Debitel
Encyclopedia
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, offering a wide range of telecommunication products – mobile and land-line telephony as well internet services. At its peak, the business commanded a 47% market share of the mobile service provider market in Germany (its largest market) with 12.4% of the overall mobile telephone market . The company boasted over 10.2 million customers of which 8.3 million were resident in Germany.
debitel owns subsidiaries in the Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
and achieved revenues of around €3.0 billion in 2003.
The company was founded in 1991 by debis, a subsidiary of German car maker Daimler Benz before being sold in 2004 to a German holding company of Swiss telecommunications giant Swisscom
Swisscom
Swisscom AG is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Along with Swiss Post, it is a successor company to the former state-owned PTT. Its headquarters are located at Worblaufen near Bern...
.
Takeovers and mergers
In June 2004, PermiraPermira
Permira is a United Kingdom-based private equity firm with global reach. The firm advises funds with a total committed capital of approximately €20 billion....
, an international private equity
Private equity
Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....
firm, acquired Swisscom
Swisscom
Swisscom AG is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Along with Swiss Post, it is a successor company to the former state-owned PTT. Its headquarters are located at Worblaufen near Bern...
's 95% stake in debitel.
In 2006 it was announced that debitel would merge with _dug telecom AG, a German telecommunications company with 430 outlets of its own which had been founded in 1993 as a mobile telephone direct sales company called ‘Dittrich und Grella’.
Including the 1100 employees of _dug, by March 2008 the merged company employed 4000 people. In October 2008 the company owned 500 outlets in Germany, marketing what are known in Germany as 'tariff-based' products under the debitel brand on behalf of network providers such as T-Mobile
T-Mobile
T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
, E-Plus
E-Plus
E-Plus is a mobile telecommunications operator in Germany. With 19.0 million subscribers, E-Plus is the third largest mobile operator in Germany, after T-Mobile and Vodafone ....
und O2. debitel also sold land-line services at this time for Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....
's T-Home brand, Arcor
Arcor (Telecommunications)
Arcor is the second-largest fixed phone line provider in Germany. The company has been renamed to Vodafone AG & Co. KG on 8/1/2009. It is owned solely by Vodafone since May 2008, when Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Bank sold their shares to Vodafone.# Its headquarters are in Eschborn near Frankfurt...
, O2 DSL, Alice (a German brand owned by Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia is the largest Italian telecommunications company, also active in the media and manufacturing industries. Now a private concern listed on the Borsa Italiana, it was founded in 1994 by the merger of several state-owned telecommunications companies, the most important of which was...
) and Freenet
Freenet
Freenet is a decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store originally designed by Ian Clarke. According to Clarke, Freenet aims to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network with strong protection of anonymity; as part of supporting its users' freedom, Freenet is free and...
.
In July 2007 debitel was granted permission by the EU Commission to take over Elmshorn
Elmshorn
Elmshorn is a town in the district of Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is located 32 km north of Hamburg at the small river Krückau, close to the Elbe river, is the sixth-largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...
-based telecommunications company Talkline.
debitel subsequently consolidated the administration of the merged companies and downsized human resources leading to the loss of 700 jobs at Talkline and the announcement that Talkline operations would close entirely by 2010.
In April 2008, Freenet AG announced it would purchase debitel from Permira
Permira
Permira is a United Kingdom-based private equity firm with global reach. The firm advises funds with a total committed capital of approximately €20 billion....
including all liabilities for approx. 1.6 billion euros.