February 04, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 15, 1428

FRANKFURT, Feb 3: Deutsche Telekom and other network providers may no longer have a competitive edge in the battle for customers according to a study, a German weekly reported on Saturday.

Third party providers who do not operate their own networks will be able to offer the same quality of products as Deutsche Telekom does, the magazine said quoting a study by DeTeCon consultancy.

The study examined 220 services such as email, telephony and television broadcasts provided by Deutsche Telekom and other network providers who control a network and through that the quality of TV broadcasts.

It concluded that companies which do not operate a network offered products that were largely of the same quality thus making the advantage a network operator has superfluous in the coming years. A spokesman for Deutsche Telekom declined to comment on the report.

DeTeCon is in part owned by Deutsche Telekom through its T-Systems unit, which provides IT and telecommunication services for businesses.

Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest telecom group by sales, issued a second profit warning early this week as its fixed-line business in Germany is under attack from a slew of resellers offering discounted DSL broadband packages.—Reuters