A year after the presentation of the “gigabit strategy” for the expansion of high-speed Internet, many projects have been ticked off. The expansion of fiber optic connections is progressing. But only a minority of households are already using the fast access.
According to the Digital Ministry, the expansion of fast Internet connections in Germany is progressing rapidly. Last year, around four million additional households were connected to the fiber optic network, said Digital and Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) at the “One Year Gigabit Strategy” ceremony.
Every fourth household with fiber optic connection
One year after the start, Wissing says that the goals of a comprehensive and high-performance gigabit supply have come significantly closer. According to him, by the end of 2022, around every fourth household in the Federal Republic was supplied with a fiber optic connection.
The expansion of high-speed networks is also progressing in mobile communications. Within a year, coverage with the fast, fifth-generation mobile network (5G) increased to 87 percent of the area in Germany, which corresponds to an increase of 22 percentage points.
A comprehensive, powerful and reliable supply of gigabit networks is the basis for successful digitization and the future viability of Germany, Wissing told the dpa news agency. “In the past twelve months, we have succeeded in triggering additional momentum in the expansion of fiber optics and mobile communications.” His ministry’s approach is to bring everyone involved to the table and tackle the ambitious goals together.
Demand in households is still lagging behind
Fiber optic access is a technology in which fiber optics are in the apartments or in the basement (“Fiber to the Home”/FTTH or “Fiber to the Building”/FTTB). The Internet connections are better here than via telephone cable (VDSL) or television cable.
However, the increasing supply of connections in households is greater than demand: only a quarter of households where FTTH/FTTB is available have fiber optic connections activated, according to a study by Dialog Consult, which is published by the Internet industry association VATM commissioned. The other three quarters do without the connection. This is probably mainly due to the relatively high prices for fiber optic contracts.
Fiber optics in every second household by the end of 2025
A year ago, the traffic light coalition presented a “gigabit strategy”, a package of 100 projects designed primarily to simplify and speed up the approval process for network expansion. In the paper, the federal government has set itself the goal of making fiber optics into the home and the latest mobile communications standard available “wherever people live, work or travel” by 2030.
As a first step, the coalition wants to push ahead with the expansion so that at least every second household can use fiber optics by the end of 2025. Of the 100 planned measures, only 39 points are still listed as open, 35 as “in progress” and 4 as “not yet started” on a website of the Digital Ministry. 32 were therefore successfully completed. The rest of 29 measures are ongoing measures.