T-Online expands Internet telephony
Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Online is getting into the Voice over IP business. "Starting tomorrow, we will be offering complete Voice-over-IP packages with new DSL rates," T-Online CEO Rainer Beaujean announced in today's issue of the German economics magazine Handelsblatt.
T-Online is thus responding to the pressure from competitors such as Freenet.de and AOL, who have long been offering such services, as the magazine writes. Up to now, the Internet provider based in Darmstadt has been reluctant to launch its own Voice-over-IP service because inexpensive VoIP calls are endangering the revenue of the Telekom's fixed-line division, T-Com, a sister company of T-Online. This helps explain why T-Online has been offering certain VoIP services but not with nearly all of the features that the competition has been offering.
When the new rates become available, 3.5 million T-Online DSL customers will be able to choose between 120 and 400 free minutes on the German landline network, Handelsblatt is reporting. T-Online will be charging 2.9 cents for each additional minute on the German landline network, while VoIP calls to other T-Online DSL customers will be free. T-Online will also soon be offering video calls via the Internet.
Beaujean told the paper that T-Online would be addressing the market "more aggressively" and that price wars are anything but a thing of the past. These price wars have already led T-Online to lower its DSL rates, forcing the company to reduce its targets for revenue and earnings in 2005. (Craig Morris) / (jk/c't)
