- Marketing is starting in Bruchsal, Markkleeberg and Hildburghausen
- Bandwidths up to 1 Gbit/s possible
- Driving forward expansion of the fiber-optic network with pre-marketing and trenching
Deutsche Telekom is expanding its pilot project for FTTH expansion (FTTH = fiber to the home). Pre-marketing is starting right now in Bruchsal, Markkleeberg and Hildburghausen, having already begun in Bad Staffelstein in December 2017. In the next three months, around 30 percent of households in each of the scheduled expansion areas are expected to sign up for a fiber-optic plan. Customers who do so during the pre-marketing phase do not have to pay a home connection fee. If pre-marketing is successful, Deutsche Telekom will start to expand fiber-optic connections into homes in Bruchsal, Markkleeberg and Hildburghausen.
Deutsche Telekom will be using trenching for the expansion process. Trenching removes the need to dig open trenches to install fiber-optic cables. Instead, narrow grooves are milled into the road/sidewalk surface. Trenching is around eight times faster and up to 30 percent cheaper than the conventional method. After the expansion, Internet connections up to 1 Gbit/s will be available in these areas. In Bad Staffelstein, 3,000 households stand to benefit from the expansion, in Bruchsal 3,500, in Hildburghausen 6,300 and in Markkleeberg 1,600. All the expansion projects are due to be completed by the start of 2019 at the latest.
The Deutsche Telekom network in numbers
In 2018, Deutsche Telekom is planning to lay 60,000 kilometers of optical fiber. By way of comparison, the figure for 2017 was 40,000. The Deutsche Telekom fiber-optic network covers over 455,000 kilometers in total, making it the largest in Europe. It would go around the Earth more than ten times. Installing one kilometer of fiber-optic cable costs between 50,000 and 150,000 euros. Each year, Deutsche Telekom invests around five billion euros in Germany.
About Deutsche Telekom: Deutsche Telekom Company profile
