The expansion of gigabit connections in Germany is progressing; more than 60 percent of private households can now book one. But at least the DOCSIS 3.1 expansion is gradually coming to an end, the capacities in the cable network are exhausted. The focus is again on direct fiber optic connections.
This emerges from the market analysis Gigabit connections 2021, which the consulting firm Dialog Consult is doing on behalf of the provider association VATM Has. The study is based on a written survey of VATM member companies as well as company publications and publicly available studies on fiber optic and broadband expansion. The figures for the first half of the year are estimates.
Most of the gigabit connections via the cable network
It is estimated that there will be 29.2 million gigabit connections by the end of June 2021. 10.8 million of them are active, i.e. they are actually used by customers – the so-called take-up rate is around 37 percent. “People accept it, but they still don't tear it out of your hands,” says the telecommunications expert responsible for the study, Prof. Torsten J. Gerpott. Of the 29.2 million available connections, around 2.3 million come from Deutsche Telekom, which, according to VATM figures, activates around 675,000 connections.
At the end of 2020 there were 27.8 million gigabit connections, so that the number of gigabit connections increased by five percent within six months. Most of the gigabit connections run over the cable network. At the end of 2020 there were 22.7 million connections, after the first half of 2021 there should be 23.3 million. An increase that is no longer as strong as in recent years. The reason: the modernization of the cable networks has been completed. “The DOCSIS 3.1 expansion is coming to an end,” says Gerpott.
High growth rates at FTTB/H
If no cable is available, expansion is via direct fiber optic connections (FTTB/H). And there is progress in this area as well. According to the VATM study, there were 5.1 million available connections at the end of 2020, and by mid-2021 there will be almost 6 million (an increase of 15.6 percent). 3.65 million of these connections come from the competition, 2.3 million from Telekom. Around 2.1 million FTTB/H connections will be used by mid-2021. According to the VATM, the competitors achieve a take-up rate of almost 40 percent, at Telekom it is almost 30 percent.
However, the quality of the respective provider cannot be inferred from the take-up rate alone. The decisive factor is the market environment. If a company expanding fiber optics operates in a region in which gigabit connections are available via the cable network, the take-up rate falls. If, on the other hand, a network operator is expanding in rural regions, which to date only have a slow infrastructure, the demand for the connections is directly higher. What is also increasing is infrastructure competition. The number of households that can choose between cable and fiber optic connections with gigabit-enabled connections has grown by more than nine percent to 3.1 million.
If you take these doubly expanded households Depending on the total number of available connections, the following picture emerges according to the VATM figures: By mid-2021, around 26.16 million households in Germany will be able to use a gigabit connection – that is a share of 62.4 percent of all private households . At the end of 2020, the value was just under 60 percent.
Gigabit expansion by 2030
For VATM President David Zimmer is satisfied with the current development, but calls for the right course for the future. “Most of the new gigabit connections are based on the HFC broadband cable infrastructure, usually without much civil engineering,” says Zimmer. Since the capacities in the cable network are gradually being exhausted, further sockets must now be tapped with FTTB/H. And because of the civil engineering required, this is more complex.
According to VATM managing director Jürgen Grützner, the gigabit expansion will be completed around the year 2030. The task of politics would have to be to set up a long-term perspective, for example to secure sufficient capacities in civil engineering. Meanwhile, Zimmer is critical of the new gray spots funding: “Thousands of market research and funding procedures based on the new gray spots funding will slow down the rapid supply of many rural communities and make them more expensive. In addition, due to a lack of prioritization, it will often leave the real white spots and the citizens there in the rain for even longer. “
Funding should be limited to places where a private sector Expansion is actually not profitable. But this would require a better system for finding such places, explains VATM managing director Jürgen Grützner.