Deutsche Telekom Expansion: How the fast network is getting to homes

Bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps is now possible as the network expansion is reaching a total of 329 cities and communities.

Deutsche Telekom's wvectoring upgrades are continuing at full speed in 2018: as of today, more than 358,000 households in 207 cities and 122 communities can now connect to the Internet with up to 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload.

The cities receiving the new service include Geislingen (9,000 households), Henstedt-Ulzburg (8,000 households), and Kamen (8,300 households). Deutsche Telekom's goal is to supply as many people as possible with fast Internet lines – in both cities and rural areas.

"We aren't only building information superhighways between major metropolises and population centers; our network also extends to the countryside. We are the only company pursuing comprehensive broadband expansion," says Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. "Some of our upgrade projects serve tens of thousands of households, while others serve just a handful. For us, every line counts. In Chemnitz, Erfurt, and Ulm, but also in Bergen an der Dumme, Hutthurm, and Puderbach."

No other company is investing as much in broadband expansion in rural areas as Deutsche Telekom. The next wFTTC commissioning wave will take place on February 15.

How the fast network is getting to subscribers' homes

The copper lines running between local exchanges and street cabinets are being replaced with fiber-optic cables (wFTTC = fiber to the cabinet), which can support considerably higher transmission speeds.

The existing distribution cabinets – those large, gray roadside boxes – are being converted into multi-function cabinets, which are veritable mini-exchanges. In the multi-function cabinets, the light signal coming from the fiber-optic line is converted into an electrical signal, and then fed into the existing copper cable leading to the subscriber's access.

Vectoring technology is used in order to make that copper-cable connection fast. By reducing electromagnetic interference ("crosstalk") in lines, vectoring is able to boost bandwidth significantly. As of the second half of 2018, "super-vectoring" will then be used, and this will enable bandwidths of up to 250 Mbit/s.