Telekom Deutschland (TD), the domestic operating unit of Deutsche Telekom (DT), plans to install 2,000 new mobile base stations this year, with a focus on rural areas and on improving coverage along roads, highways and rail routes. In terms of 5G communication, 5G antennas have been transmitting in Telekom’s network in central Berlin under real conditions since 2018 and the firm will set up additional 5G test areas in other German cities in 2019, starting in the first quarter with Darmstadt. Telekom says it will also be making increasing use of small cells in its network in 2019 to upgrade network capacity in line with demand in major cities such as like Hamburg, Berlin and Munich.
Telekom also plans to roll out 60,000km of optical fibre in 2019, adding to the 500,000km already installed nationwide. After conducting advance marketing for 140 business parks in 2018, the company will now start connecting them with fibre-optic lines, starting with the Egelsbach business park near Frankfurt. Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) upgrades are already planned in 2019 for around 61,000 households in Bautzen, for around 47,000 households in the Maerkischer Kreis district, and around 45,000 households in the northern Saxony region. The first 30,000 households in and around Stuttgart are planned to be connected with optical fibre as part of a major digitisation project. Furthermore, this year Telekom will modernise around five million households to enable speeds of over 50Mbps.