"We are now starting the largest fiber optic project in the history of Hesse", announced the Hessian digital minister Kristina Sinemus (CDU).

The plan envisages that by 2025 half of the almost 1.56 million households in the Frankfurt / Rhine-Main region should have a gigabit connection - so far fewer than 150,000 have.

By 2030, 90 percent of households and 640 industrial areas should have such fast Internet access.

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

Fast internet is considered to be the basis for digitization.

According to the federal government in Hesse, 96 percent of households already have access to a broadband connection with 50 megabits per second, but the corona lockdown showed that this is sometimes not enough if, for example, videos are streamed and people work from home at the same time.

Gigabit connections are even more important for companies that control their production facilities remotely or that have many video conferences taking place in parallel.

With a five percent fiber optic share in broadband connections, Germany ranks at the bottom of the list of the OECD industrial countries, while the Scandinavian and Baltic states as well as South Korea, Japan, Spain and Portugal have more than 50 percent.

Alternative laying techniques planned

With the Frankfurt / Rhein-Main regional association, three companies that lay fiber optic cables and connections have signed framework agreements on rapid expansion. These are Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Giganetz and Deutsche Glasfaser. These undertake to invest, plan and provide capacities. In return, the regional association promised "a positive and safe investment climate", as it was called when the contract was signed.

In practice, this means, for example, that processes are decided more quickly and alternative laying techniques should be made possible in shallower soil depths, since these are cheaper and faster, but not without controversy among municipalities. This includes, for example, the thin slitting of the street (trenching), the so-called blowing into empty pipes that have already been laid, or the use of existing gas, water and sewage pipes. Digital Minister Sinemus reported when the contract was signed in Frankfurt on Thursday that she herself was able to lay three meters of fiber optic cable in just ten minutes during a test in the Odenwald.

The state government has budgeted 270 million euros in funding for broadband expansion throughout Hesse by the end of the legislative period, part of which is to flow into the gigabit project. The state of Hesse wants to further digitize the administration for this project as well. Project documents should be submitted digitally so that they are available more quickly and can be processed in offices. Individual procedures should also be processed more often in parallel instead of frequently in succession, as was previously the case.

Sinemus pointed out that the Hessian building regulations were changed in order to speed up the approval process.

In addition, the Bundestag passed a new telecommunications law in April.

According to this, for example, the costs for a new fiber optic connection can be added to the rent as operating costs, with a maximum of five euros per month for nine years.

Costs of up to 1.8 billion euros

Representatives of the companies involved have emphasized that the funding only covered a fraction of their costs. Giganetz CEO Wolfram Thielen said he was counting on ten times the sum that his company would invest. As the Telekom said, laying a fiber optic connection costs around 600 to 1500 euros per household, in the densely populated city it is cheaper than in the country. In order to achieve the target of 90 percent fiber optic supply in the region set for 2030, that would result in a total of between 750 million and 1.8 billion euros.

For antitrust reasons, the three companies involved are not allowed to agree with each other which price offers they will make or who will negotiate with which municipality.

Telekom has so far been strongly represented in cities with existing networks that can be expanded, while Giganetz and Deutsche Glasfaser have so far concentrated on rural regions.

A bottleneck, warned Giganetz managing director Thielen, but could arise from the lack of construction workers and civil engineering companies.

Like the Telekom representative for Hesse, Stephan Käfer, he expects the framework agreements to enable planning security for several years, so that construction companies can be booked on a long-term basis.

However, it is also unclear whether the need for such comprehensive gigabit coverage is actually necessary. As it was said, not every household or company that now has a gigabit connection actually uses it - partly for cost reasons, but partly because conventional connection speeds have so far been sufficient for them. The regional association said that planning is not being made for current, but for future broadband needs.