Vodafone GmbH is a mobile telecommunications operator in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

headquartered in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

. It provides

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

, LTE, 5G,

cable internet In telecommunications, cable Internet access, shortened to cable Internet, is a form of broadband Internet access which uses the same infrastructure as a cable television. Like digital subscriber line and fiber to the premises services, cable Inte ...

, landlines,

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

, and IPTV services. As of the third quarter of 2021, Vodafone GmbH has more than 31 million mobile customers in Germany, making it the third-largest provider of mobile phone services in Germany. The company's headquarters are in the suburb of Heerdt in

, with regional offices throughout Germany. Vodafone Germany's main competitors are Telekom Deutschland (Deutsche Telekom's German private customer unit) and Telefónica Germany. Vodafone Germany's network serves both prepaid and postpaid customers on

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

and LTE (

Long Term Evolution In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by us ...

). In July 2019, Vodafone started providing 5G services. At the end of 2010, Vodafone had 36.676 million mobile phone or mobile internet customers and 3.945 million customers with a DSL / VDSL connection.

History

The company in its present form resulted from Vodafone's takeover of the German engineering group Mannesmann GmbH in 2000. On 8 December 1989, the West German

Federal Ministry for Posts and Telecommunications Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

( de; one of several predecessors of the present-day

Bundesnetzagentur The Federal Network Agency (german: Bundesnetzagentur or ) is the German regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railway markets. It is a federal agency of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Acti ...

) awarded the second digital GSM-900 (also known as D-Netz ( de; ''D-Network'' in Germany) network in Germany to Mannesmann, as the first private company in Germany to break the monopoly of the telecommunications services operated by

Deutsche Bundespost The Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) was a German state-run postal service and telecommunications business founded in 1947. It was initially the second largest federal employer during its time. After staff reductions in the 19 ...

(now

Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...

). This licence was subsequently expanded to cover the former East Germany after

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

in 1991. Mannesmann subsequently began operations of its mobile network on 30 June 1992. It was rebranded Vodafone D2 in 2002. In February 2011, Vodafone Germany started providing IPTV via DSL and VDSL connections. In April 2011, Vodafone Germany started to distribute

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

content via IPTV. Following Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Germany started selling the Apple

iPhone 4S The iPhone 4S (originally styled as iPhone 4 S, retroactively stylized with a lowercase 's' as iPhone 4s as of September 2013) is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the fifth generation of the iPhone, succ ...

in September 2011. As of 2014, the company owns around 75% of

Kabel Deutschland Vodafone Kabel Deutschland GmbH is the largest cable television operator in Germany. Kabel Deutschland was subject to a hostile takeover bid by the British Vodafone Group in September 2013; the deal was approved in December 2013 and finalised on ...

and in 2019 Unitymedia was merged with Vodafone. In February 2020, the Unitymedia brand will be phased out from market, according to Vodafone Germany.

Sponsoring

The company sponsored the AMG-Mercedes team in the

24 Hours of Le Mans The 24 Hours of Le Mans (french: link=no, 24 Heures du Mans) is an endurance-focused sports car race held annually near the town of Le Mans, France. It is the world's oldest active endurance racing event. Unlike fixed-distance races whose ...

, Blancpain Sprint Series and

Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM, German Touring Car Masters) is a grand touring car series sanctioned by ITR e.V. who have been affiliated to the DMSB- FIA since 1984. The series is based in Germany, with rounds elsewhere in Europe. The s ...

References

External links

* Vodafone Companies based in Düsseldorf Mobile phone companies of Germany {{Telecom-company-stub