T-Mobile is a German mobile telephone provider, owned by Deutsche Telekom. It operates several GSM networks in Europe and the United States. T-Mobile also has financial stakes in mobile operators in Central and Eastern Europe. Globally, T-Mobile has some 150 million subscribers, making it the world's seventh largest mobile phone service provider by subscribers and the third largest multinational after the United Kingdom's Vodafone and Spain's Telefónica. T-Mobile UK has recently become part of a joint venture with France Telecom's mobile network provider, Orange U.K.; together they make the UK's largest mobile operator, called Everything Everywhere.
Based in Germany, T-Mobile is present in ten other European countries (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) as well as the United States.
In late 2005, Deutsche Telekom attempted to acquire rival mobile network operator O2, but was beaten by Spain's Telefónica.
In March 2008, the company announced its plan to acquire Siemens Wireless Modules (now known as Cinterion Wireless Modules) as part of the JOMA consortium. The Siemens Wireless Modules spin off to Cinterion Wireless Modules was concluded on 1 May 2008.
In Germany, its home market, T-Mobile is the largest mobile phone operator with almost 36 million subscribers (As of January 2008), closely followed by its primary rival, Vodafone. The highly profitable GSM network in Germany is scheduled to be supplemented and ultimately replaced by UMTS, for which T-Mobile spent EUR 8.2 billion in August 2000 to acquire one of the six licenses for Germany.
On July 1, 1989, West Germany's state-owned postal monopoly, Deutsche Bundespost (DBP) was reorganized, with telecommunications consolidated in a new Deutsche Bundespost Telekom unit; this was renamed Deutsche Telekom in 1995, and began to be privatized in 1996.
The analog first-generation C-Netz ("C Network", marketed as C-Tel) was Germany's first true mobile phone network (the A and B networks, also owned by the post office, had been previous radiotelephone systems), and was introduced in 1985. Following German reunification in 1990, it was extended to the former East Germany.
On July 1, 1992, the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom began to operate Germany's first GSM network, along with the C-Netz, as its DeTeMobil subsidiary. The GSM 900 MHz frequency band was referred to as the "D-Netz", and Telekom named its service D1; the private consortium awarded the second license (formerly Mannesmann, now Vodafone) chose the equally imaginative name D2. In 1996, as Deutsche Telekom began to brand its subsidiaries with the T- prefix, the network was renamed T-D1 and DeTeMobil became T-Mobil; the C-Netz, in the process of being wound down, was not rebranded, and was shut down in 2000. In 2002, as Deutsche Telekom consolidated its international operations, it anglicized the T-Mobil name as T-Mobile, although sometimes also using the name T-D1 within Germany. It is still common for Germans to refer to T-Mobile and Vodafone as D1 and D2.
D1 introduced short message service (SMS) services in 1994 and began a prepaid service, Xtra, in 1997.
On April 1, 2010, after the T-Home and T-Mobile German operations merged to form Telekom Deutschland GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, the T-Mobile brand was discontinued in Germany and replaced with the Telekom brand.
The T-Mobile ring tone was composed by Lance Massey.
United Kingdom
T-Mobile UK started life as Mercury One2One, a GSM mobile network operated by the now-defunct Mercury Communications. Later known simply as One 2 One, it was the world's first GSM 1800 network when it was launched in September 1993. In its final days it was operated as a joint venture between Cable and Wireless and American cable provider Mediaone Group, which had a number of investments in Britain dating back to its days as the US West Media Group. One 2 One was purchased by Deutsche Telekom in 1999 and rebranded as T-Mobile in 2002.
T-Mobile offers both pay-as-you-go and pay-monthly contract phones. The pay-monthly contracts consists of set amounts of minutes and 'flexible boosters' which allow the customer to change them month to month depending on their needs. Prior to this T-Mobile had a contract option known as 'Flext' which gave the user an amount of money to use for calls, texts, MMS and mobile internet as necessary. This was withdrawn in early 2010. T-Mobile launched their 3G UMTS services in the Autumn of 2003.
On December 12, 2007, it was confirmed that a merger of the high-speed 3G and HSDPA networks operated by T-Mobile UK and 3 (UK) was to take place starting January 2008. This will leave T-Mobile and 3 with the largest HSDPA mobile phone network in the country, with a theoretical maximum speed of 6.5 Mb/s, rising to 7.2 Mb/s over the course of the year, although HSDPA access is restricted to Web'n'Walk Plus customers and above.
On September 8, 2009 France Telecom's Orange and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom announced they were in advanced talks to merge their UK operations to create the largest mobile operator with 37% of the market. The long-term future of either brand is unclear such deal is completed although both brands will be maintained for the first eighteen months at least.
Consumer Focus and the Communications Consumer Panel sent a joint letter to the then Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in December 2009 asking for the merger to be investigated by authorities in the United Kingdom, rather than Brussels. The British Office of Fair Trading joined this call by asking the EU to allow it to investigate the proposed deal in February 2010, saying that it believed the merger could have a 'significant' effect on competition.. On March 1, 2010 the European Commission approved the merger, on the condition that the combined company sell 25% of the spectrum it owns on the 1800 MHz radio band and amend a network sharing agreement with smaller rival 3. On 1 April 2010 Deutsche Telekom and France Telekom finalised the deal and completed the merger of their UK based operations, causing Orange UK and T-Mobile UK to cease to exist, although the brands will be maintained for at least 18 months.
On 11 May 2010 the new parent company of the merged Orange UK and T-Mobile UK brands was announced as "Everything Everywhere". Orange and T-Mobile will continue as leading brands in the market, with each brand having its own shops, marketing campaigns, propositions and service centres. However, behind the scenes, the two brands will be run by one company, with one team and one vision "to give consumers instant access to the people, places and things they want, wherever they are".
T-Mobile's UK is also used as the backbone network behind Virgin Mobile (the world's first virtual network), for both 2G and 3G signals. Although on a Virgin handset/simcard it will report as saying Virgin and will not find T-Mobile UK on a manual network scan.
