Deutsche Telekom has revealed that its technology team focused on building optical fiber network, street cabinets and mobile base stations in 2018 as part of the strategy to improve customer experience in Germany.
“Our ambition is to give our customers the best network experience – and not just in densely-populated areas,” said Walter Goldenits, CTO at Telekom Deutschland.

Deutsche Telekom installed around 60,000 kilometers of optical fiber in 2018, achieving 50 percent growth from 2017. The total length of the company’s fiber-optic network is 500,000 kilometers.

Deutsche Telekom made 8.8 million households faster this year. 26 million households can now book a rate plan with 100 megabits per second (MBit/s) or more.

Deutsche Telekom has installed 23,000 new street cabinets in 12 months. It equipped them with active technology and connected them to the network via optical fiber. The total number of street cabinets in the network has now increased to 177,600.

Deutsche Telekom said it aims to complete its FTTC (fiber to the curb) upgrade in 2020. Deutsche Telekom’s FTTH (fiber to the home) will reach up to two million households every year.

Deutsche Telekom is the first network operator in Europe to use artificial intelligence (AI) in a pilot project aimed at faster, more effective planning of the optical fiber expansion. The company engineers focus on faster and optimized route planning to ensure faster roll out of its network.

Deutsche Telekom is executing the two contiguous FTTH projects in Germany. Deutsche Telekom is equipping some 40,000 households with FTTH in the district of Vorpommern-Rugen and some 50,000 households in the Bautzen district.

Deutsche Telekom has connected a hundred parks with optical fiber, benefitting nearly 45,000 businesses in total. Deutsche Telekom plans to connect 3,000 business parks throughout Germany with optical fiber in 2022.

Deutsche Telekom has built 1,300 new mobile base stations this year, increasing their total number to 27,000.

Deutsche Telekom’s mobile network covers 99.8 percent of the population and 97.6 percent of its area. 97.8 percent of the population have LTE coverage; area coverage is 97 percent.

Over 80 percent of Deutsche Telekom’s mobile base stations are already connected with optical fiber. They have also been equipped with single RAN technology, making them ready for the new 5G communication standard.