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Projects/Deutsche Telekom
PretotypeDesign study

CONCEPT T: the router you no longer hide

Client
Deutsche Telekom
Format
Concept & pretotype
Date
From October 2022
Role
Concept · general contractor

The Project

Ein neues Kapitel
in der Router-Historie.

Routers lead a shadowy existence: they sit in a cabinet, behind furniture or in the basement. They only get noticed when they stop working. That is exactly where the CONCEPT T ROUTER came in – as the only hardware product in Deutsche Telekom's Concept T series.

FUTURE CANDY worked out the detailed concept and then built the pretotype – a physical model together with moving images, with which the idea could be decided on in Telekom's Portfolio Innovation Board. Technical validation, an MVP and the final router followed; FUTURE CANDY acted as general contractor throughout and steered the internal and external partners.

The result was the visionary design study made up of three modules – Base, Hub and Mobile Unit – shown publicly at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The Challenge.

How does a box become a piece of furniture?

The router market is saturated, and along the customer journey there are barely any touchpoints with the brand. A router you hide cannot shape brand perception.

The task was therefore twofold: the router had to become attractive enough to stand visibly in the living room – and functional enough to justify that place. The device you only interact with when something breaks was to become the new centrepiece of the living room.

On top of that came the target group: generations Y and Z think planet-centric, are not very loyal, are open to Web 3.0 and are sceptical about big tech's appetite for data. A product for them has to be made of sustainable materials, be simple to operate and bring decentralised functions with it.

The Result

Vom Pretotype
auf den MWC.

The concept became CONCEPT T – Deutsche Telekom's vision of the router of the future, presented at the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona. The final model was built by the design studio LAYER in London.

Three design studies were shown there, whose names come directly from the project – VIEW, BUDDY and LEVEL:

Concept Level picked up the modular principle: a base with classic router functions plus modules you can add – a cylinder with an AI voice assistant and smart home control, a cone with Wi-Fi sensing for room monitoring and fall detection, a flat Web 3 module as a wallet for crypto and NFTs that generates Magenta Tokens along the way, and a mesh sphere for connectivity.

Concept Buddy gave the AI a face: a small robot that listens to voice and gestures, distinguishes between members of the household, drives through the flat on wheels, boosts the Wi-Fi precisely where needed – and turns into a personal trainer or watering assistant via projector.

The hologram became a projector, the drones became wheels. The principle stayed the same, though: base plus modules, voice instead of buttons, Magenta Tokens for sharing – and a router that is allowed to stand in the living room.

The payoff

What stuck
in the end.

The project volume for the finished router was estimated at around 3 million euros. The decision on it was taken on the basis of a physical model and moving images – not a slide number.

Precisely because the router is the most invisible device in the home, the leap was so large. Anyone who rethinks a saturated product wins attention that another feature would never have generated.

The 360° hologram became a projector, the repeater drones became wheels. What remained: modularity, voice control, Magenta Tokens – and a router that wants to be seen.

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