Quantum leap with high-speed data volume:

The new O₂ Free pricing portfolio has put an end to all compromises in digital life: O₂ customers now get more high-speed data volume than ever before¹⁾. With it firm focus on extra-large data packages, Telefónica Deutschland is setting a new standard for mobile freedom. Watching a whole season of a favourite series in HD on a smartphone, following all Champions League matches on the move with Sky Ticket, streaming favourite music and YouTube videos every day, keeping in touch with friends on Skype or FaceTime at any time, all at high speed: from 6 September, O₂ customers with the new O₂ Free pricing portfolio with extra-large data packages of up to 25 GB can enjoy carefree access to the digital world any time and on the move – without having to keep searching for a WiFi hotspot. “Telefónica Deutschland is the first mobile phone provider to gear its pricing portfolio so rigorously towards extra-large data packages while making them affordable. This is a real quantum leap for our customers. With the new O₂ Free portfolio, we are setting a new standard for mobile freedom”, says Markus Haas, CEO of Telefónica Deutschland. “O₂ Free customers will be getting more high-speed volume than ever before. As a result, they can make maximum use of the internet and use the digital world any time and on the move.“

The new O₂ Free pricing portfolio is a logical extension of Telefónica Deutschland's philosophy of letting customers have access to the digital world at any time. In this way, the company is firmly focusing on its customer's preferences and requirements. After all, user behaviour is changing: more and more customers are streaming music and videos on the move, applications for photo and video sharing are increasingly popular, and the latest devices provide ever more data-intensive applications for everyday digital life. Accordingly, mobile data consumption is rising quickly. In the second quarter of 2017, O₂ postpaid LTE customers consumed 48% more on average than just a year ago. Customers of the promotional rate O₂ Free 15 use over 4 GB per month on average. A recent GfK study²⁾ also shows that mobile use is changing. It reveals that 62% of users streamed online videos on their mobile device in April 2017. Users of mobile devices spend a particularly large amount of time on YouTube (191 minutes), Netflix (160 minutes) and Amazon (159 minutes). The total utilisation time per user was around 3 hours 40 minutes in April.

In addition, YouTube is ranked second among the most popular applications (73%) with the highest data consumption (3.2 GB/user/month), although it used least on mobile devices at present. Even so, to be able to stream videos on the move, many customers move from one WiFi hotspot to another. This means an end to hotspot hopping, as O₂ is giving its customers their mobile freedom back and getting rid of compromises in the use of digital content. Telefónica Deutschland is finally making mobile data use a fixture of everyday digital life with the new O₂ Free pricing portfolio. This presents customers with whole new dimensions in the mobile use of data-intensive content. If the new season of your favourite series is starting at the weekend, you can quickly catch up on the last few episodes you missed – on the train or tram, on holiday by the Baltic or on a business trip. With a high-speed volume of 10 GB, around 20 hours of streaming with normal quality is possible. Chatting for hours with friends via Skype or FaceTime while you're out and about? You can also do that in future, any time, on the move and with no hotspot at all. And if you don't want to miss Bundesliga or Champions League matches while you're in the beer garden, you can simply follow the whole match on your mobile with friends.

Wolfgang Metze, Chief Consumer Officer (CCO) of Telefónica Deutschland: “The new O₂ Free portfolio is in line with the times and meets customers' desire to surf at high speed for even longer and unimpeded. The new prices cover data packages of different sizes, depending on requirements. With extra-large data packages, our customers can enjoy a new kind of mobile freedom with a very fair price/performance ratio.“ For EUR 29.99, customers will receive a data volume of 10 GB with the new O₂ Free M from 6 September – enough for 20 hours of video streaming or listening to 120 hours of music online. Even those who manage to use up the 10 GB can keep on surfing without interruption at up to 1 Mbit/s with O₂ Free. And at 20 GB, the data volume with O₂ Free L is twice as large. After the launch of O₂ Free last year, the new portfolio is the next logical step: digitalisation is advancing apace, so O₂ customers will be able to use their digital options on the move in future at top speed while continuing to benefit from the O₂ Free surf-on guarantee³⁾ . There are also new prices for business customers: we will release further information on this soon.