An article by Niek Jan van Damme, Member of the Board of Management Deutsche Telekom AG for Germany and Managing Director Telekom Deutschland GmbH.
The broadband expansion in Germany has kicked off a hefty debate within the industry in recent months. No surprise, given the many possible technological and strategic approaches. Moreover, Germany is a fairly large country with a wide range of population densities between regions, which poses considerable challenges to the companies that have to invest in serving them. Competition always involves confrontation. Nonetheless, we at Deutsche Telekom are convinced that the time has now come for more collaboration.
We have now defined the necessary standards for wholesale products, a technical prerequisite for comprehensive offerings. The regulators at the European level have given a clear signal that they intend to support collaborative models above all in the broadband expansion. Companies that accept subsidies will also be required to give other providers access to their networks. And ultimately, willingness to collaborate is growing overall among industry players, to at least partially refinance their significant investments in the networks through cooperation.
We at Deutsche Telekom are convinced that a smart mix of technologies is the right way to offer ultra-fast Internet access in as many places as possible, as quickly as possible. We are investing heavily – five billion euros in Germany last year alone, more than any other telco in the country – especially in fast fiber optics. We now offer fiber-optic lines to some 60 percent of households nationwide. Our initial target is to offer speeds of at least 50 megabits per second to around 80 percent of the population over the fixed-line network. The cornerstone of this promise is vectoring technology, which we continue to enhance. In the mobile domain, our LTE network coverage now reaches more than 92 percent of the population, offering speeds of up to 300 megabits per second. And 5G, the next technological leap that will affect both the fixed-line and mobile communications, is right around the corner. Deutsche Telekom is taking a leading role in its development.
Competition in infrastructure will remain essential to building the best networks in the future. Nonetheless, we hope to increase collaboration with our competitors, as we have done with Netcologne for some time and are now pursuing with innogy TelNet. The agreement with innogy TelNet covers nearly 60 local networks within the rural areas of Eifel, Hunsrück and Münsterland. A total of about 55.000 households will thus get the opportunity to purchase our Double Play products.
We want to utilize our competitors' infrastructure to continue to offer our customers Deutsche Telekom lines everywhere in future. Which means we will be supporting the expansion of our partners at the same time. This isn't an easy step for Deutsche Telekom by any means: we already know wholesale; now we will have to learn more about "wholebuy". Competition does not rule out collaboration. We need both to create the best possible infrastructure for Germany.