OREANDA-NEWS. October 19, 2012. "The domestic mobile communications market finds itself in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, demand is drastically growing in the data area. Since last year, the quantity of data in the mobile communications networks has doubled. On the other hand, this positive development in demand is not stopping the rapid drop in prices and the falling revenues of the operators," explains Andreas Bierwirth, who has been the new CEO of T-Mobile Austria since the beginning of September, at his press conference appearance on Wednesday, October 17. "Capacity utilization of our production is no longer linked to revenue. At the same time, the technical quality of all networks across all providers is better than in almost all other countries in Europe despite the challenging and high-cost topography of the country. This contradiction is unique."

"The results of this development are the source of almost daily headlines in the business press," said Bierwirth: "One supplier wants to leave the market by merging with the smallest provider. This company, in turn, sold its network to the China Development Bank two years ago. The market leader just had to get a Mexican investor on board and reduce dividend payments substantially. And, because we also publish our business figures, it is no secret that T-Mobile had to suffer continuous drops in revenue and EBITDA as did the market as a whole in the last few years."

"This situation is, on the one hand, positive for our customers in the short term: Austrian mobile communications customers can be happy that they have the lowest prices in the EU with the highest quality," added Bierwirth. However, Austria is threatened with a future loss in the quality, particularly for broadband, due to a lack of financing for adequate investments in the networks. "This is why the telecommunications market needs to reboot. A reasonable relationship between increasing demand and earnings, and thus the ability of the providers to compete, has to be once again established. I am determined that T-Mobile will be the first to tap into this reboot to stop the downwards spiral of the companies and be able to offer consumers the highest level of products and services over the long run."

As the new CEO of T-Mobile Austria, his biggest goal is thus to increase the profitability of the company so that long-term investments will continue to be possible, explained Bierwirth. The goal is for revenue to be stable again within two years; starting in 2015 T-Mobile aims to generate growth again.

To achieve this, T-Mobile plans to regain market shares and reinforce its position as the undisputed number two on the Austrian market, primarily due to the superior quality of our brand and our products. To this end, Bierwirth launched an internal work program called "Attack2Win" to define the priorities and growth areas for the next three years. This includes considerably strengthening the T-Mobile brand within the two-brand strategy. "Although we won the audience prizes for the most popular and the best mobile communications provider in Austria in 2012, we are not fully exploiting the potential of the T-Mobile brand. We have to infuse the brand with emotion to offer customers a strong community with a lot of exciting, innovative developments, not least of all streaming music on cell phones." tele.ring, in contrast, has a very popular and prominent brand and has been considered the price leader among the established providers for many years. The business model, however, has to be adjusted to the market with low-cost SIM-only providers Bob and Yesss to be able to keep up.

"In the consumer segment, we will concentrate on innovations that generate revenue that we are able to bring to Austria based on the innovative power of the Deutsche Telekom Group. We plan to lead on the basis of usability: the things that we offer will function easily and reliably. We will focus here on music, payment by cell phone and SmartApps," said Bierwirth.

In the business customer segment, there will be increased cooperation with T-Systems and thus the development of new system solutions for business customers accelerated. There is also the international strength of T-Mobile through the presence of its sister companies in most countries in central and eastern Europe as well as in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. This will allow T-Mobile to offer interesting, cross-border products and services particularly to Austrian companies that primarily operate in these countries.

Another growth market for Bierwirth is the "Internet of things", the communication of devices for service functions or for more efficient use. "We are pioneers in the machine-to-machine area. We will expand this further to keep our leadership pledge." Areas of focus include logistics where, for example, Deutsche Telekom equips Daimler with "Car2Go" as well as the energy and healthcare segments.

Through this work program, Bierwirth wants to be able to generate the necessary revenue with the rapid increase in data traffic to make it possible to invest in the fast expansion of the LTE data technology. "Less and less is currently being paid for better and better performance. The change in revenue has become completely independent of changes in costs. Future tariff models have to be oriented more around the respective data volumes," said Bierwirth. "In the last six years, mobile communication charges have fallen by 55% while we are constantly providing better performance."

"If you buy two or three kilos of apples at the market, it goes without saying that it costs more than just one kilo even if you get a quantity discount. The same logic that applies to apples also has to apply once again to data. Of course, the current safety mechanisms are retained as the speed brake when the agreed limit is reached or the maximum limit for follow-up orders. This will allow customers to adjust their consumption to their needs without any unpleasant surprises."

The new T-Mobile CEO also announced new priorities in two other areas. On the one hand, in the reduction of production costs. Here the plan is to lower them 15% by 2015. One way to achieve this is, for example, network partnerships provided, if this is possible under the scope of licensing terms. On the other hand, T-Mobile Austria wants to enhance its image as a responsible "Corporate Citizen": "We employ around 1,400 people in Austria and we provide the service of a central infrastructure for the information society with T-Mobile and tele.ring. As a result, we also have to convince legislators that they also have to create the best possible framework conditions for us to carry out these tasks," said Bierwirth.