MONTABAUR (dpa-AFX) - Germany's fourth cell phone network is getting bigger, but it is still tiny compared to the competition. The head of network operator 1&1, Ralph Dommermuth, said in Montabaur that more than 400 sites had been integrated into the network by the end of June. That was about twice as many as three months previously. In comparison: O2 has around 28,000 active mobile sites in Germany, Vodafone 26,000.

National roaming from O2

Where 1&1 does not transmit its own radio signals, its customers are connected to the O2 network. This is done as part of a national roaming agreement between the two companies, under which 1&1 pays rent for the use of its competitor's network. However, 1&1 is switching to Vodafone this summer - so in future, customers will be connected to the network of the British telecommunications group's German subsidiary.

Setbacks in network expansion

1&1 had to contend with considerable headwinds when building its mobile network. At the beginning of 2023, 1000 sites were supposed to be in operation, but in fact only five were. The Federal Network Agency then initiated fine proceedings. 1&1 blamed its expansion partner Vantage Towers, which had not handed over a large number of sites despite a corresponding contract.

The cooperation between the two companies is still not going according to plan, as is clear from Dommermuth's statements. "We have just had another 250 sites canceled by Vantage." The expansion is laborious. "But we are increasingly gaining altitude." By the end of 2025, 1&1 must reach a quarter of households in Germany with its antennas, as stipulated by the Federal Network Agency. 1&1 wants to achieve this.

Network outage annoys customers

In May, 1&1 experienced considerable technical problems in its still small network and many customers were unreachable for a long time. It is estimated that around 50,000 notices of termination were received as a result of this outage, says company boss Dommermuth. He was also surprised by the outage. "My wife woke me up in the morning because my colleagues couldn't reach me on my cell phone because my cell phone was also down."

Something like this does happen when building a new network, but it shouldn't have happened. "It also took us too long to fix it." The company has learned from this and assumes that this will not happen again.

Cautious expectations for the year as a whole

The United Internet subsidiary had a rather mixed half-year. Sales increased by 1.1 percent to 2.02 billion euros and the operating result (EBIT) fell by 22.8 percent to 196.1 million euros. The costs for the network expansion - the start-up costs - were significantly higher than before. 1&1 had recently lowered its original annual forecast for sales and profitability somewhat./wdw/DP/ngu