Deutsche Telekom earmarked €23.5B ($27B) for the next five years for its German landline and mobile networks, small cells and the digitalization of infrastructure, CEO Timotheus Hoettges said on Sunday in an interview during the Digital Life Design conference., according to Bloomberg's report.
The announcement, ahead of Deutsche's longer-term financial plan set to be unveiled at an investor meeting next month is stiffen competition in the German telco market, especially against its homeground rivals, Telefonica and Vodafone. Bloomberg's report said that Vodafone's statement in November indicated that the company will be reducing outlays. The report quoted Vodafone's CEO Vittorio Colao as saying that upon completion of Vodafone's (POUND)19 billion global network upgrade program dubbed Project Spring in 2016, the company will start cutting back on spending.
The announcement by Deutsche Telekom will be a big boost for network equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Networks, ZTE and Huawei Technologies.
Timotheus Hoettges, CEO, Deutsche Telekom
We can’t start investing and then suddenly stop. Building networks is what we know how to do best - - we’ll leave making apps and creating services to others.
