Last week, Telekom boss Tim Höttges was once again at T-Mobile in the United States and, as he says, experienced the “common spirit”.

Indeed, the transatlantic interaction seems to be working well at the moment.

The subsidiary presented decent results, the parent company in Bonn followed suit.

At the end of July, America boss Mike Sievert raised the bar, and now Deutsche Telekom has raised its business forecast for the second time this year.

Helmut Bünder

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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Because things are not going badly for the group in Germany and in most European markets either. But by far the largest flywheel is America, where T-Mobile is chasing away the former top dog AT&T and Verizon in droves. Around 2.5 million Americans switched to the US offshoot in the first half of the year alone, and Telekom makes almost two thirds of group sales and operating profit across the Atlantic. Investors reacted enthusiastically to the forecast. The share gained 3 percent and reached its highest level since 2001 at almost 18.50 euros.

“We can now become number one in the all-important US market.

This is a unique opportunity, ”said Höttges when he presented the interim report.

With the takeover of Voicestream, Telekom entered the market at the turn of the millennium - and initially had a difficult time there.

Höttges' predecessor René Obermann tried to sell the business, but failed because of the antitrust authorities.

Then Höttges flipped the switch.

"Kingmaker" for consolidation

Under his America governor John Legere and with a lot of money from Bonn behind him, T-Mobile blossomed into an agile challenger who mixed up the market and positioned itself as the “kingmaker” for market consolidation.

That followed after much back and forth through the merger with the smaller competitor Sprint in the spring of last year.

The economies of scale and savings through the merger with the subsidiary of the Japanese Softbank group are paying off faster than expected. Synergies of up to $ 3.1 billion are expected this year alone. In total, T-Mobile now supplies 105 million cell phone customers in the United States - more than in Germany and all European markets combined. And is the front runner in 5G expansion in America. The company can reach more people with the new wireless standard than AT&T and Verizon put together, said Höttges.

The rise in the Champions League, however, has a downside: Debts have also increased and in relation to operating profit are still beyond the self-imposed upper limit.

At the same time, Telekom will have to mobilize billions more in the coming years to buy additional shares: it currently holds 43 percent of the shares in T-Mobile US and owes its dominant role only to a voting rights agreement with Softbank.

Goal "technology leadership"

CFO Christian Illek reports initial successes here.

Liabilities fell slightly in the first half of the year, and the major rating agencies all improved their ratings for T-Mobile by a tick.

At the same time, the group is promoting the sale of the mobile communications business in the Netherlands.

The multi-billion dollar radio tower company is also in the shop window.

The group also needs the financial leeway in Europe and on the home market for the expensive network expansion from 5G to fiber optics: the goal is "technology leadership", said Höttges.

"That is why we are investing again at a record level in our infrastructure in 2021."

In Germany, Telekom wants to supply 1.2 million households with fiber optic Internet, and from 2024 onwards, as many as 2.5 million households are to be added annually.

The broadband business ran solidly with 80,000 new customers per quarter, and Telekom also grew in German mobile communications, but not with the same rate as in America.

The problem child remains the business customer division, for whose restructuring thousands of jobs are being cut.

The planned realignment of T-Systems towards cloud services is only progressing slowly and is not enough to compensate for the dwindling business.

Quarterly sales therefore fell by 5.5 percent to just 1.1 billion euros.

Telekom consoles itself with the fact that incoming orders have risen by around a quarter.