers chose the premium offer for the residential customer segment, T-DSL 1500, which was introduced in September. T-ISDN business also reached its all-year high with the sale of 49,000 lines in the 49th calendar week. Every second new T-ISDN customer chose the lead product T-ISDN xxl - a total of 2.6 million customers.
" But it was not just our attractive offer full of numerous innovative highlights that convinced such a huge number of customers. Our huge efforts to strengthen our selling power are paying off to an ever greater degree", said Brauner. Under his leadership, T-Com is consistently pushing for the structural development of traditional telephone shops into highly specialized megastores.
T-Com will be an important driving force for the products and applications of the entire Group in 2003 as well. For in times of convergence, the fixed line networks remain the core lifeline of all means of communication- especially in the booming mass market of broadband communication. The expansion and refinement of the high-speed communications network also provides an indispensable support for innovative applications of other Deutsche Telekom divisions.
The increase in the speed of innovations is reflected in T-Com's continuous product offensive. It will secure a high level of demand and additional customer segments in 2003. A high-speed variant of T-DSL with rates of up to 2.3 megabits per second downstream is planned for 2003, along with a fastpath option specially designed for on-line gaming. Achim Berg, member of the T-Com board of management responsible for National Business said, "We will continue to push ahead with the differentiation strategy to meet requirements and are optimistic about the issue of high-speed Internet access in 2003. We expect to have around four million T-DSL customers by the end of 2003 based on current plans."
T-Com wants to demonstrate the possibilities of the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) with the fixed line network at the CeBIT trade show. T-Com will also successfully boost its business with T-Pay. T-Pay combines different variants of on-line payment systems, thus stimulating electronic trade and retaining access line customers. Providers with an extremely wide reach such as RTL New Media, TV-Movie and even Chip Online were willing partners even for the pilot operation. The official rollout will follow shortly.