T-Mobile and Orange Austria have agreed to jointly use their existing 3G infrastructure in rural areas.
The two companies have been increasing cooperation since last year, when they completed the merger of their UK subsidiaries to form Everything…
T-Mobile and Orange Austria have agreed to jointly use their existing 3G infrastructure in rural areas.
The two companies have been increasing cooperation since last year, when they completed the merger of their UK subsidiaries to form Everything Everywhere. Earlier this year they announced joint infrastructure plans in Poland and additional partnerships could be sealed in Romania and Slovakia.
Under the agreement, a number of existing 3G stations located in rural areas will be mutually used by both operators with a view to increasing network coverage for their customers and improving capacity. Each operator will contribute several hundreds of stations, but spectrum will not be used jointly.
Robert Chvatal, CEO of T-Mobile Austria, said: “Mobile data volumes are growing constantly. Only last year, mobile data traffic within the T-Mobile network increased by more than one third to about 4,300 terabyte of data. The boom, above all in the mobile broadband segment, requires continuous network roll-out. With this network cooperation, we will mutually use several hundred mobile telephony stations and thus further promote 3G coverage in all of Austria, with particular emphasis on rural areas.” Orange CEO Michael Krammer said: “Smartphone & Co are booming. Seven in ten new Orange customers opted for a smartphone already in 2010. This results in mobile telephony networks being used more intensively. Providing customers with high network quality and broadband wherever they are and whenever they want to use their smartphone, requires constant network investment. This network partnership creates an added value for more than 6 million mobile telephony customers in Austria by expanding coverage and at the same time saves each operator about 30 million euro respectively.”
