DT continues to lie to itself with super vectoring

Deutsche Telekom has continued its rural broadband expansion with an additional 160,000 households, but is still claiming super vectoring is a suitable alternative to fibre investment.

The first 423 nearshore areas have gone live meaning 160,000 houses in the Brieskow-Finkenheerd, Dautphetal-Mornshausen, Waldfischbach-Burgalben, Schwabsoien and Wyk auf Föhr areas can now experience speeds up to 100 Mbps. This is the first phase of the broadband expansion project, focusing on the rural areas before moving onto the major cities. It’s an unusual approach tackling the farmers first, but we like the unusual every now and then.

“The nearshore roll-out program is a key part of our broadband strategy,” said Walter Goldenits, Chief Technology Officer at Telekom Deutschland. “That is why this successful start to the project is so important. As the single network operator, we are building super-fast Internet infrastructure for our customers right across Germany.”

The vectoring and super vectoring investments are nothing but a short-term fix for DT, which it seems very happy with. Once the upgrades are completed users will be able to experience speeds up to 250 Mbps, however that is no-where near the lightning fast promises of fibre. This might appease the German people for the moment, but short-term strategies like this are only going to cost the telco more when customers demand fibre speeds in a couple of years.

There are plans to lay 6,000 kilometres of optical fibre in approximately 7,200 nearshore areas, however this is not a number which should be deemed anywhere near high enough to satisfy the hungry digital appetites of the connected economy. DT can continue to lie to itself for the moment but it won’t be long before the strategy comes back to kick it. And hard.