Deutsche Telekom said its subsidiary T-Mobile Czech Republic has bagged a major contract renewal from retail chain Tesco, for connecting over 1,000 stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary.

With annual sales of around 55.9 billion euros and over 470,000 people, UK-headquartered Tesco has stores in 11 countries in Asia and Europe.

The network operated by T-Mobile Czech Republic (TMCZ) is the backbone of Tesco’s mission-critical data applications in all four countries, including payment transactions as well as supply chain and employee information systems. Tesco has hosted 78 million shopping trips per week throughout 2016.

Tesco is benefiting from a centrally managed service, ensuring the stability and homogeneity of the network at all of the company’s outlets. In addition to a regional IP Virtual Private Network (VPN), Tesco receives data center collocation, dedicated Internet access, voice and SMS services with a guaranteed quality of services and multilingual support across the region.

“Operating the network from a single location and receiving the same quality of service in each country were among the key advantages for choosing the Deutsche Telekom Group,” said Martin Berdych, CEE IT Infrastructure & Operations Manager at Tesco.

Three years ago, Tesco chose GTS Central Europe to connect over 1,000 of its stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary with a centralized private corporate network. Following the merger of GTS and Deutsche Telekom Group, Tesco recently decided to extend its contract with the Group for another three years with the option to add a further two years.

“A cross-border corporate network with reliable VPN and back-up solutions on each location was key to cover Tesco’s needs. This is a success story about thinking globally, acting locally, and providing an all-in-one, seamless service to our business customers,” says Ralf Nejedl, senior vice president B2B & ICT at Deutsche Telekom Europe.