8 August 2007

For years, Germans have moaned about the poor service provided by the formerly state-run Deutsche Telekom. These days, another voice has joined the chorus – that of the fashion model whose face graces the company’s posters around the country.

The model, Dora, is complaining that she has waited for three months for the company to install her new phone line, she told the tabloid, Bild. She said she will wait one more week before opting for another provider. Dora has been the face of a new ad campaign for the company’s high-speed Internet connection.

Waits of months for new service are not uncommon with Deutsche Telekom. And getting a response from the comany is notoriously difficult –and expensive.

What management says:
With the ongoing decay in domestic revenue, Deutsche Telekom has been shoring up defenses at home while implementing a fast-moving offense abroad. Stiff competition and a crushing regulatory environment in Germany led to a revenue decline of 5.1% there last quarter. Stating the obvious, CEO Rene Obermann acknowledged that "we are fully aware that here in Germany we are exposed to considerable competitive pressure." According to the company, the way out of the mess "is to improve the company’s competitive standing" domestically. Hmm, OK.

A new survey from T-Mobile suggests that the UK population is sitting on 52.3 million old phones, with a combined value of £1.1bn, and they’ve kindly offered to take them off our hands too.

They go on to suggest that these phones could be used to pay for 39,000 nurses, or to buy the entire Chelsea football squad nearly four times over, though how nurses would feel about being paid in old phones isn’t clear.

We wanted to give you a heads-up on a new, experimental feature we’ll be trying out on the Google News home page. Starting this week, we’ll be displaying reader comments on stories in Google News, but with a bit of a twist…