Annual General Meeting on the Internet: The Telekom Board of Management is available to answer questions about 600 questions submitted by shareholders.
One topic is particularly important to them.
Bonn - With fiber optics right into the apartment, Deutsche Telekom * wants to enable significantly more households to use high-speed internet than before.
Corresponding plans confirmed corporate boss Tim Höttges on Thursday in Bonn at the online general meeting of Telekom.
These connections should be available in ten million German households by the end of 2024 - whether consumers will sign the relevant contracts is another question.
That would be almost eight million households more than before.
In 2020, Telekom laid fiber optics in the apartments and houses of 0.6 million households, and in 2024 this value is expected to climb to 2.5 million per year.
“The future is fiber optics,” said Höttges.
According to this, a further 2.5 million households per year should have fiber optic access.
“That is the number of times that Deutsche Telekom wants to bring fiber optics into every apartment or house.” By 2030, all households should be able to use the fiber optic network.
However, expansion by competitors is included here.
Telekom wants to offer fiber optic connections to 10 million households - the project is expensive
By 2024, Telekom's fiber optic spending is expected to increase from 1.5 billion euros a year to 2.5 billion euros.
"This is a huge investment, perhaps the largest investment in the history of Deutsche Telekom," said Höttges.
The group boss referred to the high effort involved in the expansion, which, however, will be more efficient and therefore faster thanks to digitally networked laying transporters.
He also gave an insight into the construction work in front of the camera.
He showed an “earth rocket” - a metal device weighing 20 kilos, ten centimeters in diameter, which is driven underground through the garden with compressed air.
A tube with a fiberglass strand is inserted into the opening created in this way.
But is it worth investing billions?
This question preoccupied the shareholders, who could not criticize the lectern at the online general meeting - they had to submit their questions in advance.
So far, pure fiber optic connections, which are called “Fiber to the Home” (FTTH) in the industry, have been relatively expensive.
Höttges was convinced of the economic potential of the investments.
“The demand for high bandwidths is growing steadily,” he said.
Glass fiber offers a download speed of 1 gigabit per second, in the future the maximum speed will even increase to 10 gigabits.
Telecom on fiber optic course: but is the expansion taking too long?
Frederik Beckendorff from the Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz (DSW) supports Telekom's fiber optic course.
“The topic has great potential,” said the shareholder representative.
What is critical, however, is the long time horizon of up to 15 years until the costs of investments are offset by income from customer contracts.
"This is of course associated with uncertainty - especially since it is not certain that customers will want to spend more money on the significantly faster Internet." conclusive.
The competitor Vodafone also offers gigabit contracts, but relies on TV cable on the last stretch to the apartment and not on fiber optics.
Vodafone's prices are lower than FTTH internet contracts.
However, pure fiber optic Internet is considered to be more stable - when the whole street is streaming films or downloading large data packets in the evening, the transmission speed per household does not decrease as much with FTTH as with TV cables.
Deutsche Telekom has had a very good financial year. After taking over US competitor Sprint, sales soared to a three-digit billion euro amount for the first time.
The turnover of 101 billion euros accounted for a profit of 4.2 billion euros, 7.5 percent more than a year earlier.
“2020 was a year with many challenges and many successes,” said Ulrich Lehner, Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
“It was the best year in the company's history so far.”
(Dpa) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
