Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer today announced the launch of the new gigabit funding program. In future, the new funding program will also enable subsidized fibre optic expansion in areas where Internet coverage is below 100 Mbit/s (“grey areas”). Previously, broadband funding measures were only possible in areas with a maximum of 30 Mbit/s (“white spots”).

BREKO Managing Director Dr. Stephan Albers explains the federal government’s new gigabit funding program:

“With the new funding program, the German government is not succeeding in directing the funding to where it is most urgently needed. Namely to those households where internet coverage is particularly poor and the economic basis for a fiber optic expansion is lacking. Experience with the federal broadband funding program, which has been running since 2015, has shown that while it makes sense to provide funding to supplement the roll-out of fibre optic networks, providing the largest possible amount of public funding does not lead to faster roll-out. Instead, it leads to competition for the already scarce civil engineering capacities. For this reason, we had advocated prioritizing and metering the funding in favour of the remaining “white spots” in order to give these households the prospect of expansion first.

It is now essential to ensure that the existing momentum in fiber optic expansion is not slowed down by false incentives. Money for fiber optic expansion is available on a large scale, in particular due to the entry of numerous financial investors. Self-financed expansion can be implemented much faster and more efficiently than subsidized projects, which are by nature lengthy and associated with many challenges. It is therefore important to further improve the framework conditions for private-sector expansion, for example by simplifying and digitizing the approval process.

The successful implementation of the funding program requires a close exchange between the federal government, the federal states, local authorities and the companies involved in the expansion. For this reason, we have argued that the telecommunications industry should also be given a place on the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure’s (BMVI) funding advisory board in order to closely monitor the further development of the program from a practical perspective. Unfortunately, this proposal was not taken up by the federal government.”