T-Mobile Austria successfully completed its 2002 business year and bolstered its position as trailblazer on the Austrian market. It was the most eventful and exciting year in the company's history, and this was above all due to the brand migration from max.mobil to T-Mobile Austria, which strengthened the position of the company.
By the end of 2002 more than two million satisfied customers relied on the innovative network operator. "At the beginning of 2002 we adjusted our figures for subscribers by exempting inactive prepaid customers; this difference was balanced out during the course of the year by new contract customers. Consequently the proportion of contract customers increased continually, leading to a considerably improved structure", explained Dr. Georg Pölzl, CEO at T-Mobile Austria.
T-Mobile Austria's churn rate, which is extremely low compared to its European and Austrian competitors, confirmed the positive participant development. Directly after the brand migration it became clear that customers acknowledged the advantages of the internationalization of the company: one month after the migration T-Mobile Austria experienced the lowest loss of customers in its history. At the same time 60% of Austrians already knew the brand. By the end of 2002 T-Mobile Austria had an awareness level (aided recall) of 95% and hence achieved the same high level that max.mobil. had secured after five years.
Sales in the company's core business rose from 861.7 million euros in 2001 to 889.3 million euros in 2002. The biggest percentage increase was 40 % - for data communication. This is reflected in the ARPU, the average revenue per user and month. It rose from 28 euros in 2001 to 30 euros in 2002, with the proportion of data up by 30% here. This is above all thanks to the innovative offer and the fastest GPRS network in Austria. The MMS service, which was started in July 2002, developed particularly positively. In addition T-Mobile Austria is the only Austrian network operator offering MMS and GPRS roaming in a total of 24 countries throughout the world. Objective tests have also shown that T-Mobile Austria has the most stable and secure GPRS network on the Austrian market. Another positive feature of the company is its international t-zones portal, with its WLAN service as well as terminal device options, such as the T-Mobile MDA. The increase in the proportion of data in its sales is also particularly thanks to the success of the business options of T-Mobile Austria. The company is still the leading provider of VPN and IP-VPN, and is still the trailblazer with its mobile office solutions.
Thanks to the increase in sales and efficiency, the EBITDA also developed even better than expected. With 318.4 million euros of EBITDA in 2002 in the core business (35.8% margin) compared to 249.0 million euros (28.9% margin) in the previous year, this key indicator, which is particularly important in mobile telephony, increased by 28%. "In addition to the higher sales, this is above all thanks to a considerable cost reduction and the related boost in efficiency", explained Pölzl. The company primarily generated cost advantages through integration in the international group: T-Mobile Austria was able to achieve considerable savings, not only in purchasing but also in development costs for products and services. "We have concentrated on improving efficiency while retaining the same high quality. Our service quality, for instance, is considerably better than the benchmark in the industry and better than the industry standard", added Pölzl.
Approximately a third of the 159 million euros of investments made in 2002 were for preparing for UMTS. T-Mobile Austria's commercial launch of its UMTS offer will be in the third quarter of 2003. Up to now the company has invested about 2 billion euros in Austria. At the end of 2002 the company employed 2,653 people in its core business, 809 of these as part-time staff. Within the framework of it
