A return to growth for domestic mobile service revenue boosted Deutsche Telekom’s Q3 results.

The company’s success story in the US is well documented but its quarterly numbers also saw an encouraging performance from the German business, albeit at a more modest level.

The company’s domestic mobile service revenue increased by 0.2 per cent year-on-year, following two sequential quarters of declines.

Deutsche Telekom also talked up a “sustained change in the usage behaviour of customers” in Germany. The number of call minutes used by its contract customers increased by 4.6 per cent compared with Q3 2015, with an even greater increase in data volumes.

As an example of the latter trend, the company said monthly data usage of contract users increased by about 80 per cent to nearly 1Gb.

T-Mobile US the driving force
Meanwhile, T-Mobile US continued its customary, powerful growth. Revenue surged 17 per cent to €8.28 billion. In the third quarter, it added almost 2 million new customers, with 969,000 additions being branded postpaid ones.

It should be noted that T-Mobile US’ total revenue is significantly higher than its parent’s domestic business. The German unit’s revenue (fixed as well as mobile) in Q3 was €5.6 billion, a decline of 0.8 per cent.

In Q3, T-Mobile US delivered €2.16 billion in adjusted Ebitda, slightly below the domestic unit’s €2.25 billion.

Overall, net profit at Deutsche Telekom rose 30 per cent to €1.1 billion, an increase boosted by higher restructuring costs in the year-ago period.