The FINANCIAL — Fast, efficient telecommunications networks are Deutsche Telekom’s focus at this year’s CeBIT.
Speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s download and 0.5 Gbit/s upload will be possible in Telekom's network in future. The company will give the starting signal for the fiber optics expansion in 2011: up to 160,000 households in ten German cities will be supplied this year alone.
"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. "Only through an intelligent mixture of technologies from wireless and landline networks can we offer our customers fast connections, high quality and attractive prices."
Connected life and work isn't a vision; it's everyday practice. People maintain their contacts through social networks and shop online, both at home and on the go; they communicate with colleagues and business partners through web conferencing and use mobile connections to access their companies' data and applications. Fast networks are the foundation for all these applications. Germany is on the verge of the gigabit society, says Mr. van Damme about the decision to launch the fiber optics expansion.
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. Telekom favours the FTTH (fiber to the home) solution. Yet modern building networks are a prerequisite for this expansion and for reaching maximum speeds. "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.
Technology mixture for the gigabit network
People are still hungry for bandwidth: according to studies, data traffic in the landline network will increase fivefold, and by 60 times in the cellular network. To meet this increasing demand, Telekom will continue to drive the expansion of the necessary broadband networks, which must be powerful and intelligent. The company is deploying a future-oriented combination of technologies that matches fiber optics and copper lines with broadband wireless technologies such as HSPA+, LTE and WLANs. This mixture will create a powerful, nation-wide broadband gigabit network.
Pilot fiber optics projects were launched in Hennigsdorf and Braunschweig in 2010. In addition, a pilot household in Dresden was wired with a direct fiber-optic connection (FTTH) with speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s. 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 Mbit/s.
Wireless high speed
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 Mbit/s, 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.
Even better coverage and even faster transmission speeds – these are the central goals in 2011 for the wireless area as well. Telekom will expand its HSPA/UMTS network once again, doubling available bandwidth in the entire network to up to 42 Mbit/s by the end of the year. Even more speed is promised by LTE technology, based on 1.8 and 2.6 GHz frequency bands. The target is up to 100 Mbit/s. 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. The LTE stick from Huawei is the first 4G device. In addition to LTE, the stick also supports the existing 2G and 3G networks, choosing the fastest available transmission technology automatically.
Deutsche Telekom covers black spots
Both DSL technology and the HSPA and LTE wireless technologies play an important role in covering existing black spots. Telekom is deploying a targeted mixture of different technologies to connect rural areas without broadband coverage to the high-speed network effectively and efficiently. The company signed over 800 cooperative agreements with local authorities to take DSL to the countryside last year. This means bandwidths of up to 16 Mbit/s are available to an additional 360,000 households. This year Telekom once again expects to sign 700 to 800 cooperative agreements with local authorities. In future, such agreements will provide for very fast VDSL technology – with band-widths of up to 50 Mbit/s – much more frequently than in the past: some 600,000 additional households will be supplied with VDSL in 2011. Telekom managed to cover around half the black spots in 2010 with HSPA and LTE 800 technology. The company will continue using this method for fast mobile connections in 2011. Plans involve equipping 1,500 areas with ultramodern wireless technology.
Telekom will also be expanding HotSpot, its public WLAN offering, which is 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.
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