The Fiber Factory will be used to scale up the process of delivering fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections in large quantities, said the company, which is aiming to connect all households in 10 years.
“FTTH is the key to the next surge in digitisation. We have revolutionized our processes to achieve this,” said Srini Gopalan (pictured), member of the Deutsche Telekom board of management responsible for Germany.
“Our Fiber Factory is now really taking off. This means we are bringing the fibre directly to where it will be needed more and more in the future: in households, businesses and schools, in the city and in the country.”
The project is part of an acceleration of Deutsche Telekom’s broadband expansion rate, said the company.
This year, Deutsche Telekom has doubled the number of households that can receive FTTH to more than half a million, it said.
“In the future, this number is set to increase to around two million households per year. Telekom’s goal is to ensure that all households in Germany have direct access to the fiber-optic network by 2030, with the group making by far the largest contribution towards this.”
Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges said: “It was the right decision to put fibre optic in every street and thus to enable fast networks from Telekom for over 80% of all households. Home offices are possible throughout the country.”
He said the company is investing around €5.5 billion a year in Germany. “Most of it will go into our network.”
Deutsche Telekom now offers 2 million households an FTTH connection, said the company, and it plans to connect 2 million a year from 2021 onwards.
“We are building for digitisation in Germany,” said Höttges. “The better the framework conditions for investment, the smoother the fibre-optic expansion will run. New technology and new times also require new and flexible answers.”
The company said that 3,000 business parks are also to be connected to the fibre network by 2023. It already connects 17,000 schools at up to 250Mbps. “In the next three years, at least one in four schools is to receive a fibre optic connection from Deutsche Telekom alone,” the company added.
