The history of many consulting firms begins with a founder, who usually also gives the company its name. There was never a Mr or Mrs Detecon, but there was the Deutsche Bundespost. It was looking for a way to transport the know-how of its civil servants in telecommunications abroad. Due to the restrictions imposed by civil service law, there was only one option: leave of absence and secondment via another company.
1977: Startup Detecon
This was the birth of the start-up Detecon: on 7 July 1977, Deutsche Telepost Consulting was founded in Bonn as a holding of Deutsche Bundespost. Its mission: Worldwide consulting services in the field of telecommunications and postal services. The focus was on infrastructure studies and profitability analyses as well as delivery-related, neutral and independent consulting.
A well-adapted Daughter of the Bundespost
What began as a vehicle quickly became a success: in a very short time, Detecon employees were deployed worldwide to drive infrastructure expansion in the fixed network. Detecon was - and still is - involved in the creation of telecommunications companies in many parts of the world. On the occasion of the company's tenth birthday, the then managing director Dietrich Elias could therefore proudly position Detecon as "a well-born subsidiary of the Bundespost" (Source: ZPF 1987 (8), p. 4f).
Pioneering Spirit in the DNA
Digital technology reached the telephone network as early as the 1970s. The introduction of ISDN marked the first digital transformation, which Detecon accompanied. This was followed by an active role in the development of the GSM standard and the prominent GSM project D1, which was transferred to the new operating company Deutsche Telekom Mobilfunk GmbH (DeTeMobil), later T-Mobile International, in 1993. Satellite technology, GPRS, GSM Rail, All IP and Next Generation Networks are just a few keywords associated with the name Detecon.
The merger with the consultancy firm Diebold in 2002 drove the cross-sector conception and implementation of digital strategies and business models. Its eponymous founder, John Diebold, was an American entrepreneur and one of the pioneers of the American IT industry. He was considered a computer visionary, was an advisor to several American presidents, gave lectures all over the world and wrote best-selling books. This earned him the nickname Mr. Automation in the industry. His sensational book "Automation" from 1952 predicted the automation and mechanisation of industry even then.
To this day, we have retained our curiosity about technologically initiated changes and the ambition to implement the potential of digitalisation in the best possible way for our customers within the scope of our consulting services!
