t-online.de is a German

news portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...

, owned and published by digital multi-channel media company Ströer. It reaches over 179 million visits per month coming from 29 million unique visitors. The editorial team is located in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

History

In 1995

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 ...

renamed the ''

Bildschirmtext Bildschirmtext (German "screen text", abbrev. Btx or BTX) was an online videotex system launched in West Germany in 1983 by the Deutsche Bundespost, the (West) German postal service. Btx originally required special hardware (it was based on ...

'' (BTX) service as "T-Online". In Spring 2000, T-Online became the first major

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

in Germany to offer a flat-rate

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telep ...

plan for consumers. This was important because local telephone calls in Germany, including dialup access to ISPs, were not offered on a flat price per call (i.e., unlimited) basis. The flat-rate service was also offered to customers with

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work ...

connections at the same price as for analog service. In spring 2001, T-Online announced the demise of the flat-rate dialup plan but offered a flat-rate

DSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric dig ...

plan in its place. Deutsche Telekom (T-Online) was the monopoly

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

(ISP) for the German Internet until its

privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

in 1995, and the dominant ISP thereafter. Until the 21st century, Deutsche Telekom controlled almost all Internet access by individuals and small businesses in Germany. The website t-online.de was taken over by digital multi-channel media company Ströer in 2015. In addition to acquiring a major news site, the synergy enables Ströer to publish T-Online editorial content via a network of public video screens in shopping malls as well as train and subway stations.

References

External links

*{{Official, http://www.t-online.de/ Deutsche Telekom Internet service providers of Germany Companies based in Berlin 1995 establishments in Germany German companies established in 1995 Web portals