T-Mobile History
T-Mobile, The T standing for Telekom because of it's German origins, is the third largest multinational mobile telecommunications corporation in the world with branches in more countries that you can shake a stick at. In the UK we've had T-Mobile since 2002, but things weren't always so. T-Mobile UK began life as Mercury One 2 One, and some of you may remember their ads which featured living celebrities telling us which dead celebrities they'd like to have their 'One 2 One' with. Stirring stuff. Anyway, the German parent group acquired One 2 One from Mercury in 1999 but re-branded three years later.
On its inception T-Mobile was ranked as the fourth largest mobile telecommunications company in the UK behind Orange, O2 and Vodafone. However, it speaks volumes about their ability to provide good services that they have managed to overtake Orange in the intervening years and are now at number 3 in the network charts with over 19.2 million customers. This large database of users is partly to do with their provision of network resources to Virtual Network Operators like the hugely successful Virgin Mobile group, created in 1999 with the ubiquitous Mr. Richard Branson's brand backing.
In 2002 T-Mobile became the first UK network to offer their customers the chance to send picture messages to one another, and this wasn't the first time that T-Mobile would offer something unique, nor the last. In 2004 T-Mobile, having taken over what was the first GSM 1800 network, launched their new high speed 3G networks to compete with larger networks. This move was followed up in 2005 by the introduction of video calling on their networks.
This in itself is not unique, but their merger of HSDPA and 3G networking resources with the network 3 Mobile in 2008 is more so. This has given T-Mobile the largest high-speed network coverage in the UK, which to the layman means that T-Mobile are able to offer quick mobile internet access to the largest number of customers.
T-Mobile haven't just been innovators, movers and shakers in the world of mobile technology, as their price plan and tariff structuring has also made unique impacts on the market. In 2006 their Flext packages threw rigid mobile phone monthly contract price plans out the window.
Instead the customer was allowed to use a set amount of texts or minutes or any combination of the two so both chatters and texters were accommodated. In recent months they have also been the first network to get exclusive access to the G1, the first smart phone to run Google's operating platform.
So where does the future of T-Mobile lie? They've already found their unique niche in the mobile market, and they're also innovating when it comes to broadband internet. They offer mobile broadband on more than just mobile phones, with mobile broadband for PC and laptop users there's loads of ways to stay connected with T-Mobile. Times are tough for everyone in the global recession, and the T-Mobile CEO has been saying that he expects to see many mergers, resulting in fewer operators but ultimately cheaper calls.
He's even gone so far as to say that mobile calls will soon be of equivalent cost to those you can make via a landline, essentially sounding the death knell for home phone communication as we know it. You can expect that T-Mobile will certainly play their part in this brave new telecommunications landscape when it emerges from the mists of the future.
