Telefonica Deutschland will begin combining its mobile networks with those of E-Plus in the first quarter of 2016, the telco announced this week.
Telefonica Deutschland completed its takeover of E-Plus in October 2014. While it has implemented national roaming between their respective 3G networks, it has otherwise continued to operate with two separate networks.
That finally looks set to change though. Telefonica said it will start by integrating E-Plus’ GSM and UMTS networks in the first quarter of next year, followed by LTE by mid-2016.
"Following the successful introduction of national roaming, the integration of the mobile networks is the next key step on the road to even better and denser network coverage," said Markus Haas, COO of Telefónica Deutschland, in a statement on Tuesday.
The telco will initially target densely-populated urban areas in a bid to quickly get as many subscribers as possible up and running on its unified infrastructure. It aims to cover 60% of the population in the first 12 months.
The network integration will take five years in total to complete, and is expected to optimise the distribution of Telefonica Deutschland’s base stations.
"We’re talking about a major technical project that’s unique in Europe and will contribute as expected to the synergies we have promised the market," Haas said.
