T-Mobile Austria

Magenta Telekom (T-Mobile Austria until 6 May 2019) is the second largest mobile and fixed company in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It is owned by

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 w ...

. In 2017 it had 5.7 million customers. Its CEO is

Andreas Bierwirth Andreas ( el, Ἀνδρέας) is a name usually given to males in Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Armenia, Estonia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Finland, Flanders, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, the Netherlands, and Indonesia. The name ...

_{de">:de:Andreas_Bierwirth">de/sub>since 1 September 2012.

History

The company was founded as ''max.mobil'' in 1996 by the Ö-Call consortium. In 2000, the company was bought by 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 w ...
. In 2002, max.mobil was renamed to T-Mobile Austria.

tele.ring acquisition

In 2005, T-Mobile Austria acquired mobile provider tele.ring from its parent company Western Wireless Corporation

Western Wireless Corporation was a cellular network operator that provided mobile telecommunications service to subscribers in 19 western states and seven countries. Western Wireless marketed analog cellular service under the CELLULAR ONE brand i ...
for 1.3 billion euros, and transformed it into its own lower-cost flanker brand
In marketing, a fighter brand (sometimes called a fighting brand or a flanker brand) is a lower-priced offering launched by a company to take on, and ideally take out, specific competitors that are attempting to under-price them. Unlike traditional ...
. The ''tele.ring'' branding was discontinued on 23 March 2020.

UPC Austria acquisition

In December 2017, T-Mobile Austria announced it would acquire cable provider UPC Austria (originally founded in 1977 as Telekabel Wien) from its parent company Liberty Global

Liberty Global plc is a British-Dutch-American multinational telecommunications company with headquarters in London, Amsterdam and Denver. Its respective legal names are Liberty Global Plc, Liberty Global B.V. and Liberty Global, Inc., with t ...
for 1.9 billion euros. The acquisition was approved by the European Commission

The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
on 10 July 2018.

The company announced plans to retire the "T-Mobile" and "UPC" brands in 2019, merging the companies under a single "T" brand. The new brand name was announced on the evening of 6 May 2019.

References

{{Deutsche Telekom, state=expanded

Mobile phone companies of Austria
Deutsche Telekom}