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| e•plus | |
| Company type | GmbH & Co. KG |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1992 |
| Defunct | 2014 |
| Fate | Merged withTelefónica Germany |
| Headquarters | Düsseldorf,Germany |
Area served | Germany |
Key people | Thorsten Dirks(CEO) |
| Products | mobile internet,mobile telephony |
Number of employees | >4,000(end 2013)[1] |
| Parent | KPN, 2002-2014 |
| Website | www.eplus-gruppe.de |
E-Plus was a mobile telecommunications operator inGermany. With more than 25 million subscribers,[2] E-Plus was the third largest mobile operator in Germany, until the takeover fromTelefónica Germany in October, 2014.
E-Plus was owned byDutch telecommunications operatorKPN since 2002. In July 2013,Telefónica Germany announced a planned takeover. The deal was approved by KPN shareholders in October 2013. The merger was delayed because of concerns by the European Commission on reduced competition in the German mobile market. In July 2014, the European Commission approved the merger, conditional on E-Plus giving up some frequencies and network capacity.[3][4][5][6]
The company was awarded Germany's first DCS-1800 (later renamedGSM-1800, also known as E-Netz (de;lit. E-Network) in Germany) license in 1993. One term of thelicence was that no furtherMobile network operator could be started within 3 years of the start of the network.
The network started operation as a "metropolitan" network, with coverage only in the biggest cities, in 1994. The coverage area was expanded rapidly, but for years the network's image was hampered by the view that its coverage was lacking. As a countermeasure,voicemail retrieval was free of charge for the first of years of operation, and calls were billed in six-second increments (in contrast to the one-minute increments of the other networks); aftertext messaging was introduced, it too was free for some time.
E-Plus was the second network in Germany to offer prepaid tariffs to its customers (after T-Mobile's XtraCard) and later introducedHSCSD, which boosts data rates onGSM networks to analogue modem speed levels. Shortly after that, E-Plus upgraded its network to supportGPRS. They now also operate a3GUMTS network.
In February 2006, after theEGSM900-band, which was in military use before, had become available in late 2005, the German regulation authorityFederal Network Agency assigned two 2 x 5 MHz channels to E-Plus andO2 Germany. In return, E-Plus andO2 Germany had to give up someGSM1800 frequencies to two competitive operatorsT-Mobile andVodafone. The firstEGSM900-base stations (cell sites) started operation in April 2006. In March 2007 E-Plus outsourced deployment, management and maintenance of its network toAlcatel-Lucent and thereby transferred 750 employees to the latter company.
E-Plus provides network access to numerousvirtual operators, such asBase,Blau Mobilfunk,ALDI Talk,Simyo,VIVA,JambaSIM. It also owns and operates AY YILDIZ, a mobile brand aimed at theTurks in Germany, offering affordable calls toTurkey and roaming in Turkish networks.
E-Plus was the first company to introducei-mode in Germany.
At the end of February 2014, E-Plus andZTE announced that ZTE would take over Managed Services of E-Plus.[7]
On March 5. 2014, E-Plus started commercial LTE service inBerlin,Leipzig andNuremberg by using 10 MHz out possible of 20 MHz bandwidth of the 1800 MHz frequency.[8]
On March 12. 2014, E-Plus announced the launch ofHD Voice.[9]
On July 1. 2016, LTE was shut down by its new owner Telefónica Germany.[10]
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