Mobilkom Austria

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mobilkom austria AG

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1996 (2006 in the last legal form)
resolution December 31, 2009
Seat Vienna , AustriaAustriaAustria 
management Hannes Ametsreiter
Number of employees about 6000
sales 3.4 billion euros
Branch Mobile communications , telecommunications

Old logo of A1 , the largest and best-known brand of mobilkom austria

The mobilkom austria AG was the largest Austrian mobile communications company . It was founded in 1996 as Mobil Austria AG and represented the mobile communications division of Telekom Austria . In 2010, the mobile communications and fixed network divisions of the Telekom Austria Group were merged retroactively to the end of 2009 to form A1 Telekom Austria , which resulted in the dissolution of mobilkom austria AG .

In Austria, the company was on the market with the brands A1 , B-Free , bob and Red Bull MOBILE and served 4.7 million customers (as of 3rd quarter 2009) with 2,165 employees.

history

Old Mobilkom Austria logo

The company was founded in 1996 as Mobil Austria AG and emerged from the radio technology service (FTD) of the former Post and Telegraph Administration (PTV). From 1997 to 2002 Telecom Italia was involved in mobilkom austria , and from 2002 it was a 100% subsidiary of Telekom Austria AG .

From May 2000 to April 2009 Boris Nemšić was General Director of mobilkom austria AG . During this time, most of the subsidiaries in Eastern Europe were founded or acquired. At the end of the 2008 financial year , the mobilkom austria group had over 17.8 million customers, around 8,300 employees, sales of 3.4 billion euros and an operating result of 689 million euros. In April 2009, Hannes Ametsreiter took over the position of General Director of mobilkom austria AG . After the dissolution, he will continue to be Director General of Telekom Austria.

In June 2010, with a reorganization agreement, mobilkom austria AG was merged into Telekom Austria TA AG retrospectively to the end of 2009 , the foreign subsidiaries of the mobilkom austria group were transferred to the Telekom Austria holding company and mobilkom austria was dissolved. Subsequently, Telekom Austria TA AG , which was expanded to include the Austrian mobile communications division, was renamed A1 Telekom Austria AG .

Development of cellular networks

The beginnings

Former Austrian mobile networks operated by mobilkom austria or its predecessors PTV and FTD:

  • ÖPR-I (Austrian paging system 1 - Tonrufpager also called beeper),
  • ÖPR-II (Austrian paging system 2, later name CallMe - numeric and alphanumeric pagers),
  • ÖBL-B (public mobile land radio service or B network, analog cellular network, compatible with German network B),
  • ÖBL-C (or C-Netz, analog car phone cellular network according to the NMT standard),
  • ÖBL-D (or D-Netz, later D)), analog cellular network according to the TACS standard),

The A1 network

The GSM -Netz of A1 was released in Austria 1994th There is now a coverage of over 99% of the Austrian population. In 2000, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) was launched. This enabled speeds of up to 75 kbit / s and thus roughly comparable with the V.90 landline modems, which reached up to 56 kbit / s. At that time, however, laptops were still comparatively expensive, mobile working was not an issue and mobile data cards were still in short supply.

In 2003, A1 put Austria's first UMTS network into operation. This enabled A1 to establish Austria as a lead market for UMTS and mobile services. In 2004 the first mobile TV offers were available at A1: z. B. CNN was broadcast live on mobile phones using streaming technology .

In 2005, the UMTS network, which has now grown rapidly, was supplemented by a complementary technology: EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution). EDGE is a standard from the IMT2000 family and, with 8PSK modulation, provides up to 236 kbit / s in the downlink . EDGE UMTS thus supplements UMTS, especially in rural and inaccessible areas of Austria. In mid-2005, 62% of the population were already covered by A1 UMTS, and a further 35% were covered by EDGE. A1 thus offered the first mobile broadband service, which was available nationwide at 97%. UMTS and EDGE were built to complement each other in order to achieve the greatest possible area coverage. According to Mobilkom Austria, the value is currently 99%. At the same time, the first A1 Vodafone broadband data cards that were UMTS and EDGE compatible came onto the market.

In January 2006 HSDPA (High Speed ​​Downlink Packet Access) 1.8 was introduced. In the middle of 2006 the A1-HSDPA network was upgraded from 1.8 Mbit / s to 3.6 Mbit / s. These speeds made a massive expansion in the connection network and in the wide area network (= backbone network) necessary in order to quickly derive the volume of data that now accumulates.

In 2007 Mobilkom Austria upgraded the HSDPA network to up to 7.2 Mbit / s. At the end of 2007, 75% of the population was supplied with A1-HSDPA. 2007 brought another innovation: HSUPA (High Speed ​​Uplink Packet Access), for faster data uplink .

On March 23, 2009 Mobilkom Austria started the commercial operation of HSPA + with up to 21 Mbit / s. Since April 2009, HSUPA 5.7 has also been activated in the traffic-intensive parts of the network.

Holdings

Participations of the mobilkom austria group

Including the holdings, the company was referred to as the mobilkom austria group . This group included Mobiltel ( Bulgaria ), Vipnet ( Croatia ), Si.mobil ( Slovenia ), Mobilkom Liechtenstein ( Principality of Liechtenstein ), Vip mobile ( Serbia ), Vip operator ( North Macedonia ), A1 ( Belarus ), paybox austria (mobile payment) ), A1 Bank, mobilkom austria group services GmbH (service) and 3G Mobile (exploitation of UMTS frequency usage rights).

International

The mobilkom austria group held six 100% international holdings and one 70% in Belarus. Three of the subsidiaries were already existing companies and were taken over by the mobilkom austria group , the remaining four were founded and built up as startups :

Total charge of mobilkom austria group around 18.1 million customers.

National

In 2003, Mobilkom made a very special strategic move with the takeover of paybox austria AG . Paybox had stopped its end customer business in Germany after Deutsche Bank withdrew as the main investor due to the poor prospects of success. The mobile payment provider, which is now only active in Austria, has thus become a 100% subsidiary of mobilkom austria .

However, several Austrian mobile phone customers can use this service:

  • In 2005 Orange bought 16.7% of paybox austria AG .
  • In 2008 paybox started a strategic partnership with T-Mobile and tele.ring .
  • In 2010 Orange gave up its minority stake. This did not change anything in the paybox service portfolio. The 16.7% was taken over by the successor to mobilkom austria ( A1 Telekom Austria ).

Mobilkom austria made another strategic move when, in December 2003, it bought the UMTS mobile operator 3G Mobile from Telefónica , which also acquired a UMTS license in Austria but never went into operation. 3G Mobile is currently primarily devoted to managing its frequency usage rights.

At the end of 2007, Tele2's mobile phone division took over around 120,000 contract and prepaid customers. These have been making calls over the A1 network since March 2008 (while they used to roam over the One National network ). In August 2008 Tele2 was finally integrated into mobilkom austria .

Cooperations

Since spring 2003 there has been a cooperation with the Vodafone Group, which means that Mobilkom can use the Vodafone brand and, conversely, Vodafone can generate additional sales without having to invest in the relevant countries.

A so-called national roaming agreement exists between mobilkom austria and the mobile communications company Hutchison Drei Austria . This means that in regions where 3 has not yet set up their own HSDPA / UMTS network, 3 customers have access to the GSM / GPRS / EDGE network, but not to the UMTS network of Mobilkom Austria (national roaming 3G-2G). Originally, 3G-2G roaming and the associated payments were a condition of UMTS frequency assignments, i.e. regulated by sovereign law by the RTR . The roaming agreement has meanwhile been converted into a private law relationship.

In June 2008, Mobilkom joined the DVB-H consortium.

Since October 2008 mobilkom austria has been in cooperation with the Austrian Red Bull Group with the Red Bull Mobile product .

Product areas

The mobilkom austria was the largest Austrian mobile operator and sells GSM - EDGE - UMTS - HSDPA - and wireless services under the brands A1 , bob and Red Bull MOBILE . Since the end of 2006, Mobilkom has been offering Voice over IP via the SIP protocol on computers with A1 over IP . Since 2007 A1 has had an HD Mobile TV Client and since 2008 it has also been possible to use DVB-H and DVB-T with the A1 hardware .

A1 over IP

Since March 2007, Mobilkom Austria has also been offering telephony over the Internet under the A1 over IP label . After online registration, the product immediately enables telephony according to the SIP standard. For this purpose, A1 over IP uses an existing A1 number of the Mobilkom contract customer. Since Friday, August 29, 2008, any number of an Austrian mobile operator is possible. Call signaling for 0664 numbers is carried out on request by means of a multi-ring on the mobile phone and at the same time on the VOIP client, calls made via VOIP are displayed to the called party with the mobile phone number, the called party does not recognize that this is actually a VOIP -Conversation is involved.

Since August 29, 2008, the A1 over IP 4 FREE service can be registered by all Austrian mobile phone customers. This allows free calls and chats on the Internet. mobilkom austria is one of the first mobile phone providers to consistently support the SIP standard and to promote the open use of this standard. All VoIP-enabled products from AVM, the iSoftphone (Mac client) and softphones from Counterpath are currently compatible with A1.net/Voip. A1 over IP can also be used on a mobile phone, e.g. B. with Nokia devices of the E and N series. Since August 2008 A1 over IP has also been available with the mobile clients from fring! And Nimbuzz compatible. In addition to A1 over IP, these clients also support MSN, ICQ, Google Talk and other communities.

According to Mobilkom Austria, around 10,000 A1 contract customers, including 50 corporate customers, were using A1 over IP at the end of September 2007. On September 17, 2007, Mobilkom Austria received an innovation award (GTB Innovation Award 2007) for A1 over IP.

A1 Mobile TV

In cooperation with Media Broadcast (owner of the DVB-H license), A1 offers mobile TV using DVB-H technology. In 2004, CNN was the first worldwide television channel to be broadcast live to mobile phones. The offer has been continuously expanded in recent years. The number of channels and video content has been increased and the quality has been improved. HD mobile TV (with the H.264 codec ) and the A1 TV player are particularly important here . In 2006 A1 started to evaluate the broadcast technology DVB-H in the pilot project mobile tv austria . DVB-H was launched in 2008. In combination with UMTS, A1 has a universal mobile TV offer nationwide. All DVB-H channels are also available on the A1, however, on UMTS.

A1 femtocell

In November 2008 A1 started the first pilot project with Femto routers in Central Europe with 35 selected private and corporate customers . In buildings that are difficult to supply, the indoor coverage with Femto routers is to be significantly improved. The Femto router creates an "individual" 3G network that is connected to the A1 network with aon Speed ​​or DSL lines from Telekom Austria for voice and data connections.

bob

Bob is a so-called no-frills mobile communications product, with which Mobilkom Austria entered discount mobile communications in the summer of 2006 . The name stands for “best of both” , ie “the best of both” (meaning the price and the mobile network). Bob provides telephony and SMS services, roaming is possible. Bob now also offers data services and MMS.

When bob entered the market, bob undercut other Austrian discount mobile phone offers with low minute prices for voice telephony without a fixed monthly fee, without minimum sales and without contractual obligations.

The original product was bought as a prepaid card , but then had to be registered. Since the end of August 2007, Bob has also been offering prepaid telephony. It is advertised that Bob is not a prepaid card offer, but is now offering it anyway.

The registration method, which can be done either online or via a hotline, is also innovative. The validity of the specified account is achieved by a test debiting of 10 cents with specification of a code number on the relevant account, which must then be announced again online or via the hotline.

In January 2009 bob had 300,000 customers.

Key figures

Market shares in the Austrian mobile communications market (as of March 2010, according to data from RTR Telekom Monitor 03/2010)

The mobilkom austria was the leader in terms of the number of end users in mobile communications in Austria, where the market share percentage did not last always further reduced by the emergence of new competitors in its history to 2006. Since 2007 the market share has increased again significantly and at the end of Q1 / 2009 it was back to 42.3%. At the beginning of 1998, Mobilkom still had a market share in terms of customer numbers of 80.68%.

December 31 Market share in%
1998 68.70
1999 54.64
2000 45.21
2001 42.59
2002 44.45
2003 43.89
2004 41.258
2005 39.518
2006 38.203
2007 40.433
2008 42.2
2009 42.26

According to its own information, Mobilkom Austria reached 99 percent of the Austrian population with its network.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mobilkom Austria Homepage: Key figures
  2. ↑ Press release from Feb. 23, 2010 ( Memento of the original from April 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of Telekom Austria. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.telekomaustria.com
  3. ↑ GSM history in Austria v. umtslink.at  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.umtslink.at  
  4. ↑ Press release A1 of February 25, 2004 CNN Live on mobile phones
  5. ↑ Press release A1 from January 20, 2005 Launch EDGE
  6. ↑ Mobilkom Austria Homepage: Key figures
  7. ↑ Heise Online: Paybox ceases retail business in Germany , January 23, 2003
  8. ↑ Heise Online: One buys a sixth from paybox austria, October 5, 2005
  9. ↑ Paybox press release of October 14, 2008 Strategic partnership with T-Mobile and tele.ring ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.paybox.at
  10. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.atmedia.at
  11. ↑ Vodafone Global press release of January 7, 2003 Vodafone welcomes Austria, Croatia and Slovenia to its mobile community
  12. ↑ Telekom Control Commission: Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH CONCESSION AND FREQUENCY ALLOCATION CERTIFICATE ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rtr.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 74 kB) , November 20, 2000
  13. ↑ The standard : Mobilkom also next year GSM national roaming partner of "3" , October 18, 2007
  14. ↑ a b Telekom press: Mobilkom now for the "better" mobile TV ( memento of the original from January 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , June 3, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.telekom-presse.at
  15. ↑ http://www.a1.net/privat/voip
  16. ↑ http://www.ip-phone-forum.de/showthread.php?t=116735&highlight=A1.net
  17. ↑ Mobilkom opens "A1 over IP" http://www.fuzo-archiv.at/artikel/303674v2 ORF futurezone from August 29, 2008
  18. ↑ http://www.computerwelt.at/detailArticle.asp?a=117061&n=6  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Computerwelt.at on A1over Ip for free@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.computerwelt.at  
  19. ↑ iSoftPhone - Telephony Software for Mac OS X
  20. ^ CounterPath Home
  21. ↑ http://www.a1.net/privat/a1overipauszeichnung
  22. ↑ Press release Austria: mobilkom austria streams CNN live on the mobile phone , February 25, 2004
  23. ↑ e-Media : Handy TV in the E-MEDIA-Check  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.e-media.at   , June 08
  24. ↑ RTR: mobile tv austria - strategy and background  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rtr.at   , March 27, 2008
  25. ↑ A1 starts the first pilot project with Femto routers in Central Europe
  26. ↑ Hannes Ametsreiter: Who speaks to bob? . In: derStandard.at . November 3, 2006
  27. ↑ Press release A1 from January 19, 2009 300,000 customers already speak to bob
  28. ↑ Press release of May 13th on the quarterly figures Q1 2009  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 89 kB)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.telekomaustria.com  
  29. ↑ Information about the telecom market in Austria ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rtr.at

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 18 ″  N , 16 ° 22 ′ 10 ″  E