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The German telecoms associations ANGA, Bitkom, BREKO, BUGLAS, and VATM called on the German government for fibre-optic funding to be reduced, due to the German Gigabit funding programme being too heavily subscribed.
The country’s “Gigabit funding 2.0” system works by distributing subsidies through a points system, and was launched last year. The associations argue that reducing the funding to €1 billion between 2024-2026, and ensuring that these funds are targeted, will prevent the overcrowding of the limited construction capacity, which then leads to the bottlenecking of the rollout.
If this happens, they warned, the completion of subsidised rollout projects could take between three and five years longer than private sector expansions.
The news comes as the German Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport announced last week that it made a total of €3.6 billion available for the expansion of fibre-optic networks over the course of 2023. From this, 638,000 additional fibre-based connections in approximately 2,300 municipalities were enabled.
“By 2030, we want fibre-optics to the home across the board and the latest mobile communications standard everywhere people live, work and travel,” said Federal Minister Volker Wissing in a press release.
“The vast majority of connections are made possible through private investments. We are closing the remaining gap with our targeted funding, which benefits precisely those regions where there is a lot of catching up to do and where expansion by telecoms companies is not economically viable.”
The call from the associations does appear strange, an opinion that many German politicians seem to agree with. “In my view, limiting the funds for this is, therefore, the completely wrong approach,” Christian democrat member of the Bundestag Reinhard Brandl pointed out to Euractiv.”
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