T-Mobile Looks to Business, Land Lines

Deutsche Telekom says it expects T-Mobile USA to surpass 20 million customers next year and is mulling a business-only mobile phone brand in the United States, a European newspaper reported on Tuesday. Even further, according to DT CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke, the American arm of the company is actively pursuing partnerships with cable operators for fixed line and wireless phone services.

In an interview with Financial Times Deutschland, Ricke told the paper that Deutsche Telekom sees no slowdown in subscriber growth, even with the rash of mergers in the American wireless industry. "We will have over 17 million clients by the end of this year," Ricke said. "Next year it will be about 20 million users, and by 2010, we are aiming for 30 to 35 million."

The company has resisted pressure to sell its American wireless division as a way to cut into the staggering debt that has plagued it. Rather, Deutsche Telekom sees T-Mobile USA as one of its biggest potential moneymakers. This is evidenced by the fact that it has repeatedly been the best-performing arm of its wireless division, even surpassing the flagship service T-Mobile Deutschland in terms of subscribers.

Ricke admitted that T-Mobile USA had not done well with business customers. He told the Financial Times that there was the possibility of a partnership to launch a separate business phone brand, saying, "a new mobile phone brand for business customers is not ruled out."

The next step in America, according to Ricke, is fixed-line telephony. "We are in talks with cable companies in the USA to extend our offering to the fixed-line network," Ricke said. However, he added that T-Mobile would only get into the arena through partnerships, and there would be no takeover or joint venture.