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Deutsche Telekom is entering the cloud telephony market
Deutsche Telekom is entering the cloud telephony market. Photo: Rainer Jensen/dpa
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For years, Deutsche Telekom has avoided cloud computing and left the virtual telephone system business to smaller start-ups. But that is now changing.
Deutsche Telekom is entering the cloud-based telephony market together with the French provider Aircall. The offer is not aimed at private customers, but at companies and organizations, both companies announced on Wednesday in Bonn and Berlin.
With cloud telephony, all functions of a telephone system are operated in a provider’s data center and made available via the Internet. Customers’ own telephone system hardware and special telephony cabling are thus replaced.
So far, Telekom had largely left this business segment to specialist companies such as Vonage or NFON. However, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), Deutsche Telekom’s venture capitalist, had already invested in the French start-up Aircall in 2020.
For small and medium-sized companies
Cloud-based telephone systems such as those from Aircall can be integrated relatively easily into customer management software (CRM) or help desk systems. “Deutsche Telekom’s business customers have unrestricted access to Aircall technology,” said the Telekom group. With the new segment, Telekom is primarily targeting sales and support teams in small and medium-sized companies.
With the partnership, Aircall is pushing into the German-speaking market and will open a location in Berlin at the end of February, initially with 15 employees. The company was founded in Paris in 2014 and has offices in Paris, New York, Sydney, Madrid and London. In total, Aircall has more than 600 employees.