New mobile communications standard
Telekom is making progress with the 5G expansion
The headquarters of Deutsche Telekom in Bonn. photo
©Oliver Berg/dpa
Deutsche Telekom announces its expansion status for the 5G mobile communications standard, thereby underpinning its lead over the competition.
Deutsche Telekom is making good progress in expanding its mobile network in the very fast 5G radio standard. The company’s own antennas now reach 94 percent of households with 5G, said company boss Tim Höttges in Bonn. At the beginning of 2022, the value was 91 percent, and by the end of the year it should be 96 percent. Even after that, the expansion should continue quickly, even if the challenge is getting bigger.
“The last percent are always the most difficult, because they go into the area,” said Höttges. In addition, the network will be technologically upgraded so that more bandwidth is transmitted. “We still have a lot to do there.”
With its expansion, Telekom is well ahead of its competitors Telefónica (O2) and Vodafone, both of whom recently spoke of a coverage of 75 percent. However, the values are only comparable to a limited extent, since both low and high frequencies are used. The higher the frequency, the wider the bandwidth. For end users, however, the difference in normal mobile phone use should hardly be noticeable – 5G offers much faster downloads and a very short technical response time, regardless of the frequency.
Telekom publishes quarterly figures
Telekom presented figures for the third quarter on Thursday. Group sales rose by 8.8 percent to 29 billion euros. However, the vast majority of this growth was due to the rise in the dollar exchange rate, as a result of which the company, which is strong in the United States with its earnings pearl T-Mobile US, received significantly more money in the euro coffers after conversion.
Without this currency effect – i.e. organic – the increase was only 0.5 percent. Adjusted operating profit (Ebitda AL) was 10.5 billion euros, organically that was an increase of 0.7 percent. Adjusted net income was 2.4 billion euros, more than 80 percent higher than a year earlier. Company boss Höttges rated the numbers as “very strong”. His company is an anchor of stability in difficult times, said the manager. The group has around 208,000 employees worldwide, 83,000 of them in Germany.