In May of this year, Ditzingen signed a preliminary contract with Telekom for the expansion in Heimerdingen. The company began the fiber optic expansion at the end of July. After two months of construction, the company can now connect the first 10 households to the fiber optic network. It is laying 11 kilometers of fiber optic cable in Heimerdingen and installing 17 street distributors. In doing so, it is creating the conditions for a further 590 households in the district to have fast fiber optic connections to their homes in the future.
"Our Heimerdingen district is now one of the fastest municipalities in Germany," says Michael Makurath, Mayor of Ditzingen. "High-speed Internet is a very real locational advantage. For the entire district, but also for every single property there."
"I am delighted that things are progressing so quickly in Heimerdingen. The residents will receive the fastest Internet connections available by today's standards. This gives them unlimited application possibilities," confirms Viktor Kostic, Managing Director of Zweckverband Kreisbreitband Ludwigsburg.
Hans-Jürgen Bahde, Managing Director of Gigabit Region Stuttgart GmbH and broadband representative for the Stuttgart region, draws a positive balance of the first months of expansion: "Heimerdingen is benefiting early on from our cooperation program with Telekom. In each of the five participating districts of Böblingen, Esslingen, Göppingen, Ludwigsburg and Rems-Murr as well as in the city of Stuttgart, construction crews are on the move and laying fiber optic cables right into the homes."
In addition to Heimerdingen, citizens in the municipalities of Allmersbach im Tal, Bad Cannstatt, Bempflingen, Reichenbach im Täle and Weil der Stadt in the Stuttgart region will also be able to benefit in the near future. In total, almost 165 kilometers of civil engineering work will have to be carried out. As in Heimerdingen, the expansion work in Reichenbach im Täle, Weil der Stadt and Bad Cannstatt is already so far advanced that the first customers will be able to use the high-speed network in the fourth quarter.
The expansion in Heimerdingen is the result of a cooperation between Gigabit Region Stuttgart GmbH and Deutsche Telekom. The focus of the gigabit project is the partnership-based expansion of the ultra-fast fiber optic network. By 2025, 99% of the population should also be able to use mobile communications (LTE). There are also plans to rapidly build a high-performance 5G network. The contract is unique in Germany in this dimension. The program is also intended to stimulate investments in fibre optics by other market participants.
The expansion area currently comprises 174 municipalities in the city of Stuttgart and the five neighboring districts of Böblingen, Esslingen, Göppingen, Ludwigsburg and Rems-Murr. Around 2.8 million people live in this metropolitan area. Around 140,000 companies are based there.
