Our business model
With 24.74 million fee-based customer contracts and 37.59 million ad-financed free accounts, United Internet is a leading European internet specialist.
Our operating business is divided into the two business divisions “Access” and “Applications”, which in turn are divided into the reporting segments “Consumer Access” and “Business Access”, as well as “Consumer Applications” and “Business Applications”.
Access division
The Access division, with its two segments Consumer Access and Business Access, comprises our fee-based access products for consumers and business customers. In our consumer business, these include broadband and mobile access products with the respective applications (such as home networks, online storage, telephony, video-on-demand, or IPTV), while the business segment offers data and network solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as infrastructure services for large corporations.
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With a length of 48,500 km, we own one of Germany’s largest fiber-optic networks. Moreover, we are the only MBA MVNO in Germany – indirectly via 1&1 Drillisch AG, acquired in 2017 – with long-term rights to a share of up to 30% of the used network capacity of Telefónica Germany and thus extensive access to one of the largest mobile networks. In the fiscal year 2019, we also successfully participated in the 5G spectrum auction and purchased two frequency blocks of 2 x 5 MHz in the 2 GHz band and five frequency blocks of 10 MHz in the 3.6 GHz band. This laid the foundation for the development of our own powerful mobile communications network. In addition to our own landline network and privileged access to the Telefónica network, we also use standardized network services from various providers. These wholesale services are enhanced with end-user devices, self-developed applications, and services from our “Internet Factory” in order to differentiate them from the competition.
In the Access division, we operate exclusively in Germany, where we are one of the leading providers.
Our Access products are marketed via well-known brands, such as 1&1, or discount brands, such as yourfone and smartmobile.de, which enable us to offer a comprehensive range of products while also targeting specific customer groups.
Applications division
The Applications division, with its two segments Consumer Applications and Business Applications, comprises our ad-financed and fee-based online applications for consumers and business customers. These include domains, websites, web hosting, servers and e-shops, Personal Information Management applications (e-mail, to-do lists, appointments, addresses), group work, online storage, and office software.
The applications are developed at our “Internet Factory”, or in cooperation with partner firms, and operated on around 90,000 servers at our 10 data centers.
In the Applications segment, we are also a leading global player with activities in Europe (Germany, France, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, and Spain) and North America (Canada, Mexico, and the USA).
Applications are marketed to specific home-user and business-user target groups via the differently positioned brands GMX, mail.com, WEB.DE, IONOS, Arsys, Fasthosts, home.pl, InterNetX, Strato, united-domains, and World4You. We also offer customers professional services in the field of active domain management via the Sedo brand. Our free apps are monetized via advertising, which is offered by United Internet Media.