The company says it is rolling out access to 5,000 companies in 30 additional business parks, where they will be able to order gigabit fiber optic connections.
“Local companies are thus in the fast lane for a long time on the information superhighway, because fibre optic cables are a future-proof investment,” said Nils Reif, Vodafone Germany head of fibre optic sales. He compared the difference between copper and fibre connections to the difference between a Trabi – the Trabant, the cheap car that was the symbol of the old East Germany – and a Porsche.
Vodafone will be focusing on the Mittelstand, the mid-range of German business that is translated into English as SMB. “With its fibre-optic expansion programme, the Düsseldorf-based communications group is bringing the German Mittelstand in numerous industrial areas onto the digital fast lane,” said Vodafone.
It will be offering businesses exclusive fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) connections with speeds of 200Mbps to 1Gbps, with “a balanced connection”, symmetrical upload and download speeds.
Vodafone said it is in a pre-marketing phase, with “lower-price tariff offers”, and “in addition, Vodafone will pay for the construction costs for fibre optic cabling, which often costs several thousand euros, right into the buildings”.
The company listed the communities it is focusing on in the roll-out as including Altdorf, Aschaffenburg, Bochum, Flensburg, Freiburg, Homburg, Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Magdeburg, Schwarzenbruck, Straubing, Norderstedt and Offenbach an der Queich.
