Deutsche Telekom Research Articles

A case study on the development of the German Corona-Warn-App

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed daily life and required fast responses to new situations, such as restricted public life. A major means to limit infections have been contact-tracing apps that inform an individual about a potential infection, helping to initiate countermeasures faster. While different tracing apps have been compared technologically, we are not aware of studies providing insights into their development processes during the pandemic emergency situation. To address this gap, we report an exploratory case study on how the German open-source Corona-Warn-App has been developed at SAP SE—and how other organizations (e.g., Deutsche Telekom AG), researchers, and individual developers contributed. We elicited data on the process, practices, and challenges by interviewing six developers at SAP SE, analyzing documentation, and discussing our data with an expert on the app’s development. Overall, we provide insights into how the development process of the Corona-Warn-App differed from other projects at SAP SE (e.g., testing), discuss the causes (i.e., public interest causing researchers to perform tests), and study the consequences (i.e., emergency tickets by researchers). Our findings can guide organizations when developing software in similar emergency situations (e.g., pandemics) in which reliable software needs to be developed within a short period of time.

Human-centered AI through employee participation.

This article examines the role of employee participation in AI implementation, focusing on a case study from the German telecommunications sector. Theoretical discussions highlight concepts of employee participation and workplace democracy, emphasizing the normative basis for human-centered AI in Europe. The empirical analysis of the case study demonstrates social practices of human-centered AI and the importance of employee representatives and labor policies in sustainable technology. The contribution is structured into two main parts: first, discussing sociological concepts of employee participation and summarizing the role of works councils in shaping digital technology implementation. Second, focusing on a case study of AI regulations at Deutsche Telekom, highlighting the significant effects of employee participation and co-determination by the group works council in promoting socially sustainable AI implementation which is done via qualitative case analysis. The article highlights the significance of participation and negotiations and gives an example for social partnership relations in AI implementations.

A cloud-based data processing and visualization pipeline for the fibre roll-out in Germany

To support the roll-out of fibre broadband Internet in Germany, Deutsche Telekom has set itself the goal of connecting more than 2.5 million households per year to FTTH (Fibre to the Home). However, planning and approval processes have been very complex and time-consuming in the past due to high communication overhead between stakeholders, missing automation, and lack of information about planning areas. Telekom addresses this problem by collecting large amounts of geospatial data (3D point clouds and 360°panorama images), which can be used to automatically find suitable routes for fibre optic lines, to determine possible locations for distribution cabinets, as well as to build a 3D visualization helping to create detailed plans and to present them to decision makers. This speeds up planning tremendously, but processing this data and creating the visualization in a short time requires automation. In this systems paper, we present a data processing platform that we have built and operated together with Telekom over the course of the last six and a half years. The platform makes use of the cloud to manage Big Data in a scalable and elastic manner. It builds upon research results from us, specifically a scientific workflow management system to automate processing, as well as Fibre3D, a web-based tool that planners can use to display the processed data and to perform fine-planning. Besides the technological aspects, this paper also describes a practical use case that shows how the platform and Fibre3D help Telekom speed up the planning and approval process. We also summarize lessons learned and give recommendations for the design of systems similar to ours. With the presented technology, Telekom has been able to already connect more than 8 million households to FTTH and expects to even improve on this in the future. We consider our collaboration, therefore, an example of how well knowledge and technology transfer between research and industry can work, and, at the same time, what impact it can have on society.

The Analysis of the Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance of Company

Corporate SCorporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been forming very dynamically and intensively for several decades. The rapid development, as well as the relatively large scope of this concept, which is cross-sectionally related to a number of different social disciplines, so far causes a very significant terminological inconsistency. The paper focuses on the relationship between CSR and the financial performance of companies, or on the positive consequences of applying the concept of CSR in business on the example of a selected company Deutsche Telekom AG, which applies CSR in its business and which achieves positive results not only from this point of view, but also from the point of view of company profitability. When analyzing the company from the point of view of the global market, it quantitatively monitors the impact of the measured indicators on the profitability of total assets (ROA) and on net profit, by testing the basic assumptions made on the classical linear regression model. The main goal of the paper was to find out the impact of CSR on the financial results of the parent company Deutsche Telekom AG for the period 2001-2021 and to find the relationship between CSR and economic benefits.

Rumänische Suffixnamen auf -ean(u) in Deutschland

This study aims to document Romanian surnames in Germany derived with the suffix -ean(u), starting from the telephone database of Deutsche Telekom from 2005. The morphological contrast between the variants that take an article and the ones that do not shows their similar distribution on the map, specifically in southern and western Germany, in the states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen and North Rhine-Westphalia, in the areas of important industrial and university centres such as Munich, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Mannheim and Frankfurt. This picture of the spread of Romanian surnames derived with the suffix -ean(u) is similar to that of the surnames ending in -escu, as well as to that of other foreign surnames, such as the Turkish, Italian, Portuguese or Greek ones, which proves the settlement of immigrants in the same highly industrialized areas of Germany. The most frequent surnames ending in -ean(u) in Germany are Muntean(u) (88+80), Ardelean(u) (65+14), Mărginean (23), Ungurean(u) (21+31), C(î|â)mpean(u) (18+11), Oltean(u) (12+22). Historically, the Romanian names derived with the suffix -ean(u) appear in the 15th century (e.g. Coman Făgărășanul 1437–1446), are derived from toponyms and indicate the place of origin of the first named. The onomastic suffix -ean(u), of Slavic origin, is present in all historical Romanian provinces, theform -ean, with no article, being much more frequent in Transylvania.

Post-Acquisition Management in Transitional Economies: Empirical Analysis of Acquired Company in Telecommunication Industry

Abstract Growing globalization has created a business environment that encourages companies to internationalize through international acquisitions. The growth in the number and value of international acquisitions in the previous period has increased the number of studies that analyze this phenomenon from different standpoints. Research has shown that the success rate of international acquisitions is relatively low. Poor management of post-acquisition changes, which is particularly complex in transition economies, is cited as the main obstacle in creating value after acquisitions. The aim of the paper is to investigate the factors that contribute to the successful management of post-acquisition changes. The research is based on the case study of the acquisition of Montenegro Telekom by Deutsche Telekom. Data is obtained through employee surveys and interviews with expatriates engaged in acquisitions in transition economies. The research shows that successful management of post-acquisition changes requires change of the corporate culture in the short term and active knowledge transfer support from the parent to the target. Changes in corporate culture aim to encourage innovation among employees and willingness to accept a new business model and process. At the same time, knowledge transfer occurs through intensive employee training on the domestic market, abroad and through online courses and hiring expatriate managers. It turns out that these two processes are complementary and must be implemented simultaneously.

1.71 Tb/s Single-Channel and 56.51 Tb/s DWDM Transmission Over 96.5 km Field-Deployed SSMF

We report an industry leading optical dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) field trial with line rates per channel <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ge 1.66$ </tex-math></inline-formula> Tb/s using 130 GBaud dual-polarization probabilistic constellation shaping 256-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-PCS256QAM) in a high capacity data center interconnect (DCI) scenario. This research trial was performed on 96.5 km of field-deployed standard single mode G.652 fiber infrastructure of Deutsche Telekom in Germany employing Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)-only amplification. A total of 34 channels were transmitted with 150 GHz spacing for a total fiber capacity of 56.51 Tb/s and a spectral efficiency higher than 11bit/s/Hz. In the single-channel transmission scenario 1.71 Tb/s was achieved over the same link. In addition, we successfully demonstrate record net bitrates of 1.88 Tb/s in back-to-back (B2B) using 130 GBaud DP-PCS400QAM.

Benchmark Performance of Digital QKD Platform Using Quantum Permutation Pad

Quantum permutation pad or QPP is a set of quantum permutation gates. QPP has been demonstrated for quantum secure encryption in both classical and quantum computing systems recently, even at a noisy 5-qubit IBMQ systems. In a classical computing system, QPP encryption is implemented as a permutation gate matrix multiplication with information state vectors. In a quantum computing system, QPP is compiled into a quantum encryption circuit in a native quantum computer and encryption is performed through QPP circuit. Leveraging its quantum mechanical characteristics, we report a digital QKD or D-QKD platform using QPP as a quantum mechanical algorithm implemented in classical systems to distribute quantum entropy, generated from physical quantum random number generators or QRNG, and quantum key over the internet. D-QKD interfaces have been developed to support the photonic QKD standard ETSI-014. This makes any systems with ETSI QKD standards compatible with D-QKD. D-QKD offers point-to-point quantum entropy and quantum key distributions as well as point-to-multi-points quantum key synchronizations with speeds 1000x faster than photonic QKD. This paper reports benchmark performance tests and randomness quality tests for pure quantum entropy generated by a QRNG and expanded entropy using the QPP protocol. The work has been funded by the PlanQK <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> project and deployed within the OpenQKD <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> testbed Berlin, operated by Deutsche Telekom.

Combatting internet time shifters

Combatting internet time shifters Arguably, the internet’s biggest security hole is the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which establishes routes between the organisational networks that make up the internet (e.g. Google, Facebook, Bank of England, Deutsche Telekom, AT&amp;T). The insecurity of the internet’s routing system is constantly exploited to steal, monitor, and tamper with data traffic. Yet, despite many years of Herculean efforts, internet routing security remains a distant dream. The goal of the SIREN project is to propose and investigate novel paradigms for closing this security hole.

The Essential Facilities Doctrine and the Bronner Judgment Clarified: Case C-165/19 P Slovak Telekom v Commission

Judgment of 25 March 2021 in Case C-165/19 P Slovak Telekom v Commission, EU:C:2021:239. The Court confirmed that dominant companies might be obliged to supply an input to a rival only where that input is indispensable to compete in the downstream market, but held that a lower standard applies if a dominant company already supplies the input or is subject to a regulatory obligation to do so. On 25 March 2021, the Court of Justice dismissed the appeals submitted by Slovak Telekom (‘ST’) and Deutsche Telekom against a General Court judgment concerning the Commission’s decision finding that ST abused its dominant position (Case T-851/14 Slovak Telekom v Commission, EU:T:2018:929). On 15 October 2014, the Commission adopted a decision finding that ST, the Slovak incumbent telecommunications operator, abused its dominant position by engaging in a range of practices designed to restrict access to ST’s local loop...

The Clash Over 5G's First Mile: The wireless industry is divided on Open RAN's goal to make network components interoperable

When all is said and done, 5G will cost almost US $1 trillion to deploy over the next half decade. That enormous expense will be borne mostly by network operators, companies like AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, and dozens more around the world that provide cellular service to their customers. Facing such an immense cost, these operators asked a very reasonable question: How can we make this cheaper and more flexible?

Internationalization Patterns of European Mobile Network Operators

The mobile communication industry is one of the most important industries, because it contributes almost five percent to the global GDP and provides the platform for most technological innovations like internet of things (IoT) or digitalization. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple-case study is to explore the internationalization patterns of the four major European mobile network operators (MNO) Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone, and Telefonica using the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model (UIPM) and the cultural, administrative, geographical, and economic distance (CAGE) distance framework as conceptual frameworks. The findings suggest that European MNOs opt for an active market entry strategy while using a “buy” market entry form to benefit from business opportunities in foreign markets with a high administrative and political proximity and identified government ownership as an impact factor on the speed of internationalization. These findings confirm and add to the current research about MNO’s internationalization patterns and offer important insights for practitioners. There is a need for additional research with other case study firms to replicate the research findings and quantitative methods to strengthen their generalizability.

Optimism Gone Bad? The Persistent Effects of Traumatic Experiences on Investment Decisions

Do memories of highly emotional stock market crashes permanently affect the investment decisions of households? The Initial Public Offerings of Deutsche Telekom during 1996- 2000 provide an optimal base to address this question, as it is known for its emotional character and is reputedly “the last time Germans invested in stocks.” Using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) household survey data, I show that having experienced this event leads to persistently lower stock market participation in the future. In addition, this effect is greater for households that had directly invested in Telekom shares, those being more likely to have high emotional experiences. Finally, I also show that such traumatic experiences on investment decisions have intergenerational consequences, significantly affecting how the next generation invests in the financial market.

How a Corporate Influencer Co-creates Brand Meaning: The Case of Pawel Dillinger from Deutsche Telekom

Research on the internal anchorage of a brand constitutes an important building block of the brand management discipline. Considering this, the increasing importance of a positive overall brand experience along all brand touch points has resulted in a parallel increase in the importance of how employees can live the brand. Corporate influencers, an area of study that is to date underresearched, could be a vehicle to authentically bring a brand’s identity closer not only to customers but also to employees. Therefore, our research focuses on the question of how a corporate influencer expresses the positioning of a corporate brand to internal audiences. To gain a deeper understanding of the instruments and tactics of an impactful corporate influencer, we chose an in-depth case study approach. We selected Pawel Dillinger, an informal corporate influencer of the German telecommunication brand Deutsche Telekom, and deeply analyzed his use of an internal social media platform to promote the corporate brand. Our research presents content categories and communication styles, underpins the role of authenticity in internal brand management, and illustrates how a brand ambassador contributes to the enacting of the values of a corporate brand. We do so by offering seven propositions characterizing the communication habits of a corporate influencer.

Fiber-Based UTC Dissemination Supporting 5G Telecommunications Networks

Any mobile telecommunications network requires syntonization among its various elements. The need to exploit the available radio spectrum efficiently and providing new kinds of services render frequency syntonization insufficient. Phase and time-of-day synchronization will be necessary in the future. Thus, network operators are searching for efficient and reliable synchronization architectures. In this article, an example of such an architecture, applicable to fifth generation mobile networks, is presented, based on the requirements published in the latest ITU-T Recommendations. For supervision of the performance of the synchronization network, the technology of optical time transfer (OTT) is proposed, which allows dissemination of an accurate timescale such as a UTC realization to selected nodes of a coherent network primary reference time clock. The OTT realized so far and its current and future role in the network of Deutsche Telekom are discussed, and representative measurement results are shown.

The American Advantage in Civil Procedure? An Autopsy of the Deutsche Telekom Litigation

This article examines the influence of civil procedure on the legal framework that supports securities markets in the U.S. and in Germany, two very different legal systems. It does so by way of comparing parallel shareholder actions against Deutsche Telekom for securities disclosure violations arising out of the same facts and allegations – the first set of actions filed in federal district court in Manhattan, the second filed in district court in Frankfurt, Germany.Deutsche Telekom was accused in both actions of misrepresenting the value of its real-estate holdings in its financial disclosures and for failing to disclose negotiations for the acquisition of the U.S. Company VoiceStream in its July 2000 offering prospectus.But the cases proceeded very differently and produced dramatically different outcomes. Within five years, and after full discovery, the U.S. class action plaintiffs negotiated a $120 million settlement with the Deutsche Telekom defendants. Meanwhile, the parallel claims by German shareholders, the first of which were filed in 2001, were ultimately dismissed by the German courts in 2012. Until now the German shareholders have received nothing, even after the German Bundestag had adopted a new and unprecedented aggregate litigation mechanism in late 2004 (dubbed “the Deutsche Telekom law”) to afford thousands of complaining German shareholders a reasonable mechanism for pursuing a just and speedier resolution of their claims against the DT defendants.The article also engages claims about the importance of litigation discovery for corporate and securities laws advanced by Michael Halberstam and Erica Gorga in Litigation Discovery and Corporate Governance: The Missing Story About “The Genius of American Corporate Law” 63 Emory Law Review 1383 (2014).

Modeling EDFA Gain Ripple and Filter Penalties With Machine Learning for Accurate QoT Estimation

For reliable and efficient network planning and operation, accurate estimation of Quality of Transmission (QoT) before establishing or reconfiguring the connection is necessary. In optical networks, a design margin is generally included in a QoT estimation tool (Qtool) to account for modeling and parameter inaccuracies, ensuring the acceptable performance. In this article, we use monitoring information from an operating network combined with supervised machine learning (ML) techniques to understand the network conditions. In particular, we model the penalties generated due to i) Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) gain ripple effect, and ii) filter spectral shape uncertainties at Reconfigurable Optical Add and Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) nodes. Enhancing the Qtool with the proposed ML regression models yields estimates for new or reconfigured connections that account for these two effects, resulting in more accurate QoT estimation and a reduced design margin. We initially propose two supervised ML regression models, implemented with Support Vector Machine Regression (SVMR), to estimate the individual penalties of the two effects and then a combined model. On Deutsche Telekom (DT) network topology with 12 nodes and 40 bidirectional links, we achieve a design margin reduction of ~1 dB for new connection requests.

The effects of strategy and institutions on value creation and appropriation in firms: A longitudinal study of three telecom companies

AbstractResearch SummaryStrategic management has come to pay more attention to value creation and appropriation (VCA) among the firm's stakeholders, including customers, capital owners, and employees. Existing research has conceptualized this as a strategic choice bounded by the bargaining power of each stakeholder group, which, we argue, risks misattributing outcomes by neglecting structural constraints. Instead, these dynamics need to be understood within the wider institutional context shaping the behavior of managers and stakeholders. Using a question‐driven mixed‐methods approach, we investigate the evolution of VCA in three telecom companies located in different institutional systems—British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, and Telecom Italia. Our findings suggest that national institutional and firm strategic effects must be considered together to understand patterns of VCA among stakeholders.Managerial SummaryUsing an emerging methodology, we quantify how three telecom firms (British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, and Telecom Italia) have created and distributed economic value since privatization. Our focus is on explaining the extent to which various stakeholders—employees, customers, capital owners, and government—were able to appropriate the value created by the firms. Some similarities are found across the three companies, but we also found major differences. To explain patterns, we bring together (a) strategic decision making by managers within the firm and (b) constraints imposed by institutions outside the firm. We find both to be important, interlinked drivers of distributional patterns. The article gives managers and stakeholders a means to understand major changes and determinants of value creation and distribution.

Return of the Inconsistent Application of the ‘Essential Security Interest’ Clause in Investment Treaty Arbitration: CC/Devas v India and Deutsche Telekom v India

Abstract Investment treaty arbitration is currently undergoing a backlash, precipitated in large measure by the problem of inconsistency in investment awards. Inconsistent reasoning and decisions have proved particularly problematic when different shareholders of an affected company pursue claims for reflective loss before different tribunals concerning the same dispute. This article examines two recent investment treaty cases—CC/Devas v India and Deutsche Telekom v India—that are a critical example of this very real problem. The first part of this article assesses the inconsistent interpretation and application of essential security interest clauses in those cases. As this article shows, the disagreement between the tribunals is explained by contradictory assessments of the same facts. The second part critically evaluates the impact of the two cases on the development of the precise criteria for successfully invoking an essential security interest clause. Such clauses comprise two elements: (i) the existence of such an interest; and (ii) the nexus between the interest and the measure adopted. These elements have hitherto been subject to inconsistent interpretations, leaving the exact contours of such clauses unclear. This article uncovers which security interests can qualify as ‘essential’ interests, focusing particularly on the question whether such an interest encompasses protection of strategic resources for military and non-military use. It also examines the meaning of the nexus requirement of ‘necessary’, and explores the difference(s) between the nexus requirements of ‘directed to’ and ‘necessary’.

Slovak Telekom/Deutsche Telekom AG: The Interplay Between EU Competition Law and Sector Specific Rules in the Electronic Communications Sector

Abstract Case T-827/14, Deutsche Telekom AG v Commission, and Case T-851/14 Slovak Telekom a.s. v Commission, Judgments of 13 December 2018. Granting access to a product or service, which is required under sector specific regulation, on unfair, unreasonably complicated or delayed terms amounts to constructive refusal to supply, without the need to demonstrate that the regulated access product or service is an indispensable input. In addition, a margin squeeze test, to assess whether the difference between wholesale and retail prices is negative, should be carried out on a year-by-year basis, and not on a multi-period basis. Finally, when a parent is jointly and severally liable for anti-competitive conduct of its subsidiary, the liability of the parent can exceed that of the subsidiary only if it reflects the parent’s individual conduct in the infringement at issue.