Germany: A Case Study

Abstract

Deutsche Telekom (DT) was separated from the postal service in 1990 and became a joint-stock company on 1 January 1995. Its mobile subsidiary DeTeMobil was set up in 1993 and operates both an analogue and GSM network. DT supplies over 85 per cent of the domestic market. It operates the world’s largest ISDN network with 3.5 million connections. It has laid an exceptionally large number of fibre-optic links to households and owns the world’s largest cable network where it is given the right of first refusal by the government in respect of network construction. It has a 25 per cent stake in the satellite company SES which operates the Astra network.