At the opening of this year’s CeBIT, Deutsche Telekom outlined a number of network initiatives, including fiber optic expansion and LTE rollout in Germany.
In 2011, Deutsche Telekom expects to bring fiber connections to 160,000 households in ten German cities. The network will be capable of speeds of up to 1 Gbps downstream and 0.5 Gbps upstream in the near future. Selected districts of the cities of Braunschweig, Brühl, Hanover, Hennigsdorf, Neu-Isenburg, Kornwestheim, Mettmann, Offenburg, Potsdam and Rastatt will be wired with fiber-optic lines in 2011.
Pilot fiber optics projects were launched in Hennigsdorf and Braunschweig in 2010. In addition, VDSL is available in 50 German cities and more than 60 percent of households in Germany can surf at transmission speeds of six to 16 Mbps.
However, for a widescale rollout, Deutsche Telekom said investment-friendly regulations are required.
“Our decision to expand the fiber-optic network in Germany proves our commitment to our home market. With today’s launch of the expansion programme, we are systematically executing our strategy,” said Niek Jan van Damme, the member of the Board of Management at Deutsche Telekom AG responsible for business in Germany.
“We have to work together with owners on the expansion and move toward the gigabit society together. This will increase not only the living value of a property, but also its attractiveness,” says Niek Jan van Damme. In particular, modern, investment-friendly regulation is needed to speed up expansion of the FTTH networks. “It must be possible to use all existing infrastructure, such as cable conduits from other grid industries or even building networks, to save costs and capture synergy potential. We also have to avoid a patchwork of local fiber-optic networks in Germany, which means the industry has to agree to mutual, open network access,” says Mr. van Damme.
In wireless, Deutsche Telekom is pursing HSPA+, LTE and Wi-Fi offload initiatives.In August 2010, Telekom added the first LTE mobile base station in Germany to its network, in Kyritz in Brandenburg. In addition, in the past year, the company boosted large parts of its HSPA/UMTS network to a top speed of 21 Mbps, while increasing coverage by over ten percent, now reaching 83 percent of the population. Marketing of the matching data rates will begin in the second quarter.
In 2011, Telekom plans to upgrade its HSPA/UMTS network once again, doubling available bandwidth in the entire network to up to 42 Mbps by the end of the year.
For LTE, the company will use the 1.8 and 2.6 GHz frequency bands to eventually offer rates of up to 100 Mbps. This new technology will be provided to selected business customers in the early summer of 2011, as part of friendly-user tests. In addition, Cologne will receive near-total LTE coverage, based on the 1.8 and 2.6 GHz frequency bands, and made available to consumers.
Telekom will also be expanding its public Wi-Fi HotSpots, which are currently available at nearly 8,000 locations in Germany. Among other advances, Telekom will equip additional ICE trains from Deutsche Bahn and Lufthansa aircraft with WLAN technology, providing a seamless high-speed network on many travel routes to business customers in particular.http://www.telekom.com
