Fiber optic expansion was delayed for years

The Anga industry association used its 50th birthday to commission a market study on fiber optic expansion. The study deals with the aspects of expansion and the need for fiber optic lines to your apartment. For this purpose, the consulting company Goldmedia has created forecast scenarios. They assume two different assumptions and come to the conclusion that the hunger for data in Germany will grow massively. At the same time, however, the expansion of the necessary fiber optic lines will be massively delayed.

Data volumes in the fixed network will explode by 2030

Interesting: Assuming a market breakthrough of new technologies such as virtual reality (VR) or artificial intelligence (AI), the average data traffic per connection will grow by a factor of 3.7. This means that from today’s average of 351 GB per month and connection, 1,030 GB per connection and month will quickly be sent through the Internet in 2030. But even in the trend scenario, which assumes moderate growth, there will already be 842 GB by 2030, according to the study. For power users, Geoldmedia even assumes 3,200 GB or 5,927 GB per month. These heavily used connections will generate a volume of 457 billion gigabytes per year in 2030 – that’s 76 percent of the bandwidth requirement. A VDSL connection is no longer sufficient, especially if such amounts of data are to be downloaded or uploaded to the Internet in a short time.

The federal government’s gigabit strategy aims to provide all households in Germany with fiber optic networks by the end of 2030. Supply is actually only available when the fiber optic is at least in the house. The supply progress is currently measured at the Homes Passed level; the fiber optic is also still in front of the property.

To the question of whether FTTB/H coverage can be achieved for all households in Germany by the end of 2030, at least on the basis of Homes Passed, the study has a very clear answer: No! For a full Homes Passed supply, 13 million residential buildings would have to be developed between 2024 and 2030. That’s an average of around 1.9 million per year. “Given the current expansion rate of 1.3 million residential buildings per year, this is not realistic,” say the authors of the study. They expect full development to take place in 2034 at the earliest – for Homes Passed. And that is the optimistic scenario. You also have to keep in mind that many fiber optic connections have been created in cities so far. Expansion in rural areas is significantly slower and more complex.

Homes Passed is only half the battle

What makes matters worse is that the fiber optic cable is not yet in your apartment. The house stitching and laying in the apartments are considered the biggest challenge in apartment buildings. Until that happens, the fiber optic network operators are expecting a completely different year. “If you consider how personnel-intensive and difficult the expansion of this network level 4 is, we will probably be talking about 2040 and later,” said Bernd Thielk, managing director of willy.tel, which operates in Hamburg, as part of the presentation of the Goldmedia study.

A few weeks ago, the fiber optic association Breko warned of a delay in fiber optic expansion.