Swisscom

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Swisscom AG is the leading telephone company in Switzerland. Swisscom is present nationwide, delivering all services and products for mobile, fixed and IP-based voice and data communications.

1 History
2 Company
3 Comments
4 External links
- 4.1 Data

[edit] History

Swisscom used to be part of the state-owned monopoly PTT (Post Telefon Telegraph in German, Poste Téléphone Télégraph in French, Posta Telefono Telegrafo in Italian). In the mid-nineties, the Swiss government, in line with general liberalisation of the European telecommunications market, split the postal and telecommunications divisions into two separate companies, Swiss Post and PTT Telecom, which was privatised in 1997 as Swisscom. In 1998 Swisscom became an incorporated company. The Swiss government remains a majority shareholder.

[edit] Company

Swisscom Fixnet had 3 million analogue telephone lines and 924,000 ISDN lines.

Its internet division is called Bluewin, formally The Blue Window. The broadband boom continues to dominate communications in Switzerland: Within a single year, Swisscom Fixnet increased the number of ADSL access lines from 656,000 to 948,000. With Bluewin, Swisscom offers the largest online portal in Switzerland for residential customers.

Its mobile division is called Swisscom Mobile. Vodafone has a 25% stake in Swisscom Mobile. The mobile network provides coverage in 99,8% of the populated area of Switzerland, and is used by 4 million customers. Since November 2004, Swisscom Mobile has been the first Swiss mobile network operator to offer UMTS mobile phones. At the end of 2004 the UMTS network already covered 90 percent of the population in Switzerland. By the end of June 2005 Public Wireless LAN (WLAN) was in use at 800 Swisscom Mobile hotspots in Switzerland and at 2137 Swisscom Eurospot locations in other countries. Mobile Unlimited, an in-house development by Swisscom Mobile that enables seamless switching between GPRS/UMTS/EDGE/WLAN, ensures unlimited communications even when on the move. Its main local competitors are Sunrise and Orange.

The enterprise solutions division is called Swisscom Solutions. This division is the point of contact for business customers, specialises in providing complex and customised integrated solutions.

Swisscom IT Services is one of the leading providers of IT services in Switzerland.

The company is also a major shareholder in Telecom FL, the main telecom operator in Liechtenstein. Until 1999, Switzerland operated telephone services in the principality, which formed part of the Swiss telephone numbering plan, but in that year, Liechtenstein adopted its own international dialling code. However, the principality still does not have its own telephone directory, its telephone numbers are instead listed in Swisscom's directory for the neighbouring Swiss canton of Graubunden.