Tim Höttges CEO of Deutsche Telekom: Future for connectivity, 5G and AI

0:00Hi, everyone, and welcome to our podcast in good company. I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sub-Wan Wealth Fund. In this podcast, we talk to the leaders of some of the largest companies we are invested in so that you can learn what we own and meet these impressive leaders. Today, I'm speaking to Tim Hudges, the CEO of Deutsche Telekom, the largest telekom provider in Europe. Deutsche Telekom has 250 million mobile customers in more than 50 countries. We own over 2 % of Deutsche Telekom, translating into 21 billion kroner, or 2.1 billion US dollars. And guess what? We have been invested in Deutsche Telekom for 25 years.

0:38Tim is a very impressive and strong leader of Deutsche Telekom. It's a fascinating company, and he is a super interesting person. Tune in.

0:54Guten Morgen, Deutschland. Alles gut? Good morning, Nikolaj. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for having me. Fantastic. Now, we are here with Tim Hotkus, the visionary leader of Deutsche Telekom. He has transformed how millions connect and communicate. And so, it's very interesting to have a deep dive into the world of telecommunication. So, thank you for coming on. Now, what are the major trends in the telecom sector that really excites you today? The first thing is 5G and fiber is the enabler of the next generation wealth. Everything is getting connected. Everything is connected. And without networks, nothing is working.

1:33So our company has a big purpose. We are connecting not only societies, but we are connecting as well the flying wheel for the business industries in this environment. What are the big trends? The first trend is, you know, more data available everywhere. Always best connected. Second, it's about new business models. You know, we have on the one side the Web 3.0 development, digital twins in the B2B area. On the other side, AI is enabling a lot of new services as well our industry. And on top of that, the world, the globalization only works while people are talking. And today, 5.3 billion people of 8 billion are connected.

2:20And we are at the verge of it. I believe, you know, for a society which is living better together, connectivity is a must. What are the challenges now? Look, the challenges are big. Our industry, because people think connectivity is a human right, a lot of, let's say, political influences are taking place on our industries everywhere. And I think the biggest challenges are different on the continents. Deutsche Telekom is only operating in the Western world. I think that's a big advantage. You know, it is... Why is that a big advantage only to be in the Western world? Look, the values are the same between the US and Europe.

2:59The cash, you know, is easily transferable between this Western world. The decoupling and the geopolitical situation which we are facing this year, this times, is something which is affecting telecommunication as well. 60 % of the internet today is not anymore an open internet. It is politically limited in its possibilities. But we, as Deutsche Telekom, are only operating in the Western world, in the US, and in Europe. And that's a strong advantage. Do you think these splits between the two parts of the world will become stronger? I see that every single day. And I believe this world is fragmenting more and more.

3:42Individual interests are more important than the global society. and therefore, yes, I strongly see a trend that the fragmentation will go on. See what's happening with the BRICS states in Africa. Think about, let's say, Russia and its allies. Think about China. And therefore, being the North Star for the Western world with regard to one of the most important products, connectivity, I think that's an asset. Did 5G actually change your life? Look, change your life. To be honest, we haven't really found a business case for 5G because people like to have more connectivity. They like to have it faster.

4:25And they don't see the advantage of low latencies yet. But it was always the case. I'm a veteran in this industry. I'm here more than 25 years. And, you know, there was a question, why should we send pictures? Does somebody need that? Why 3G services? And today, if we have a 3G service, we're already complaining because we need the data throughput. We want to see the videos. We want to share everything with our spouses. And the industry is getting connected. And the same is happening with 5G. I see this, that this low latency is getting important for the car industries to be always best connected.

5:07It is an issue which we see in the connection with home offers and the way of collaboration across different countries. So therefore, yes, the 5G cases will show their impact, especially in the IoT sector. No, no, I can see that from my own family WhatsApp group. There are no limits for what a family can share in terms of potentially uninteresting things. But what's coming up next? What's next after 5G? By the way, we see a 30 to 40 % data traffic increase every single year. And our industry is producing this without any additional revenue increases. So, therefore, you know, Moore's law is hitting us even more than in the classical IT industry.

5:53So, we have to find ways of being more productive. We have to automate our services. We have to make it as well in the 5G space easier for developers to connect to the infrastructures. We have started an initiative from the whole mobile industries, GSMA, to open up APIs that developers can work on the different slices, as we call it, in the 5G. So if you don't need low latency, you don't get it. If you need high latency for highly automated services in the production area, you can experiment that. If you want to have, let's say, just the connectivity, you can work on the different features of the 5G ecosystem.

6:37So this will be a new trend that developers can access the 5G APIs directly in a fully automated way. You mentioned you've been around for some time here. But if we go back and look at the telecom sector in the 90s, it was really booming. But then over the last few years, it's been a bit different. So what happened here? By the way, the first thing is we have to split between the US and we have to split between the European market. And by the way, that is even, you know, historical way of dealing with things. In the 90s, you know, the margins of the teleco industries were very high. And by the way, I think our industry made a big mistake that time with very high roaming charges, not opening up the market.

7:23So the regulator had to intervene and highly regulated that market at that time. While in the US, you know, this market was growing. It was not regulated at all from the beginning. Different policy was taking place. Spectrum was not rented. Spectrum was sold. So different ways of dealing with the same environment. Now, from that time, Europe created a market of 27 markets where the political idea was in every market we need something like four players. Now, that means we have more than 100 players for a continent like Europe for 500 million people. In the US, you have only three and a half players for a market of 330 million.

8:06So, the industry is today totally different. You have economies of scale in the US while you have a fragmentation over competition in Europe. Will you get more consolidation than in Europe, you think? It is needed. It is definitely needed. 35 players in Europe have less than 500 ,000 customers on the infrastructure. So they can never play. They're only interested in contribution to margin. They're only trying to survive the next quarter, but they're not investing strategic long term. So the return on capital employed in the European market is half of the return on capital employed in the US. The prices of the US market are three times higher per customer than in Europe.

8:49So that is good for customers. But the consequence of this is the industry in the US is investing significantly more into modern infrastructure than they're able in Europe. Let's talk about the infrastructure. So you say we now have 30 % growth in traffic. You do all the work. The big tech companies take all the profits. How happy are you about that? How happy are you about that? That's a quote which Eric Schmidt, the former Google manager, did once. He said, you build the networks, we take the profit. And this is exactly what's happening. And what do you think about it? What do you think about it?

9:30I think it's totally wrong. and we have started a fair share debate from our industry and we have just published a letter from the 20, the biggest telcos here in Europe, where we said, look guys, the industry is growing by 30 to 40 % capacity every single year. You know, we expect now a 4K video coming across the YouTube channels. We expect, let's say, that everything is a video. the Netflix and the streaming industry is booming. And all this traffic is going into our networks and they're not taking any cost on the infrastructure. So this is a construction mistake when the World Wide Web was built.

10:16At that time, AT &T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, the big telcos connected their networks. And they did that on a free basis. Why did they do that? They said, you give me traffic, I give you traffic. We balance this out, so we make it a net sum game for zero cost. What can you do about it? Today, 80%, 80 % of the whole traffic in our infrastructure is coming from players who don't provide any kind of infrastructure in exchange, which are, you know, 10 big players from the US environment. These are the GAFAs, mainly, and the streaming services. And our position is for the ones who are eating up more than 5 % of the total traffic, only the ones who have more than 5%, they should contribute and they should give us as an industry or as a techs, I don't care.

11:10They should give us a contribution, which is helping us to build the capacity for the next generation. And how will you get that contribution? What are you going to do about it? Look, the first thing is we do not want to increase the prices for our customers because they simply say, by the way, if you want to reimburse your cost, just increase the end customer prices. But you know, in this political landscape in Europe, and with the customer orientation which we are having, we don't want to increase the prices of the end customers. So therefore, we want to let them participate. They should pay us for the traffic they are putting into our infrastructures a certain termination fee, as we know it from the past, and in other places of our industries.

11:57And this is then helping us to stem this huge billions of costs which we have in our industries. We call that fair share, only for the ones who have more than 5 % of the traffic. Look, one last sentence. It cannot be that our networks are spammed with advertising. and they always do this to take out data from consumers which they monetize then in the u.s and what you have seen is the european telco industry and we are the biggest player we have a market cap of 100 billion while the u.s players in this industries are all trillions of market cap and there is an asymmetry in our industry which we have to balance a bit they should contribute and help us to build this next generation networks.

12:49Clearly a job to do here, Tim. But when you look at Deutsche Telekom, huge success. What's the secret sauce here? Why have you guys been good? The secret sauce is always willing to transform, always willing to go new ways. Second, focus. Being very focused on the classical connectivity part. Thirdly, it's about the attitude which our people have with regard to we don't want to be good. We want to be leading. Leading in every category. Our aspiration is always to do things not in a good way, in a leading way. So always compare that. If everybody in the company would apply to this aspiration, the jigsaw of the whole organization will be leading.

13:38And that is what we are trying to drive. How does Deutsche Telekom look in 10 years' time? How do you look differently? That's too fast for me, but I'm not ready with where we are striving for. I think this issue of being number one in the markets and this attitude of always wanting to be leading, I think this is good. But now we have to face customer satisfaction in comparison to the big internet companies. So therefore, for me, the new benchmark is not anymore the telco sector. Then benchmarks is the service which you can get from the highly digitized companies. And therefore, full automation of our services, the way of bringing new adjacent service to our connectivity, easy to use for our customers.

14:25Even the way of the capabilities of embracing new technologies like AI for us. This becoming a leading digital company, leading digital telco. This is our new strategic imperative, which we are driving here in the company. And therefore, I'm more comparing me now with the digital ecosystem than with the classical telcos. So fast forward 10 years, what does Deutsche Telekom look like, you think? Look, we own the majority of the most valuable telco company in the world already, which is our T-Mobile US business. We are in all the markets where we are operating, except one, you know, we are number one in mobile and fixed line services.

15:06So Deutsche Telekom will be number one in the world for telecommunication services. We keep our focus, keep our focus on the connectivity part. That is the basis for whatever we are going to do. This is where our core capabilities are. The second thing is, I think there will be a European market consultation where Deutsche Telekom is best positioned to create a European, a central European player in this very important industries with its values, with its legacy, with its knowledge and its skills based in Europe for the Western world. That is, I think, my aspiration going forward. I don't see immediate acquisitions or mergers in Europe.

15:55I think we are still in this phase of very federal ambitions. But I think in 10 years, this will have changed. If I gave you a lot of money, like a lot of money, where would you deploy it? By the way, I think we have a lot of money. So we are a 100 billion company. I have BBB plus ratings in all regards. So I have a high credit worthiness in the market. So if we need money, if we would ask for money, you know, we can easily get it. But look, the money should be spent in areas where you gain appropriate profits. So therefore, find the right way. And on top of that, don't go in areas which you don't understand.

16:46So, you know, don't jump on something and, you know, burn the chips and then think, you know, now we are in the cloud. era or now we go into a new consumer's digital consumer service or we go in software development for applications or whatever i can tell you we will we will lose a lot of money so so therefore it should be expanding the adjacency if i would have more money i would spend it at the edges of our connectivity piece because i believe there is a certain commoditization of 5g service and fiber going forward. So that means every year we are investing, but there is a certain way that the prices for the surfaces will be flattish or will decline.

17:29So therefore, the question is to create a growth company, you have to work on the use cases around this connectivity. And that is what we are thinking about. How will artificial intelligence change the way you work? look um eight artificial intelligence is a game changer and chat gpt was this kind of moment which we all witnessed i can tell you it will change the world now there was long time development of ai as well in our companies we are using bots for years already in our organization we have machine learning functionalities but chat gpt the the automation of natural language so by the way the reason why the Homo sapiens is superior to all the others living on this earth is because of our language, because of our communication.

18:22Suddenly, we have a tool which automates that. This was a breakthrough, and it's definitely an inflection point in history. So therefore, it will affect everything. Now, what are we doing? There are areas where you have a lot of data. These are the areas where you should start with AI. In our case, it's the custom interaction. So we are modernizing our bots on chat GPT basis. So we are learning from the classical protocols, from all, let's say, the taped or the known customer interaction. The system learns from that one. And in the connection and the prompt which we connect to all the knowledge which we have about the network functionalities, the products, the tariffs and the like, we create a new bot.

19:16By the way, we will have that bot already this year as an MVP here in Germany to experiment with this new way of interactive customer service via a machine. And what kind of device do you think we will need to really communicate with AI? I mean, you have the likes of Sal Maltman and so on now developing completely new things. What do you think it will be? We will talk. Everything else is not natural. You know, our screens, our keyboards, everything is something we have learned to communicate easier. We don't need that. Everything will take place via your natural speech. Will it be a phone or what do you think it will be?

20:00No, you're just talking to a mic. And what would the mic be connected to? It will be connected to a machine and the machine will understand what your needs are. Whether you have a request towards your telco bill, whether it will be a request towards a technical issue in the machine, whether it will be, you know, a command which you give, you know, to change maybe a protocol or a change, you know, software. You know, you will do this with the most natural way of communication, just with your mouth. And this is the first one. It will be multimodal. So we will not only have speech to speech. We will have as well a speech which is creating presentations, speeches which is creating pictures.

20:53So the machine will transfer our language into doing, into the automated way of making our life easier. And that is the purpose of it, making our life easier. It will take over first routines, but prospectively, it will even help us to be more creative. You can easily fine-tune the models, yet you're not only getting the average of an answer, but even the edges of answers in the LLM models. So, therefore, you will get as well new kind of creative inspirations. It will be always a human-machine interface. I don't believe that the machine is taking over. I don't believe that. It will be always that I'm easing my life.

21:38I get new inspirations. I get new ideas, new knowledge with the machine. And then I transfer that and transfer that into my daily work. It will make us faster. It will make us more skilled. Think about program languages and other things which you cannot work on today. It will help us to simplify our living. And it will definitely take away routines, which gives us more time to create more important things, more creative things. it will create new jobs. That is what micro-envision is. Yeah, I love that optimistic, you know, vision. I share it totally. But how do you think artificial intelligence will impact the geopolitical tensions which we touched upon earlier?

22:31My biggest worry, and, you know, excuse me, I'm a German. And for the Germans, the glass is always half empty. There's nothing to excuse. There's nothing to excuse her, you know. But, you know, I very often hear, you know, ah, come on, you know, the Americans, we are positive, you know, while the Europeans are always in this kind of mode of saying the glass is half empty. And at the end of the day, if the glass is not half empty, if the glass is half full, you know, we are always surprised by the good things, you know, to be a pessimist is always the better surviving strategy because you're never disappointed.

23:00Anyhow, that said, you know, everything in this times get used as a weapon. We have seen oil. We have seen gas. We have seen grain. We have seen food, data. Everything is used as a weapon. And it seems to be that in this world where kind of, you know, the classical organization is somewhat the kind of the cordial alignment between our values is a little bit, let's say, getting fragmented or falling apart. But in this world, AI will be used as a tool as well to manipulate. And therefore, you know, we have to find new ways. What is the answer? By the way, it's even a business answer. ID management, very important.

23:50You know, so that you have to certify who is talking to you. It might be that you're sitting here with my avatar and you don't recognize that. So therefore, how can you make sure that it's Tim talking to you right now? So, these certified protocols, not only on persons, but as well on data, is something which is getting more importance in the future. And to make sure that we don't have fake news and other things. I have to say, if you're an avatar, you're a pretty clever one. I'm not sure because, you know, I'm not so easy to predict for a machine. I hope at least, you know, but maybe the experts are looking on that one.

24:36But stay unique. Absolutely. But in the connection to that, what about equipment? You know, how is this going to play out with the equipment providers in the various parts of the world? The first thing, as I said, we should not be naive. Everything is used as a weapon. And therefore, you know, we cannot run in the Western world technology where you have a kill switch in the software or kill switch somewhere in your technical infrastructure. So therefore, you know, on top of that, you cannot be dependent on only one single supplier. You have to build a multi-supplier strategy, which gives us easy.

25:21This world is getting more difficult, more vulnerable. And therefore, you know, for us as a company, we are taking actions on this one. When you say kill switch, you mean that a country can turn off your infrastructure? Think about if somebody would be able to turn off the emails or the data traffic for a day. You know, the economic effect would be detrimental. It would be significant. So that said, we have to make sure that we are having control about critical infrastructure at any time. And that is what we're doing. We have, for instance, in the mobile network, our core network, where the data is aggregated.

26:09In the IP aggregation network, where data is transferred, we have full control. We only have Western providers. Now, it's not against the Chinese, but it is better in this political world to have a multi-vendor strategy which is providing on this one. I don't believe it's a good idea to shut down the doors to China. Their innovation, their creativity, the way how they have performed in our industry in the past was as well a great learning impact as well for Nokia and Ericsson. It brought innovation to our industries. And on top of that, I believe that being open, talking to these people, working with these people, using these people will keep globalization intact.

27:00I don't believe if we are banning Huawei that this will not have an impact to other industries. And if we are closing down or decoupling our industries, what do we have? What is this society about? I don't believe that's the way forward. So, therefore, don't be naive. Critical component securities, focus that you have them always under control, even if you run them your own with your own software. And on top of that, use the globalization for the competition of technologies and to learn how different continents are evolving. In addition to AI, what other innovations do you think will define the telco sector in the next decade?

27:44multifold by the way multifold it starts with the in our industry by the way the development of the own software which is running the antennas which we call open run where we do a lot of coding a lot of things artificial intelligence will help us to develop that code faster the whole management of cloud infrastructures our networks are operating from cloud infrastructures we call that disaggregated infrastructure In this disaggregated infrastructure, the protocols which we are using there will be supported by AI. The way how we are interacting with our customers, I mentioned that already, bots will be based with AI tools.

28:28By the way, teaching our agents, teaching our service people will work with AI. We have already a tool based in Hungary and in Germany, which we are using to learn from the talks we had with our customers in the past to understand what the best interactions were for these individual cases and teach our service people that they have more success in the interaction with their clients. So it's not only for the customers as well for our own people to learn from that one. And then we have this whole area of internal processes. And I can tell you how many processes big companies have who could be automated.

29:13How many services, you know, where artificial intelligence can be used. I'm using ChatGPT4 on a daily basis. By the way, I'm doing a lot of letters where I'm saying, by the way, I want to say this, this, this, this, and this. Do that in a friendly manner. And by the way, consider that, you know, I'm writing this letter to South Korea or whatsoever. And, you know, I get a draft letter then provided by ChatGPT. I love it. And I change a little bit, but then I send it out. I look forward to seeing the letter. I hope I'll get one from you. There are a lot of ones, you know. Maybe you get one, you know, and you will not find out that it was, you know, quickly, you know, re-agent by the system.

29:55Absolutely. Moving tack a bit here and moving on to corporate culture, which I know is high on your agenda. How would you describe just in short the core values of Deutsche Telekom? In short. First, the cultural change of Deutsche Telekom is the most important driver of the success of this company. The first one is, by the way, everybody would say customer first. Okay, you can say that, but you have to live that. That is definitely the thing. The second one, curiosity. Always been curious about new things. The third one is the element of purpose and belonging. We are very tied to each other. We feel like, I would not say family, that is too much, you know, but we feel togetherness.

30:50And by the way, history is, we were always, you know, a kind of state-owned company, you know. We were always the one who were attacked. This created this kind of mentality of a castle, you know, where people were defending themselves. And we have used this now for getting extroverted. Look how many people are on social media talking about the company. If every employee is the communication department of this organization, and everybody's showing his tea and his magenta, The message is very strong. We believe in our products. We believe in the strength of our company. And customers are recognizing this.

31:26And customers always want to be with the winner. Success is a formula of discipline plus talent times attitude. The attitude of the way how we're doing that, and I'm coming back to leading. Leading is our attitude. Everybody should have this attitude to do things in a better way than the others. So performance-oriented. This is the way we're doing. And for me, a lot has to do with empowerment. You know, I cannot run a business in Seattle, 9 ,000 kilometers away from here, and tell these people how the tariff of the next proposition should look like. I should trust these people that they are doing the right thing.

32:05So I would say 80 % of our business is driven by empowerment of local people, building the right networks, having a great service, having good propositions for their customers, being, let's say, aggressive on the competition and considering the appropriate return on investments. but centralize the ones which you have to do so i would say 20 central 80 decentral gives a lot of empowerment to the people how does this tally with um being a german company you know we think about a german company as being very process oriented um you know top-down structured no i think hierarchically look i always said demystify the ceo you know and i can tell you when I see the CEOs in the US, you know, they sometimes behave like gods.

33:01You know, I always say, you know, I'm one employee as everybody else, and I always have to own a discipline. If I'm not good in one discipline, if I cannot be a role model for doing practical work my side, how can I be, you know, telling the other people how they should do their work? So everybody is a worker. Everybody, you know, is a work. I always say guard horse, you know, Everybody should be a guard horse. We do not need escut winners here. We need guard horses in this organization. And how do you stay connected with the ground? How do you try to stay grounded? Look, my whole business is that way.

33:40I can tell you I have daily interaction with young people of the organization. I'm on the front line. Please follow my Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn channels. You know, I was one day digging the ground, you know, and putting fiber into houses. So I was doing the practical work. You know, I drilled the walls. I was, you know, digging the grounds. So I was trying to understand, you know, how our processes are working. I always want to be on the lowest, you know, the operational level of this organization to Underhouse where the money is going. and that's the way how I'm trying to stay grounded.

34:23I'm spending significantly more time with customer service, with the technical infrastructure and with let's say new business models than I'm spending for instance with capital markets. So what do you think is the most important part of your CEO job?

34:41By the way, the most important is the shadow of the leader. I know about that principle. So if I'm not committed, if I'm not living up to the values of this company, if I'm not the role model, 100 % applying to the rules which we have communicated, nobody will follow the rules. So I have to be visible and I have to be very authentic in the way I'm coming across. I should be part of the organization that the authenticity means people should say he understands the business. He understands what we are doing. He understands as well, hopefully, most of the problems which we are having. He's not, you know, somebody who is a superstar, you know, sitting in talk shows or hanging out with celebrities all day long.

35:30He should be a worker in this organization. I think this is it. I earn, I don't want to be loved. I want to have respect for what I'm doing. And this comes from the jobs I do personally. being let's say deals like the u.s deal being it like operational team in the communication being like fighting outside for political topics for this company this is let's say how i want to be perceived respected that i'm always 100 committed first always deutsche telecom how do you make how do you make how do you make decisions do you need a lot of analysis or are you more gut feel, pattern recognition type of person?

36:14I have to say, people always say to me, Tim, follow your intuition. Tell me what your intuition is because we love your intuition about things. To be honest, I'm personally different. I analyze everything. I always, you know, looking on the pros, the cons, you know, the opportunities, you know, I'm always listening to a lot of people. I want to get, let's say, a full picture of a holistic view, cubistic, a holistic view about, let's say, what are we talking about? And then, you know, I'm drawing a conclusion of that one. Interesting wise, sometimes the conclusion comes automatically. So you do not have to always, you know, show the organization, I'm calling the shots.

36:58Let the discussion maintain and organize a discussion in your organization. And suddenly the organization falls into a conclusion where you can say, that's the right one, go ahead. than rather sitting there and calling the shots all the time. Are you a perfectionist? I'm a perfectionist, yes. What are the disadvantages of being a perfectionist? You're too slow. And because, you know, you always want to, you know, improve things, you know, until the ultimate. Sometimes you hate. I'm never happy. I'm never satisfied. I think this is the biggest negative. By the way, it's good for the company because, you know, I have, I can never, and that is psychologically maybe one of the biggest issues you can analyze is I'm never happy about something.

37:49You know, I did a big deal, successful, you know, with Sprint. And to be honest, I enjoyed it maybe for an hour. And then I was thinking away, what are now the complexities, the problems which are coming from that one? And what do we have to solve next? So I'm relentless. How do you think it is to work for somebody who's never happy?

38:11to be honest i i i have a lot of people who are working for me for quite quite some time i think at the beginning it is um demotivating i think at the beginning it's hard then people understand i have a good humor so i'm always easy i'm always you know in in in i like to love a lot in in the office i make a lot of jokes as well maybe not always the best ones but you know at least you know i'm trying to be as funny as possible so people have always this warm and cold a little bit now after a while maybe if they don't if i don't appreciate their work people are learning that whatever i'm doing i'm doing this because i want to make this deutsche telecom even more successful i always stand for the company and then they start you know organizing themselves and they don't become dependent on constant appreciation for me.

39:08They find, you know, their satisfaction in the achievements which we jointly have. And then after a while they say, by the way, it's normal that Tim is not appreciating that. You know, that is how he is. Let's move on and follow him. I think, you know, we are on a good track. I think that is this three phases of how I'm not somebody who's really applauding and appreciating all time. But nevertheless, I'm very happy in the way how the organization is striving for awards, how the organization is striving for success, and how ambitious this organization became over the last 10 years. I read an interview with Roger Federer, the tennis player.

39:45He said when he was young and he won a game, he just moved straight back on the court and continued to train. Now, when he got a bit older, he stayed the night, had a glass of champagne with his wife, and celebrated success. so it probably is important you know from time to time that's your advice you know so i don't have any advice you know i don't want to go to goethe's faust you know but goethe's faust and in goethe you know there's faustos and faustos makes this deal with mephisto and the deal is you know mephisto says the moment where you stop striving for better The moment where you are saying, I want to enjoy that specific moment.

40:27Verweile doch, du bist so schön. That moment you lose your life to the devil. And therefore, the mentality of me is a little bit like Dr. Faustus, who is constantly, you know, curious, constantly striving for something new, constantly driving this organization. And maybe the moment where I stop and enjoy that moment, you know, I will lose my life to devil. So therefore, please, I hear your advice, but so far, I haven't adapted it. Now, Tim, you started your life in strategic consulting, and some of these companies, such as McKinsey, they say that they hire insecure overachievers. Is that where you were when you started your working life?

41:10I think I'm still an insecure overachiever. so that is i admit that i said that in front of my my leadership team i don't think that's wrong you know i'm unsecure because a lot of challenges are coming you never have a kind of white and and black answer it's everything is gray and you have to to navigate companies you know 200 000 employees including their families through to this fog and therefore you know there is no no no kind of security in this one. But, you know, I'm always, you know, and I said it earlier, I always, you know, anticipate the worst. And then when it turns out, you know, that it's getting better, I'm happy.

41:54And if you anticipate the worst, you prepare yourself, maybe more diligent, more deeper than the others. At least, you know, that was my recipe so far. And then you are surprised if you over achieve at the end of the day. So, therefore, I don't think it's something bad with this. Nevertheless, you know, I think, you know, we can be, there is a lot of, let's say, self-conviction in me of, you know, being now in the operations for more than 35 years. And therefore, I have a lot of, let's say, stamina and a lot of, let's say, convictions that this company is very successful. And on top of that, I have to say all the ingredients, market structure, spectrum positions, the leverage situation of the company, capabilities, technology know-how, all they say the ingredients for a future success of Deutsche Telekom are very strong today.

42:57And therefore, I think we are at a good place. How do you define success at the personal level?

43:07So for me, stay happy as a person. A bird can only fly with two wings. That is this classical American example, but there's a lot of truth in it. If you have problems with your health, if you have problems with your family, if you have problems in your private life, over time it will eat into your business life as well. So it is very important that you keep a very balanced personality, that you take time for yourself, that you have your own life aside from the company. Second, it is very important that you are happy with this. You know, don't try. You can fight in difficult situations. It's not that I recommend that if you don't like your situation, immediately throw it away and try something new.

43:54You have to fight through this. But you should set yourself limits. And say, by the way, if it's not improving after a year, after one and a half years, whatever timeline you have, and it's still the situation, then move on and do something different. And on top of that, you know, find your interest, your private interest. Always stay curious, you know. We like to travel. I like my sports. I'm very intensively, you know, balancing. I'm now 60 and I have to work on my body on a constant basis. I have three times a week, a personal trainer in the company that I stay fit for this job. And, you know, so this helps me to stay happy as a person.

44:35How do you relax?

44:39In activity. You know, I'm not somebody who can sit, you know, for too long on the beach. Sometimes I have this moment, you know, of, you know, an hour, you know, doing nothing. But I'm a very active person. You know, my wife, you know, gets mad with me, but she's with me for 30 years. So she gets mad with me because I'm constantly, you know, thinking about, you know, don't waste your time. You know, what can we explore? Is there something which we can find? And I think that it gives a lot of energy. It gives a lot of power, which I can then even transfer into the company. And I'm always exploring new things.

45:20What do you read? this time i i by the way i read these days a lot of um newspapers and about psychology um and the book which i'm reading recently you would be love is called the inner game it is the question you know how your your inner um perception your inner mentality is influencing you're doing, your activities. In sports, in this case, for instance, in golf, or as well in your business. And I'm trying to understand a little bit more what is driving attitude. So this is an interesting book, and I always try to draw analogies for my business out of this. Lastly, we have tens of thousands of young people listening into this.

46:08What is your advice to young people?

46:15The first thing is stay curious. Always, you know, not, you know, being it in your private, in your business life. Explore the world. Explore people. Explore new areas. Go deep in certain things, but as well, you know, look right and left of it. and always you know stay in this momentum of that changes that things which are transforming something good enjoy them than rather being afraid of it train your muscles for change get out of your comfort zones get out of your comfort zones on a constant basis and do things you know if it's a marathon or i i had to get off my comfort zone last year and i sailed with five friends and a 48 feet boat, you know, from Gran Canaria to San Lucia.

47:15This was 20 days on the ocean. I had to get out of my comfort zone to challenge myself and say, by the way, I have to broaden my horizon. Very good. Tim, this has been super interesting and very, very inspiring for us all. Big thanks for taking the time and good luck with everything. Thank you, Nikolai. We keep on running and we won't stop. Thank you.