Major Restructuring at Deutsche Telekom

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Rene Obermann just sent around an email to all employees, announcing some changes in the Board of Management:

As of March 1, 2009 the following changes in the Board of Management will take effect: Timotheus Höttges will take over as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). His successor as Board Member for T-Home Sales and Service in Germany is Niek Jan van Damme. He has managed T-Mobile Netherlands for the last seven years. Another new Board Member is Guido Kerkhoff, who will establish the Board area for the business in South Eastern Europe. This will enable us to be more focused in steering our business there, in order to better exploit the growth potential.

But even more serious is the consolidation of mobile and fixed-line communication services:

Firstly, we will remove the division between our fixed-line and mobile communications businesses in Germany, going beyond the existing integration of Sales and Service. In the future, German mobile and fixed-line businesses will be headed by a new Chief Sales and Service Officer, Germany.

As you might have noticed, he is not talking about entertainment – so I’m wondering what happens to T-Mobile’s t-movies or T-Home’s Videoload, T-Mobile’s t-games and T-Home’s Gamesload, T-Mobile’s t-music and T-Home’s Musicload, etc… This gets even more interesting as

future product development, IT and technology will be steered across Europe, procurement globally.

[...]

It is planned to combine these functions within a new COO Board area under the leadership of Hamid Akhavan.

So is this going to include digital entertainment services? I hope that the consolidation of both business lines will bring exciting new services and foster innovations from both sides – Mr. Obermann is very clear that

this is not a headcount reduction program. We have agreed with employee representatives on the purpose of these changes and will proceed with the restructuring on a cooperative basis. This is about opportunities for growth!

[...]

I would like to emphasize again that we are on our way to a new Deutsche Telekom – and this Deutsche Telekom stands for connected life and work as well as for best service.

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Deutsche Telekom will slash about 19,000 jobs over the next three years (telcojobsbloggers.com)

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Deutsche Telekom Enters The CDN Market, Partners With EdgeCast (streamingmedia.com)

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Deutsche Telekom Posts Higher Profit (nytimes.com)

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[dld] Oberman and Varsavsky on German telecommunications (hyperorg.com)

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