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T-Mobile is a multinational mobile phone operator. It is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and belongs to the FreeMove alliance.

Global

T-Mobile is a group of mobile phone corporate subsidiaries (all under the ownership of Deutsche Telekom) that operate GSM networks in Europe and the United States. The "T" stands for "Telekom." Most subsidiaries of Deutsche Telekom have names beginning with "T-". T-Mobile also has financial stakes in mobile operators in Eastern Europe. Globally, T-Mobile has 99 million subscribers, making it the world's fifth largest mobile phone service provider and the second largest multinational after the UK's Vodafone.

T-Mobile International has a substantial presence in 9 European countries (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Great Britain, Poland ) and in the United States.

Deutsche Telekom recently attempted to acquire rival mobile network operator O2, but it was eventually acquired by Spain's Telefonica.

As well as kit sponsors for FC Bayern Munich and West Bromwich Albion, T-Mobile is also a sponsor of several sports events, some of which carry the company name. For example, it sponsors its own cycling team, the T-Mobile Team, and the Austrian first division football competition, the T-Mobile Bundesliga. It is also the official global mobile phone carrier for the 2006 FIFA World Cup football games being held in Germany.

Germany

In Germany, its home market, T-Mobile is the largest mobile phone operator with 32 million subscribers (as of September 2005), 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 €8.2 billion in August 2000 to acquire one of the six licenses for Germany.

Deutsche Telekom (and its predecessor, the Deutsche Bundespost) owned the analog first-generation C-Netz ("C Network," marketed as C-Tel; the A and B networks were previous radiotelephone systems), which was in operation from 1985 to 2000. On July 1, 1992 what was now the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom began to operate Germany's first GSM network 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 (now Vodafone) chose the equally imaginative name "D2." Later, 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. Finally, as Deutsche Telekom consolidated its international operations, it chose the English name T-Mobile, although retaining the name "T-D1." (It is still common to hear Germans refer to T-Mobile and Vodafone as "D1" and "D2.")

D1 introduced SMS services in 1994 and began a prepaid service, Xtra, in 1997.

Czech Republic

T-Mobile entered Czech market in 2001 when it acquired Czech's second largest cell phone service provider Paegas. Paegas was founded in 1996 by Ceske radiokomunikace, and until 2005 it had always been No. 2 cell wireless provider. Its biggest competitor has always been Eurotel, on the other side Oskar, the youngest of all three providers, has never become any significat player in T-Mobile's fields of business.

Czech T-Mobile recently became No. 1 cell phone service provider in the Czech Republic. One of the reasons for that was the former No. 1 Eurotel change its formulas for compounding the number of customers - it used to count all sim cards that made a phone call in last 18 months as active, now the range of being not active has shrunk to 13 months.

Today T-Mobile provides monthly plans as well as very popular pre-paid cards called Twist. T-Mobile is the only wireless provider that offers their customers North American products, such as BlackBerry which is widely popular among businesses.

United Kingdom

T-Mobile UK was previously known as One 2 One, and before that as Mercury One 2 One. T-Mobile offers both pay-as-you-go and monthly contract phones [both, curiously, offered under a united 'Relax' brand name, but their business strategy is to concentrate on the latter as the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is generally higher. Pay-as-you-go is also offered under the Mates Rates name, which offers reduced tariffs for pay-as-you go subs who mostly call other T-Mobile subs.

T-Mobile UK also offers U-Fix, which is basically a hybrid between pay monthly plans, and pay as you go. One pays a set amount per month. The plan includes a set amount of minutes (peak or off-peak) and texts. If one desires to spend more than your set monthly allowance, you can top-up with U-Fix cards, as if one was topping up a pay-as-you-go plan. This allows consumers to more closely monitor and control their spending, and is particularly useful for teens. Another advantage of U-Fix is that virtually all phones offered to pay monthly subscribers are offered to U-Fix subs (in contrast with Relax pay-as-you-go's limited selection.

Another T-Mobile UK plan is Flext, in which you pay a set amount per month, like U-Fix. However, the plan is not for a set amount minutes and texts; rather, one receives an 'allowance' (roughly 3 times as much as the monthly rate) that you may use for any combination of minutes, texts, voicemail, which are billed at set rates.

3G UMTS services have been launched in a limited, but quickly expanding, coverage area as of 2004. However, these services haven't been well received by most mobile subscribers in the U.K, and sees little profits for T-Mobile due to astronomical operational expenditures. T-mobile/one2one actually envisigned this "lame duck" technology over 6 years ago when they were cautious about GPRS and the emergance of MMS and other data protocols being turned into revenue streams.

The Netherlands

T-Mobile NL (formerly known as Ben Nederland) was taken over by T-Mobile International in September 2002, and rebranded as T-Mobile on 25 February 2003. T-Mobile Netherlands has approx 2.3 million subscribers (as of July 2005), and is positioned third in the Dutch market.

The company started the deployment of its 3G UMTS-HSDPA network. The launch to the public was in November 2005, but full coverage is expected in mid 2006.

Apart from mobile communications, T-Mobile is one of the largest public WiFi operators in The Netherlands. The so called 'T-Mobile HotSpots' are available at major locations including every McDonalds restaurant.

United States

T-Mobile USA was previously known as VoiceStream Wireless (formerly a division of Western Wireless until it was spun off as an independent company in 1999 which by the end of that year had acquired regional GSM carriers Aerial in the Southeast and Omnipoint in the Northeast). In May 2001, VoiceStream, along with Southern regional carrier Powertel were acquired by Deutsche Telekom for $24 billion, and changed nationally to the T-Mobile name in September 2002. Headquartered in Factoria, Bellevue, Washington, T-Mobile USA is currently the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. market with 22.7 million customers (as of Q1 2006). As the smallest national carrier, T-Mobile USA tends to compete on price, and advertises heavily to the youth market. They also occasionally decide to compete on features; they were the first U.S carrier to launch ringback tones ("CallerTunes") and "HiFi Ringers" (ringtones which are clips of an actual song). T-Mobile USA's corporate slogan is "Get More", recently changed from "Get More From Life" in order to allow an additional word to be added after "Get More". (e.g. "Get More Minutes"). In addition, the company changed its spokesperson from Jamie Lee Curtis to Catherine Zeta-Jones to update its image.

Although T-Mobile USA has the smallest native network out of all the national U.S. carriers, it has roaming arrangements with major competitor Cingular as well as with a number of regional carriers, such as Centennial Wireless, Dobson, Unicel and SunCom; however, at present T-Mobile To Go prepaid customers have roaming on only some of those carriers. T-Mobile exclusively uses the GSM 1900 MHz frequency to build out its native network. Most roaming coverage, however, is provided by affiliate carriers using GSM 850 MHz frequency (although some is GSM 1900 MHz frequency). T-Mobile also launched an EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) network in 75% of its GSM footprint in September 2005. In 2006, T-Mobile plans to spend more time improving coverage and filling gaps in suburban areas, as their network is already well built out in urban areas. Also, T-Mobile USA will bid for 3G spectrum (in the 2100 and 1700 MHz bands) in the upcoming FCC auctions, to be held in August 2006. The 3G network will be based on a UMTS/HSDPA solution and should be launched sometime in 2007.

In contrast with T-Mobile's other international markets, customers do not automatically have access to international roaming. Contract customers require a credit check before the service is enabled, and prepaid customers do not have international roaming at all. The service, called "WorldClass" must be added before traveling overseas.

T-Mobile USA operates 6,000 T-Mobile HotSpot locations for Wi-Fi Internet access, including airports, airline clubs, Starbucks coffeehouses, Kinko's, Borders Books and Music, Hyatt and Red Roof Inn Hotels. The Wi-Fi infrastructure was completely replaced when T-Mobile bought the Wireless ISP MobileStar.

T-Mobile's spokesperson is Academy Award winning Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. (The VoiceStream Wireless spokesperson was Jamie Lee Curtis.) While Zeta-Jones continues as T-Mobile's global spokesperson, T-Mobile USA also began using rapper Snoop Dogg as the spokesperson for the company's T-Mobile Sidekick in a series of commercials late in 2004. T-Mobile is also an official sponsor of the National Basketball Association, the NBA Rookie Challenge and the Women's National Basketball Association.

T-Mobile USA will introduce UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) using Kineto software in the 1st half of 2006, the first American carrier to do so. This will allow private customers as well as businesses to use inexpensive WiFi routers to fill in coverage gaps. At CES 2006, Samsung confirmed that the T709 will be a T-Mobile UMA phone, and will be released at launch.

So far in 2006, T-Mobile USA has captured a total of 11 J.D. Power Awards in the areas of customer care, call quality, and overall customer satisfaction. In particular, it has dominated the wireless industry in the area of customer care, winning all customer care awards for all 6 surveyed regions for three years in a row.

Statistics of Deutsche Telekom's GSM networks

as of December 2005

• All T-Mobile networks (including affiliates and minority owned) 120 million

T-Mobile branded networks

• Global (under T-Mobile brand) 87 million
• Germany 29.5 million
• United States 22.7 million
• United Kingdom 19.23 million
• Czech Republic 4.6 million
• Hungary 4.2 million
• The Netherlands 2.3 million
• Austria 2.1 million
• Slovakia 2.0 million
• Croatia 1.9 million

Mobile operators in which T-Mobile has a substantial stake

• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Poland - Era
• Republic of Macedonia
• Montenegro - MONET GSM

Country-Specific T-Mobile Sites

• T-Mobile International
• T-Mobile International mobile-compatible
• T-Mobile Austria
• T-Mobile Croatia
• T-Mobile Czech Republic
• T-Mobile Germany
• T-Mobile Hungary
• T-Mobile Netherlands
• T-Mobile Slovakia
• T-Mobile United Kingdom
• T-Mobile USA

External links

• T-Mobile Flext
• T-Mobile Flext Tariff Details
• T-Mobile USA Hotspot Home Page
• HowardForums T-Mobile USA Wiki
• HowardForums T-Mobile USA Forum

• Mobile phone companies
• Telecommunication companies of the United Kingdom
• Companies of Germany
• Companies based in Washington