6,500 visitors: Leading trade fair for fiber optic expansion sets new visitor record
Politicians and industry focus on open access
Industry communicates new cooperation agreements
BREKO presents key figures for sustainable network expansion

Wiesbaden, March 16, 2023 Fiberdays 2023 ends today with a new visitor record and continues its growth course as the leading trade fair for fiber optic expansion. The congress also provides important impetus on the second day. The strong competition for Germany’s fiber optic networks is one of the most discussed topics at this year’s Fiberdays. With the announcement of new cooperation agreements, BREKO member companies are following up their commitment to Open Access with action.

Fiberdays at RMCC Wiesbaden ends today with important impulses for the new fiber optic year, a new record number of trade visitors and new formats and topics. “Fiberdays, like the industry, is constantly changing. This year, we were able to start an exciting fiber optic year on our traditional date in March and thus as the first event of the telecommunications and digital industry and set important impulses in the dialogue between politics and the industry. The growing importance of the event is also reflected in the steadily increasing number of trade visitors. With over 6,500 participants, Fiberdays has reached a new dimension. We want to continue to do justice to this growth in the future and further develop the leading trade fair for fiber optic expansion on this basis,” summarizes BREKO Managing Director Dr. Stephan Albers.

Open Access instead of double expansion

The competition for fiber optic networks, which is currently manifesting itself to a very large extent in the threat or actual double expansion by Telekom, was one of the most discussed topics at this year’s Fiberdays. In his keynote speech, Federal Minister Dr. Volker Wissing appealed to the industry to further expand the existing open access efforts. The Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs (BMDV) is committed to Open Access and wants to “give further impetus to the dynamic”.

The panels on the second day of Fiberdays also focused on cooperation and open access. As part of the Open Access panel, the CEOs of leading German telecommunications companies such as Deutsche Glasfaser, Freenet, Vattenfall Eurofiber, Vitroconnect and Telekom held a controversial discussion on the extent to which fiber optic expansion requires regulation and what characteristics marketable Open Access solutions must have. The CEOs of the fiber optic and mobile network operators agreed on the increasing importance of Open Access for nationwide fiber optic expansion and the need for fair Open Access conditions. The panelists see the solution of choice in Open Access cooperation based on virtual layer-2 bitstream products.

New Open Access agreements

As part of Fiberdays 2023, four BREKO members announced the conclusion of cooperation agreements. The companies Vattenfall Eurofiber GmbH and vitroconnect GmbH announced their partnership. Together, they will promote the expansion of fiber optic networks in Berlin in the future and offer Berlin citizens even more fiber optic offers from various providers with Open Access. They want to ensure that companies, public authorities and private individuals benefit from fast, reliable and secure internet connections and that the digital infrastructure in Berlin is further expanded.

Wemag AG subsidiary Wemacom Telekommunikations GmbH and Stadtwerke Neumünster today also followed up on the industry’s commitment to Open Access announced at the Fiberdays congress by signing a cooperation agreement. The contract was sealed live on the Fiberdays stage by the managing directors Volker Buck and Fabian Bühring. The companies, which are building fiber optic networks in different regions, will grant each other network access in order to offer their customers more diversity and increase each other’s network utilization. According to Buck and Bühring, the exchange of experience about the expansion process also plays a role in the cooperation.

KPIs for sustainable fiber optic expansion

The German Broadband Association (BREKO) and Stadtwerke Münster are working together with industry expert and economist Prof. Dr. Jens Böcker to develop an approach for measuring sustainability in the telecommunications market. Nine key performance indicators (KPIs) were presented at Fiberdays. Criteria such as interference suppression requirements, co-laying during construction work on other supply infrastructures, network usage, open access share, sustainable financing, energy efficiency of telecommunications technologies, laying methods, resource management and climate-relevant emissions are intended to address the special features of the construction and use of digital infrastructures and make them measurable. The results are to be made available as part of an industry guideline.

New themes and special areas

The Municipal Marketplace, which was launched this year together with Fiberdays gold sponsor teranet as a new element of Fiberdays, met with great interest from the Fiberdays trade audience. “The Municipal Marketplace, organized jointly by BREKO and our teranet brand as a central meeting point for municipal decision-makers, was a complete success and met with a great response from districts, cities and municipalities as well as other municipal institutions,” summarizes GVG Managing Director Michael Gotowy. “Not least because of this, we as the GVG Glasfaser Group were able to hold a large number of constructive discussions with high-ranking representatives from business and politics – such as the Hessian Digital Minister Prof. Dr. Kristina Sinemus. We are more than confident that concrete new projects can be realized as a result.”

A highlight especially for municipal administrations and companies was the “Gigabit Campus of the federal states and the federal government”, which brought together the digital representations of the federal states and the Gigabit Office of the federal government on 150 square meters. The Infomobile of the Federal Gigabit Office was also on hand in Wiesbaden to answer questions from those responsible in the municipalities and provide information on the expansion of digital infrastructures.

Media Hall celebrates strong growth in visitor numbers

The congress on the future of television, which was held for the first time last year as part of Fiberdays, recorded a strong increase in visitors in its second year and was very well received by network operators and the media industry. TV expert Christian Heinkele, who was commissioned to organize the event, was equally positive: “This year we focused on the topic of fast channels. The topic has a high global relevance and offers a good refinancing opportunity for network operators. This was well received. Thanks to the high-caliber line-up, the Media Hall has become the leading congress for fast channels overnight. The full auditoriums speak for the great interest of the audience.

In the Media Hall, renowned industry experts also took a look into the future and highlighted the influence of new applications and technologies such as Metaverse and ChatGPT on the requirements and business models in the TV and fiber optic market. In addition to IPTV and OTT providers, network operators in the Media Hall gained insights from the industry’s most important content providers such as RTL Media Group, ProSiebenSat.1, Warner Bros Discovery and Sport1. Renowned FAST Channel and xVOD providers as well as TV technology experts, associations and interest groups also used the Future TV Congress to present themselves and network, including industry giants and pioneers such as Samsung TV Plus, Amagi and Meta.