The focus on the divided digital agenda of Germany have put a lot of focus on the country’s progress in broadband development. The resent debate triggers a lot of pressure on making the development transparent. Industry associations across Germany have warned that the vectoring plan, if it proceeds, would leave German citizens and industry technological standstill. This would put Germany at a serious disadvantage compared with other EU Member States (such as Sweden, Spain, Portugal) that already enjoy the benefits of widespread gigabit- capability networks and those like France that have made the deployment of fibre networks their top priority. Read the full story here.
At the same time there is a risk of remonopolization of infrastructure, if incumbent operator Deutsche Telekom is encouraged to invest in so-called “vectoring” technology to upgrade the legacy copper network to accommodate superfast broadband services. Read more about the reactions from alt nets here.