The German Broadband Association (BREKO) comments on today’s decision by the Bundesrat on the ordinance on the minimum requirements for the right to the provision of telecommunications services:

“The fact that the Federal Council gave up its blockade at the last second was overdue. The demands for higher bandwidths and latency requirements could not be justified from a legal or technical perspective.

The right to basic Internet coverage must not be allowed to become a brake on fiber optic expansion in its implementation. To prevent this, the Federal Network Agency must ensure that wireless Internet access technologies such as mobile and satellite communications can be used, especially in sparsely populated areas and isolated locations. By using wireless technologies, digital participation can be ensured quickly and unbureaucratically for the affected citizens without having to reprioritize already scarce construction capacities and thus significantly reduce the pace of fibre-optic expansion.”