From next month wireless customers of Telekom Deutschland (TD), the domestic fixed and mobile division of German telecoms company Deutsche Telekom, will be able to access download speeds of up to 100Mbps using their smartphones. The new ‘LTE (Long Term Evolution) Speed’ option will be available with all of TD’s ‘Complete Mobile’ rates from 4 September for an additional EUR9.95 (USD12.5) per month. The new option is being launched alongside a number of new LTE-capable smartphones, such as the HTC One XL and Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE. After connecting around 1,000 rural areas to its 800MHz LTE network in 2010, TD first brought LTE to the city in July 2011, when it launched a 4G network operating in the 1800MHz band in Cologne. Commercial services were made available in Frankfurt in February 2012, followed shortly by Bonn, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, Mainz, Bremen, Hanau, Heidelberg, Bochum and Stuttgart, among others. TD aims to have expanded coverage of its urban 4G network to a total of 100 cities by the end of the year, while more than ten million customers in rural regions are already able to enjoy fast mobile broadband through LTE 800. In addition, TD offers download speeds of up to 42Mbps across its entire UMTS network, reaching around 87% of Germany’s population.
Deutsche Telekom meanwhile has also unveiled a new TV service, ‘Entertain to go’, which enables ‘Entertain’ subscribers to view programmes on a smartphone, tablet computer or laptop, by enabling access to 40 TV channels and the online video store in their home network. ‘Entertain to go’ will be available at the end of the year as an add-on option for EUR4.95 per month with a contract term of one month only for all ‘Entertain’ IPTV customers.