The resale agreement follows recent similar deals with Vodafone and Telefónica.
The United Internet subsidiary has been reselling Duetsche Telekom’s VDSL since 2012. The new contract between Deutsche Telekom (DT) and 1&1 Versatel replaces the previous one and will run for ten years, allowing Versatel to reselll FTTH and VDSL, according to golem.de.
Better marketing
Golem.de reports that DT is thought to be less successful than its competition at selling its fiber optic access and will benefit from United Internet’s marketing machine.
This is supported by a Dialog Consult study published in October 2020, which found resellers companies achieve a take-up rate of almost 50% compared with DT’s less than 20%. DT did not comment on the study’s findings. DT works with partnerships.
Power of partners
“We are pleased about this agreement and the further common path. [DT] will be Germany’s fibre optic company. Large nationwide partnerships are important for this,” said Srini Gopalan, CEO of DT Germany. Following contracts with Telefónica and Vodafone, this is the third cooperation of its kind that DT has concluded within a few weeks.
“As we open our networks on the basis of freely negotiated contracts for everyone in the market,” emphasised Gopalan. In addition to the agreements for FTTH connections from local network operators, 1&1 Versatel can initially offer 1&1 Drillisch around 750,000 additional FTTH connections for marketing.”
Standard offer
1&1 Drillisch is also a subdisiary of United Internet. It is in the process of transforming from an MVNO to becoming Germany’s fourth mobile operator having secured its own 5G spectrum. While it builds out its infrastructure, it will rely on national roaming – the agreement to use Telefonica Germany’s network was hammered out in the last few days after intervention by the European Commission.
“We look forward to significantly expanding our fibre-optic offering. Fibre-optic is increasingly becoming the standard for fast communication in private households,” said Ralph Dommermuth, head of United Internet.