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By Suzanna Kerridge, 17 February 2000 00:20

NEWS German telco, Deutsche Telekom (DT), has bought French ISP, Club Internet, as it continues its attempts to gain supremacy in the European ISP market. DT will pay up to FF50,000 (£5,100) for each of Club Internet's 380,000 users to boost the European presence of its own Internet service, T-Online. A Deutsche Telekom spokesman said: "This is a very important chance for us to further our growth in the Internet and especially of T-Online. We will be the number one in Europe." Deutsche Telekom's expansion into Europe began last year when the company bought Austrian mobile communication company MaxMobile. Deutsche Telekom and Lagardère-owned Club Internet will work together on advertising, content, and as yet unspecified Internet services. The French ISP claimed the deal would enable it to bolster its own user base at a time when free French ISPs are aggressively grabbing market share. Over the past few months, the free ISPs have taken between 25 and 30 per cent of the French Internet market. Deutsche Telekom debuted in France last November when it bought Siris, a high speed Internet access. Ashim Pal, Internet analyst at Meta Group, said: "This announcement comes as no surprise, as it continues the consolidation around ISPs that we have been experiencing. "We have seen a lot of the smaller content providers amalgamated into large telecos. What the telecos are traditionally good at is providing high availability, reasonable cost and network access, but not really content." But Pal praised Deutsche Telekom for localising its services. He said: "In tough language countries where English is not widely spoken and there is a resistance to the Anglicisation of everything, focussing on language services is bound to be successful. Companies like AOL have not placed too much focus on localised services and they could miss out." AOL recently took out a full-page advert in German newspaper Handelsblatt calling on Chancellor Schroeder to investigate Deutsche Telekom for monopolistic practises. AOL criticised the telco for not giving others "fair chance". See also:
'Deutsche Telekom to float ISP' (http://www.silicon.com/a35344 )
'Deutsche Telekom announces falling revenues' (http://www.silicon.com/a32339 )