T-Online

T-Online, a former subsidiary and now business unit of Deutsche Telekom, is the biggest internet service provider in Germany. It evolved out of the proprietary German Bildschirmtext (BTX) information service in 1995. The T-Online brand is also used in Hungary, Austria and Switzerland.

T-Online France is the French subsidiary of T-Online International AG, Deutsche Telekom's internet arm and has about 1 million registered customers and 2,000 points of sale in convenience stores and supermarkets. Its portal receives more than 30 million visits and 213 million pages are viewed per month. T-Online had an estimated 13.4 million customers in Europe in the first quarter of 2004 and a sales volume of about 1.58 billion euro in 2002; the business unit, which is based in Darmstadt, has about 2600 employees, of which 2000 are located in Germany.

History

In 1995 Deutsche Telekom renamed the BTX service as "T-Online". On Spring 2000 T-Online becomes the first major ISP in Germany to offer a flat-rate dialup 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 connections at the same price as for analog service. On Spring 2001: T-Online announced the demise of the flat-rate dialup plan but offered a flat-rate DSL plan in its place.