German operator Deutsche Telekom (DT) is ready to put the pedal to the metal in 2022, aiming to deploy fiber even faster after covering 1.2 million new households this year.
The operator said its 2021 deployment figure represents a doubling of its rollout performance in 2020 and included the installation of more than 70,000 kilometers of fiber. In the coming year, it is aiming to ramp its pace even further to hit two million new homes passed with fiber.
All told, DT is striving to reach 10 million households with fiber by 2024. Thereafter, it expects to add 2.5 million fiber connections each year.
“By 2030, we want to build eight million fiber-optic connections in communities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants,” Telekom Deutschland Board of Management member Srini Gopalan stated. “In addition, our GlasfaserPlus joint venture will provide four million rural households with a fiber-optic connection.”
RELATED: Deutsche Telekom secures €900M for rural fiber JV in Germany
Unveiled last month, the joint venture with Australia-based IFM Investors is expected to begin deployments in 2022 and aims to reach its four million-location target by 2028.
By the start of the next decade, “every household and every company in Germany should have a fiber-optic connection. We will build a large part of this,” Gopalan said.
DT is far from the only one looking to get in on Germany’s white hot fiber market. Liberty Global and Telefonica have also announced plans to build fiber in Germany, and earlier this week fiber provider Deutsche Glasfaser Group secured 5.75 billion Euros (approximately $6.47 billion) in financing to help it reach a goal of covering four million households in the country by 2025. The company said it is hoping to secure an additional credit line of 1.5 billion Euros ($1.69 billion).
Deutsche Glasfaser was acquired last year by investment firms EQT Infrastructures and OMERS for a reported sum of $2.74 billion. The company said that it ultimately wants to provide fiber to six million, or about 10% of, households in Germany and will offer use of its network to other providers on a wholesale basis.