Many providers promise quick and uncomplicated fiber optic expansion. But the road to high-speed Internet in the house is often rocky – and municipalities are at the mercy of construction crews.
When Mayor Rüdiger Germeroth walks through Zierenberg in northern Hesse, trouble quickly arises. “It’s been going on like this for almost four years, everything torn up, poorly filled in, all rubbish.” What initially went well ended after just a few weeks. “We can’t even find contacts at the companies because the construction managers are constantly changing,” he complains about the situation.
And in addition to the annoyance comes the fear of a lack of road safety. He points to the metre-high cable reels, two of them, parked on the side of the road – and just a stone is there to prevent the heavy cable reels from rolling down the slope of the road. Road safety is a central issue for municipalities – but construction companies are responsible for the details. This is not an isolated case: many municipalities are complaining about what is happening here. Germany has fiber optic fever.
The mayors’ hands are tied
By 2030, all households and businesses in Germany should have access to high-speed internet. In order to accelerate the major fiber optic expansion project, procedural simplifications were stipulated in the Telecommunications Act. Specifically: All licensed providers have free access to the fiber optic expansion and thus to public paths.
The result is a widespread lack of law for the municipalities. The telecommunications companies are obliged to repair the transport routes. But if they do not fulfill this obligation adequately, the communities are at the mercy of the construction crews.
“Some subcontractors make you wonder whether they ever had anything to do with civil engineering,” says Dieter Hornung, mayor of Burghaun, a municipality in eastern Hesse. And the town hall boss from Bad Salzschlirf, a neighboring community, can only shake his head when he looks at the paving stones that were put back on the sidewalks after the expansion. “It’s a patchwork quilt, and we now have to explain that to the citizens.”
Companies are fighting back
A spokeswoman explains on behalf of Deutsche Telekom that they take the cases of damage very seriously and are analyzing the reasons for them. They are trying to optimize work processes. Telekom argues that the responsibility for technically correct execution lies with the civil engineering companies commissioned. “They are requested to repair the defects immediately if they report damage.”
And smaller providers such as the Goethel company are also making arguments to limit the damage: the expansion is very complex, explains Peter Raue, Goethel’s construction division manager, and it is “difficult to find expansion partners with whom you can implement everything well.” That in the Goethel case, a house on a street in Zierenberg is sometimes forgotten while the entire street is already connected? “Mistakes happen,” said the construction department manager.
Germany as a gigantic construction site
In addition to the large telecommunications companies such as Telekom and Vodafone, more than 200 fiber optic companies are currently active in Germany to set the pace. Because Germany is still a gigantic construction site when it comes to broadband expansion. Politicians wanted fiber optics as early as 1981. That was under Helmut Schmidt. Then a new chancellor came along – Helmut Kohl relied on copper cables, and this continues through the republic to this day.
“For many years we relied on our very good old telephone infrastructure, which allowed high data rates via DSL technology,” says Jens Tiemann, who works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication Systems. “It wasn’t necessary for Telekom to rip out the copper cable.”
The result: Germany is now in 36th place out of 38 OECD countries. And the European Union just certified Germany as “poor” in its expansion. But if you believe the optimists, in just one and a half years the future will have arrived at the speed of light in half of German households.