The EWE telecommunications group: A strong partner in the region

The telecommunications companies in the EWE Group are all-round service providers that offer their private and business customers everything they need when it comes to landline, internet, mobile phone and TV services, thus ensuring that there is full competition in telecommunications within the region. The foundation for this lies beneath the ground – in the company’s own powerful telecommunications network, which is currently more than 30,000 km long and is continuously being expanded. Since the telecommunications market was liberalised in early 1998, the telecommunications group has been successful in increasing its market shares. Overall EWE TEL GmbH, with its brands and subsidiaries, and htp in Hanover (EWE stake of 50%) supply well over 700,000 customers.

The EWE telecommunications branch is well equipped to deal with the current and future challenges posed by the telecommunications market. The tendency towards bundled products that combine internet, landline and mobile phone services continues unabated. Added to this are the increasing needs of the energy economy for high-performance communications technology: Integrating the steadily rising percentage of renewable energies into the energy supply of the future will require the creation of “smart grids” all over Germany in the coming years, i.e. intelligent networks that efficiently link the oftentimes decentralised producers, storage facilities and consumers. The telecommunications group therefore relies on close cooperation within the EWE Group. EWE trio is the first product bundle to combine energy and telecommunications. In the next few years this interlinking will increase as markets converge. All of this requires bandwidth.

There are also signs of a growth trend in the already partially saturated DSL market. This is to some extent due to the broadband campaign launched by the German federal government to eliminate what are known as white areas. As a result of new media and services such as TV via broadband, there is rising demand for bigger and bigger bandwidths in internet connections. EWE TEL GmbH is bringing new technologies like VDSL (“very-high-bitrate digital subscriber line”) and direct fibre optic connections (“FTTH – fibre to the home”) to areas outside of population centres too.

In order to remain successful in the highly competitive telecommunications market in the future, the EWE telecommunications group’s strategy is to market itself as an all-round telecommunications service provider with energy expertise that offers a first-class service, regional proximity and reliable products. As well as expanding the company’s own network infrastructure further, this strategy includes the development of new (bundled) products with unique regional features and an intelligent carrier and wholesale business.

EWE supplies over 700,000 customers with telecommunication products such as landline and mobile telephony, highspeed internet and online-TV.