Federal Minister for Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt tabled a new policy paper laying out a four phase approach to a ‘Gigabyte Society’. The policy was formulated on the back of a report by the Fraunhofer Fokus research group commissioned by the ministry.
Under the first phase, which is to be completed by the end of 2018, the government aims to provide all households with at least a 50 Mbps connection, though many new installations will be gigabyte-compatible. All new residential projects must include a FTTH/FTTB connection.
By the end of 2019, fibre optic connections will be laid in all under-serviced regions as well as in new business areas. The following year should see the roll-out of a 5G network for mobile devices.
In the project’s final phase, the government hopes to introduce gigabyte-capable convergent infrastructure across Germany. To fund the project, the German federal government has to date provided EUR 4 billion and committed a further EUR 10 billion to the next phases.
In addition, companies within the Net Alliance – made up of BREKO, BUGLAS and VATM – have previously invested EUR 8 billion in both 2015 and 2016, and will ‘increase their investment as needed’ in coming years.
The three organisations – which represent telecommunications providers other than Deutsche Telekom – issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to a large-area, gigabit-capable connection network by 2025.
Acknowledging the different possible models for such a network, the ‘Net Alliance’ urged the government and business communities to work towards greater clarity around regulation and funding of any infrastructure project.
The groups also emphasised that the network infrastructure must be flexibly available ‘in line with the needs and applications of the respective users’, and drew attention to potential network issues other than bandwidth, including failure protection, jitter, security and latency.
