Debitel AG was one of the largest

mobile telephone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

services providers in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, offering a wide range of telecommunication products – mobile and land-line telephony as well internet services. At its peak, the business commanded a 47% market share of the mobile service provider market in Germany (its largest market) with 12.4% of the overall mobile telephone market . The company boasted over 10.2 million customers of which 8.3 million were resident in Germany. The company was founded in 1991 by Debis, a subsidiary of German car maker

Daimler Benz The Mercedes-Benz Group Aktiengesellschaft, AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German Multinational corporation, multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It ...

before being sold in 2004 to a German holding company of Swiss telecommunications giant

Swisscom Swisscom AG is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Its headquarters are located in Ittigen near Bern. The Swiss government owns 51.0 percent of Swisscom AG. According to its own published data, Swisscom holds a market share of 56 ...

Takeovers and mergers

In June 2004,

Permira Permira is a global investment firm. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with assets under management of €60+ billion. The Permira funds have made approximately 300 private equity investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Ser ...

, an international

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

firm, acquired

's 95% stake in Debitel. In 2006 it was announced that Debitel would merge with _dug telecom AG, a German telecommunications company with 430 outlets of its own which had been founded in 1993 as a mobile telephone direct sales company called ‘Dittrich und Grella’. Including the 1100 employees of _dug, by March 2008 the merged company employed 4000 people. In October 2008 the company owned 500 outlets in Germany, marketing what are known in Germany as 'tariff-based' products under the Debitel brand on behalf of network providers such as

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...

E-Plus E-Plus was a mobile telecommunications operator in Germany. With more than 25 million subscribers, E-Plus was the third largest mobile operator in Germany, until the takeover from Telefónica Germany in October, 2014. Ownership E-Plus was ...

and O₂. debitel also sold land-line services at this time for

Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (; short form often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a German telecommunications company that is headquartered in Bonn and is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. Deutsche Telekom was ...

's T-Home brand,

Arcor Arcor is an Argentine confectionery company. Arcor may also refer to: * Arcor (telecommunications), a German telecommunications company * Arcore (Lombard: ''Arcor''), a municipality in Lombardy, Italy See also

* ARCore, a software development ...

, O₂ DSL, Alice (a German brand owned by

Telecom Italia Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixe ...

) and

Freenet Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...

. In July 2007 Debitel was granted permission by the

EU Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

to take over

Elmshorn Elmshorn (; nds, Elmshoorn) is a town in the district of Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is 30 km north of Hamburg on the small river Krückau, a tributary of the Elbe, and with about 50,000 inhabitants is the sixth-largest t ...

-based telecommunications company Talkline. Debitel subsequently consolidated the administration of the merged companies and downsized human resources leading to the loss of 700 jobs at Talkline and the announcement that Talkline operations would close entirely by 2010. In April 2008, Freenet AG announced it would purchase Debitel from

including all liabilities for approx. 1.6 billion euros.German press release dated 27.04.2008

References

{{reflist Mobile phone companies of Germany Companies based in Stuttgart Telecommunications companies established in 1991 German companies established in 1991 2004 mergers and acquisitions 2008 mergers and acquisitions Telecommunications companies disestablished in 2008 2008 disestablishments in Germany