Telecom News --
Alcatel-Lucent and SWU TeleNet extend 50 Mbps broadband to rural Germany
Paris, 02 February, 2011
- Up to 50 Mbps broadband for residents and businesses in rural Ulm region
- Connecting 12,000 households by the end of 2013
- Using a mix of copper- and fiber-based access technologies (VDSL2/GPON)
- Supporting the need for open networks - i.e., enabling multiple providers
to offer multiple forms of content from a single network
 |
As part of the “Internet-Offensive 2012” initiative, the region of Ulm in the South of Germany is preparing itself to quickly meet and surpass the targets of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, which aims at providing every European citizen with 30 Mbps broadband by 2020. |
To this end, local network operator SWU TeleNet - an affiliate of Ulm’s public utilities - and Alcatel-Lucent have started to deploy an access network that supports speeds up to 50 Mbps per subscriber in 14 districts of Ulm and Neu-Ulm, and in the independent municipality of Talfingen. By the end of 2013, about 12,000 households will be connected to this brand-new, high-speed broadband network.
In many cities across Germany, broadband providers are fiercely competing for customers. Rural areas, however, have largely been excluded from high-speed broadband access - in view of the high investment costs. SWU TeleNet is now tackling this situation in the Ulm region, closely cooperating with its mother company SWU, telephony service provider G-FIT and solutions provider Alcatel-Lucent. Leveraging as much as possible the existing DSL network infrastructure, SWU TeleNet and Alcatel-Lucent have started to deploy an access network that mixes copperbased VDSL2 and fiber-based GPON technologies, turning Ulm into one of the leading broadband regions in Germany. This opens up a whole new range of communication, entertainment and business development opportunities for the district’s citizens and local enterprises.
One key consideration of SWU TeleNet was that the network should be open to future providers of IPTV and video services. Thanks to this “open networks” approach, SWU TeleNet can increase the return on their investment by opening up to more services, service providers can extend into new areas, and end-users get a wider range of choices for subscription content. To accommodate a smooth delivery of these services, a customer- and service-specific assignment of bandwidths and priorities will be allowed, ensuring that all services are transmitted with the required quality: voice with guaranteed bandwidth and highest priority, video services with fixed bandwidth and minimum delay and Internet with the highest quality of experience.
Quotes: Andreas Kövi, Managing Director of SWU TeleNet GmbH, “We are pleased with the successful launch of our broadband pilot project in Jungingen. Further municipalities will follow, leveraging the products and support from Alcatel-Lucent. From the very beginning we have adopted the open network model. It enables service providers to offer attractive services, such as e-health or IPTV, to a much wider target audience.”
Dietmar Urban, Key Account Manager of Alcatel-Lucent Deutschland AG “Alcatel-Lucent is committed to help bridging the digital divide in regions around the world. This project with SWU TeleNet is another example of this commitment - extending high-speed broadband access to 12,000 households in a rural area. Leveraging our expertise in VDSL2 and GPON, we are able to fundamentally improve their way of living, working and communicating.”
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