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TWST: Can we begin with a brief outline of debitel (Frankfurt:DBLG.F), bringing us up-to-date with who the company is today?

Mr. Wagner: Today, debitel is Europe’s largest mobile communication service provider. We are network independent, which is one of the strengths of the company. Having contracts with several network providers helps us operate as an objective advisor to our customer. On the network operator’s side, debitel has bundling functions for indirect sales. We therefore help them to reduce their costs for sales activities and customer care. For our trading partners and for our dealers, we also bundle the activities of all network operators, and this gives them a full portfolio of networks to offer, but with only one logistical chain to handle. debitel has been in the market for 10 years, which is a very long period of time in mobile communications in Germany, and we now have ten million subscribers. As far as our revenues are concerned, last year we ended up with a total of €2.5 billion and an EBIT of €79 million. This in fact is somewhat unique because the European market is currently undergoing some turbulence, certainly as far as mobile communications is concerned. It is one of our clear targets to be profitable and to stay profitable, and this in fact is a target we have had for the past ten years. We have continued along this track for the first half of this fiscal year, where we are showing a slight increase in sales by 7% to €1.3 billion as of the end of June. We are showing an EBIT for the same period of time of €27 million. In comparison to last year there has been a small decline in the EBIT, which is the result of special effects from last year’s divestiture in Belgium and also delays in the commission payments from the network operators for pre-paid business, related to a reduction in hardware stocks. If you subtract these special effects, then we are inline with a similar EBIT as last year. For the projection for the entire year, we expect an increase in revenues compared to last year. We made two acquisitions last year, one in the Netherlands and one in France, which help to strengthen the business models we operate in these two countries, and the integration of those activities has had an impact on our bottom line. We are therefore expecting our EBIT at the end of the year will be slightly below the EBIT of last year after restructuring. debitel in total has about 3500 employees. We are publicly noted with a free float of around about 6% today. The remaining 94% is held by Swisscom and jointly with Swisscom we are looking for opportunities to increase our free float. This may be done by acquiring corresponding companies to our business models, financed for example through a shareholder loan by Swisscom, and then later converted through an additional IPO into equity to increase our free float. It would also be helpful to be included in one of German Stock Market indices.

TWST: What would you point to as the underlying strength at debitel?

Mr. Wagner: Our underlying strength is our business model as a so-called Enhanced Service Provider. Today, for example, we do not have the burden of, the UMTS license, but we have the right to use the services of the network operators and the right to use their network infrastructure to implement our own services for differentiation in the market. This means the capital needed for our business model, compared to the network operators, is extremely low. As a result, we are extremely flexible and fast in the market and we don’t have the burden of having to earn back the huge amount of money spent for the licenses. We participated in the auction process for the UMTS license in Germany, but we withdrew after the limit we had set for what we considered the license to be worth was reached.