A number of industry associations in Germany including Breko and the VATM have criticized the draft coalition agreement reached between the conservative CDU and the centre-left SPD for failing to place enough emphasis on fibre broadband roll-out as Germany strives for nationwide gigabit broadband coverage by 2025.
While the CDU and SPD agreed to establish a nationwide gigabit network in Germany by 2025 in their negotiating paper, the parties failed to commit themselves to a concrete target for fibre-optic infrastructure that would extend beyond the current legislative period, said Breko, Germany’s federal broadband association, in a statement with fibre-network industry association Buglas and the municipal associations DLT and VKU.
The agreement leaves open the possibility that Germany could continue to subsidize techniques like vectoring and fail to reach its broadband targets, said the associations. Instead, they called on the government to direct public subsidies in the broadband roll-out solely toward a "sustainable, pure fibre-optic network in all buildings in Germany" in their final version of the coalition agreement.
Telecommunications industry group VATM likewise warned in a separate statement that Germany will fail to reach its broadband goal for 2025 given that the lack of focus on FTTB/FTTB connections and the continued reliance on the interim technologies backed by Deutsche Telekom like vectoring.
The government’s proposal to finance the expansion of gigabit networks through a fund created by the auctioning off 5G licenses is likewise "not sensible" given that the agreement does not contain a concrete budget for the expansion of broadband linked to the fund, said the VATM. These high auction intakes will also deprive companies of "urgently needed" resources for investment that will then have to be balanced out later through public subsidies.
Digital industry association Bitkom meanwhile criticized that the parties’ agreement "demotes digitization to a marginal issue" and lacks determination. The association also urged the government to furnish all businesses and "digitisation drivers" like schools with a fibre-optic connection by 2020, devote half of public R&D subsidies to digital technologies like AI and 3D printing and establish a national council for infrastructure to promote digitisation in the energy and transport sectors.
