German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) plans to spend over EUR6 billion (USD6.7 billion) over the next four years on the migration to an all-IP network across its European operations. The Bonn-based telco has already completed the upgrade in Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, with more than eight million lines migrated to IP technology across the continent, including five million in Germany. ‘We are consistently pursuing this path and, in the meantime, are migrating up to 100,000 customer lines across Europe to IP technology each week,’ Claudia Nemat, DT board member for Europe and Technology, was quoted as saying at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The move to all-IP integrated network will make it easier and cheaper for DT to offer consumers multi-service packages of high speed broadband, television and fixed and mobile telephony. The customer experience will be enhanced through superior products, better customer service and shorter time-to-market with higher speed and less latency.
According to DT, half of households connected to its European network will be able access broadband connection speeds of at least 100Mbps by 2018, while fixed data rates of up to 500Mbps will be available for around 12% of homes. The firm says it will achieve this primarily through the combination of fibre-optic technology and new technologies such as G.fast and ‘Super Vectoring’, which it will gradually deploy throughout Europe in connection with the infrastructure restructuring. In terms of mobile technologies, DT adds that LTE network coverage will be expanded to around 95% of the population in its European markets by 2018, while all DT radio masts in Europe will be equipped with the 4G technology by 2020.
