Customers

Consumers

Our aspiration is to offer customers the best network experience, anytime, anyplace – whether at home or at work, our network should work seamlessly and across all technologies. That’s why we market fixed-network and mobile communications in convergent products (fixed-mobile convergence (FMC)). Successfully so: at the end of the reporting year, the number of customers subscribing to FMC or comparable offerings in our Germany and Europe operating segments had increased to 14.6 million. At our 2024 Capital Markets Day, we additionally declared our intention to further enhance general customer satisfaction levels and to expand our pioneering role in the industry.

For further information on the development of our customer figures, please refer to the section “Development of business in the operating segments.”

In pursuit of our goal to become the Leading Digital Telco, we want to offer more than simply the best connectivity: what really counts for us is the network experience. For this reason, we offer our customers additional services that turn our network leadership aspiration into a first-hand experience. Our MagentaTV product has now been expanded throughout our entire European footprint to aggregate linear television with extensive features on the one hand, and provide access to content from the biggest video streaming services on the other. In 2024, we continued our efforts to further improve and enhance the TV experience: for instance, in 2024 we launched our new MagentaTV 2.0 TV platform and broadcast, e.g., every match of the UEFA EURO 2024 soccer championships in Germany, including pre- and post-match coverage, with some matches exclusively available from us. We offer MagentaTV at attractive conditions, such as free of charge six-month subscriptions to Apple TV+ or Paramount+, as well as a discounted MegaStream offering for our fixed-network customers. We also implemented measures to benefit from the abolition of the “Nebenkostenprivileg” in Germany in the reporting year. This meant housing companies were previously able to pass on cable TV and internet service fees as ancillary rental costs to tenants. Since the law was changed on July 1, 2024, tenants have been able to conclude their own contracts with TV providers. We are addressing this new customer group, to which we previously had no direct access, with attractive offers to switch to MagentaTV. We further rolled out our Android-based TV platform with a Deutsche Telekom-specific user interface to deliver an even more personalized user experience; this service is now available in seven countries (Germany, Austria, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, and North Macedonia). The addition of 311 thousand TV customers in Germany and 126 thousand in our national companies in Europe shows that we are on the right track.

In addition, we further developed the OneApp platform for a digital sales and service experience in our European national companies and in Germany. The OneApp platform not only improves the customer experience by adding the ability to set-up and manage routers or monitor internet usage behavior in the home network, it also enables us to monetize our existing offerings (e.g., through upselling of fixed-network/fiber-optic contracts, through our Magenta Moments loyalty program, and through in-app coupons). In the United States, we also launched the T-Life app in the reporting year to likewise provide our U.S. customers with a digital service platform.

Magenta Advantage

Beyond this, we also strive to establish and monetize new, digital business models – alongside our core business – on the basis of our Magenta Advantage, stemming from our assets and abilities in our core business. This includes, for example, 261.4 million mobile customers, 9.0 million TV customers, and access to the largest companies in the world across industries. All of which gives us a tangible edge that we call our Magenta Advantage. For example, we would like to further leverage our digital reach and brand strength advantage in a more targeted manner to make exclusive offers from partners available to our customers, to reward their loyalty and – where possible – to generate additional revenue. In 2024, we further expanded our loyalty program Magenta Moments, which has its own section in the OneApp in our national companies in Europe as well as in Germany (where the app is known as “MeinMagenta”). We delighted on average 1.7 million active customers every month of 2024 in Germany (and up to 2.5 million active customers in December 2024) with exclusive offerings from partners such as Rituals, Lindt, Paramount, and Perplexity. Overall in 2024, we enabled more than 250 moments for our customers with, e.g., external partnerships and priority tickets for music events. Roll-out in our national companies in Europe began in the third quarter of 2023, and the program was running in eight countries as of the end of 2024. We have since won around 5.9 million users in these regions and enabled over 40 million transactions. Our network of active partnerships extends to over 3,200 international brands such as Perplexity, Samsung, and Wolt. The approach is paying off: customer satisfaction is higher among Magenta Moments users than among non-users. In the future, we plan to build up further capabilities for data analysis and segmentation and continuously improve the personalization of our offers. On top of this, we also use our Magenta Advantage to invest in digital business models. Examples of these are the online delivery service Box and the payment service Payzy in Greece. The core of our brand promise, “Reliability, security, and trust,” remains the same and protecting our customers’ data and privacy is our top priority.

Customer satisfaction and service

Our commitment to delivering best-in-class customer service and to utilizing the Magenta Advantage is paying off. In the reporting year, we once again maintained customer satisfaction at a high level, measured using the globally recognized TRI*M method. We use the results of this non-financial performance indicator to improve our customer contact processes, and our products and services. At the same time, we determine the loyalty of our customers towards Deutsche Telekom. The results are presented as a performance indicator, the TRI*M index, which ranges between minus 66 and plus 134 points. At the end of the reporting year, this indicator (for Deutsche Telekom excluding T‑Mobile US) came in at 77.6 points compared with 76.2 points at the end of the prior year. The values achieved in particular for our Germany and Systems Solutions operating segments, as well as across most of the Europe operating segment, put us in a leading position relative to the respective benchmarks. With the exception of the Europe operating segment, where our goal is to post slight improvements in some areas, we plan to maintain these leading positions in the benchmark for 2025. In 2021, we added the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a further metric. NPS measures the ratio of enthusiastic customers (promoters) to unhappy customers (detractors). For example, a score of 10 means that the share of promoters exceeds the share of detractors by 10 percentage points. We maintained and in some cases indeed improved our NPS in all of our operating segments with consumer operations (Germany, United States, Europe) over the course of the reporting year. In the United States, for instance, we improved our NPS yet again on the prior year. This success is largely down to the various measures we have been pushing in recent months, such as the introduction of new prepaid plans in Germany in August 2024 with more data allowance and the option to rollover unused allowance to the next billing period. We also doubled the data allowance for our existing postpaid customers using our Young rate plans in Germany at the start of October 2024.

We have received numerous awards confirming our dedication. For example, Connect readers once again voted us best-in-class for mobile, fixed network, prepaid, and IPTV. In the Connect shop test, our Telekom shops took the overall win for the outstanding quality of their customer service. We swept the board in the Chip digital customer service test, taking the #1 spot in all categories. Focus Money magazine awarded our shops the Service King award for the eighth consecutive time in its Deutschland Test Study 2024. In the United States, too, we are reaping the rewards of our focus on customer-centricity: numerous surveys rank T‑Mobile US ahead of its competitors in terms of service quality (e.g., the J.D. Power study “Wireless Customer Care Mobile Network Operator Performance” rated T‑Mobile US the mobile carrier with the best customer service in the United States for the 14th time in succession).

Business customers

In the reporting year, we maintained our market-leading position (in terms of revenue) as a provider of telecommunications services for business customers in the Germany operating segment and posted growth in service revenues slightly above the prior-year level. As a trusted partner, we drive forward the digitalization of our customers based on global, secure connectivity, flexible software-based networks, and end-to-end security solutions. And in future, these activities will increasingly be based on integrated offerings (combining fixed network, mobile communications, and IT) and further strengthen our portfolio in the IT environment. However, integrated offerings also require digitalization expertise beyond connectivity (e.g., specialist sales, advisory, integration), since small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are increasingly looking for solutions from a single source. In 2024, we strengthened our collective market presence in the B2B segment by marketing activities in Germany and in Europe as a whole under the “T Business” brand identity, as well as with events such as Digital X. Our efforts were rewarded: Connect trade magazine named us the overall winner after surveying business customers in Germany on satisfaction with their mobile communications and internet providers. Our national companies in Europe also recorded substantial growth in revenue with business customers across all areas (mobile, fixed network, IT). Growth was strongest in the Europe operating segment, where our IT business recorded a revenue increase on an organic basis of 11.6 %. Demand for our productivity, cloud, and security portfolio continued to grow in 2024.

Going forward, we want to maintain our position in the B2B segment and achieve profitable growth. This also means we want to remain the partner of choice for businesses with cross-border connectivity needs, and to this end are investing in robust, global fixed-network and mobile communications structures and providing a one-stop shop for connectivity through the orchestration of our own networks and those of our partners. In the medium term, we want to respond to changing customer needs with fully cloud-based, modular network services and dynamically adapt our networks. Standardized application programming interfaces (APIs) will even make it possible in future to automatically manage individual network parameters in real time. To this end, over the coming years we plan to radically overhaul our own network and IT landscape, transforming it into a modular, software-defined production environment with integration capabilities for customized app and IT landscapes. We continually drive forward the commercial availability of communication and network APIs, offering easy access for developers and business customers under our Magenta Business API brand since 2023. Our business customers are already using our Magenta Business APIs, available through our developer portal, due to our efforts in the reporting year to commercialize and market them.

As major topics like the Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity remain highly relevant, security and network solutions (network, IT, and cloud computing) are beginning to merge into highly secure, end-to-end solutions. Security functions which were once purchased separately are increasingly becoming part of the connectivity product or of security solutions, like new-generation firewalls that are already integrated into some SD-WAN solutions or classic mobile communications and fixed-network solutions, while Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions deliver SD-WAN in combination with cloud and application security from a single source. We will continue to develop the core elements of our B2B portfolio, comprising our Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) solutions and SD-WAN products, holistically, taking account of network and security aspects. Security is an integral component of every one of our products and services (e.g., campus networks, IoT) – and that goes for every part of the communication chain: from the user via the devices, Wi-Fi/mobile radio/LAN, through to access and corporate networks, transport networks, and data centers. “Security by Design” is our goal here – from development and operation to management of the network services by us and our customers. IT business for corporate customers is moving away from traditional IT outsourcing services towards new cloud-based services and digital solutions (particularly in the field of artificial intelligence). The strategy of our Systems Solutions operating segment is still to become the “leading European vertical full-service IT player.” The vision concentrates in particular on the DACH region, where we are already a leading IT service provider (in terms of revenue). Our strategic focus is on fulfilling the core customer requirements of digitalization: advisory, cloud services, and digital solutions. For selected industries (automotive, healthcare, public sector), we additionally offer industry-specific solutions. We are increasingly making use of AI, too, to help improve customer solutions and internal processes. Nearshoring and offshoring are gaining in relevance for the Group in a competitive environment, and we increasingly utilize both to unlock additional capacities, particularly at T‑Systems. In the reporting year, we also expanded our global IoT business by joining the Bridge Alliance comprising 34 mobile communications companies from Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East. Our accession to the alliance has two main benefits: one, we are simplifying access to countries in the Asia-Pacific region for globally operating companies from Europe; and two, we are simplifying access to Europe for companies outside of Europe.