The brand blau ''(previously: blau Mobilfunk GmbH)'', is a mobile network brand owned by Telefonica Germany. The key brands are the discount tariff "blau.de" for calls within Germany and "blauworld" for calls outside Germany.

History

The company was founded by three entrepreneurs, Martin Ostermayer, Thorsten Rehling and Dirk Freise in 2005. The money came from the sale of the website ''handy.de'' to Bertelsmann. A company for the distribution of mobile phone service with

E-Plus E-Plus was a mobile telecommunications operator in Germany. With more than 25 million subscribers, E-Plus was the third largest mobile operator in Germany, until the takeover from Telefónica Germany in October, 2014. Ownership E-Plus was o ...

was the base to establish Blau Mobilfunk GmbH as the first independent mobile phone discounter. Blau Mobilfunk took over the

mobile virtual network operator A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobile ...

in the discount sector, debitel-light, in November 2006.

Debitel Debitel AG was one of the largest mobile telephone services providers in Europe, offering a wide range of telecommunication products – mobile and land-line telephony as well internet services. At its peak, the business commanded a 47% market sh ...

received a minority share of the Blau Mobilfunk GmbH as compensation. 2007 blau.de already had 600,000 customers. Blau Mobilfunk was taken over by the Dutch E-Plus-mother KPN in April 2008. The key brands blau.de and blauworld were continued. Blau.de also offered an allnet flatrate like Yourfone in addition to normal prepaid cards in 2012. Thus blau.de is not only a pure prepaid discounter, but also offers handy tariffs by invoice. Blau Mobilfunk has belonged to E-Plus since 1 January 2013. It became a brand of Telefonica Germany, which after the E-Plus acquisition in 2014 migrated customers to their main company in 2015.

Cooperations

blau.de offers branded reseller partnerships to other companies, i. e. the usage of the blau.de tariff under the brand name of the partner. Hereby the customers should be connected to the brands of the partners. At the moment there are the following cooperations: * Netto: NettoKOM * ATG (Arora Trading GmbH): simVOICE * ECO World Connect GmbH: Mobilka In cooperation with KPN Spain the discount tariff blau.es was established in Spain in October 2008. The Network of

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower * Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum ...

Spain is used for this.

Technology

blau.de initially used the network and all the technical equipment of

, which was later merged with the

Telefónica O2 Germany Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

network. The network accessibility reached 98% of the population in Germany in 2011. Connections of up to 384 kbit/s via

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...

-network and of up to 7,2 Mbit/s via

HSDPA High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunica ...

as an enhancement of UMTS were possible in 2011.

References

{{reflist German brands Mobile phone companies of Germany Companies based in Hamburg Telecommunications companies established in 2005