Telekom and Tesco: the tale of a retail success story

• Telekom’s business customers grow across Europe
• Deutsche Telekom’s Czech subsidiary renews major deal with Tesco
• IP Virtual Private Network connecting over 1000 of Tesco stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary

Telekom’s business customers continue to grow across Europe: In Czech Republic, Deutsche Telekom Group’s subsidiary T-Mobile Czech Republic secured a major contract renewal from Tesco, a global grocery and general merchandise retailer, connecting over 1000 of its stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Tesco is one of the world’s top three retailers with stores in 11 countries throughout Asia and Europe, annual sales of around 55.9 billion Euros and over 470.000 people employed world-wide. In recent years, Tesco has been expanding rapidly in the Central Eastern Europe (CEE) region, adding a continually growing number of stores, branches and warehouses.

The network operated by T-Mobile Czech Republic (TMCZ) is the backbone of Tesco’s mission-critical data applications in all four countries, including payment transactions as well as supply chain and employee information systems. Such services are essential to retailers, and to Tesco in particular, considering it hosted 78 million shopping trips per week throughout 2016.    

Run by Deutsche Telekom’s Czech subsidiary and backed up by local support in the respective countries, Tesco is benefiting from a centrally managed service, ensuring the stability and homogeneity of the network at all of the company’s outlets. In addition to a regional IP Virtual Private Network (VPN), Tesco receives data center collocation, dedicated Internet access, voice and SMS services with a guaranteed quality of services and multilingual support across the region.

“It was important for Tesco to find a trustworthy partner able to provide a regional approach across CEE. Operating the network from a single location and receiving the same quality of service in each country were among the key advantages for choosing the Deutsche Telekom Group,” says Martin Berdych, CEE IT Infrastructure & Operations Manager at Tesco. 

“A cross-border corporate network with reliable VPN and back-up solutions on each location was key to cover Tesco’s needs. This is a success story about thinking globally, acting locally, and providing an all-in-one, seamless service to our business customers,” says Ralf Nejedl, Senior Vice President B2B & ICT at Deutsche Telekom Europe.

The relationship goes back to about three years ago, when Tesco chose GTS Central Europe to connect over 1000 of its stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary with a centralized private corporate network. Following the merger of GTS and Deutsche Telekom Group, Tesco recently decided to extend its contract with the Group for another three years with the option to add a further two years. 

Whether in Germany or abroad, big grocery retailers, such as REWE or Tesco, can rely on Deutsche Telekom Group expertise and solutions to further grow their businesses and satisfy holistically their customers’ needs. 

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