- Funds from the federal broadband funding program ensure future-proof fibre optic connections directly to buildings
- 90 percent of all building owners have connected to the digital future
- In total, more than 7,500 households, 125 companies, 6 schools and a rehabilitation clinic in 92 villages will be connected
Located in the Bergisches Land region, around 35 kilometers north-east of Bonn and around 40 kilometers south-east of Cologne, the municipality of Nümbrecht has a good 17,000 inhabitants and covers an area of just under 72 square kilometers. The very rural location of the municipality, which has been designated a climatic health resort, is characterized by a sparse population and large distances between the villages.
For these reasons, telecommunication companies had shown little interest in improving the internet supply through a self-service expansion – as this would not have been very profitable. However, the municipality of Nümbrecht did not want to accept this situation and decided in 2016 to push ahead with the fiber optic expansion itself with the help of the federal broadband funding programme. The decision was made in favor of the so-called profitability gap model, in which the expansion is carried out by a network operator determined by tender and the resulting profitability gap can be closed with subsidies.
In May 2018, aconium GmbH, as the project sponsor of the federal funding program on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), presented the municipality with the final funding decision for almost 8.7 million euros. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia will provide the municipality with additional funding in the same amount, bringing the total to 17.4 million euros.
“The broadband expansion will lead to a significant increase in residential value, quality of life and a significant improvement in Nümbrecht as a business location, as digitalization will restructure and simplify many areas of work and life,” says Mayor Hilko Redenius, underlining the motivation of the Oberberg municipality. “Citizens, schools and, last but not least, businesses have had a greatly increased need for good internet coverage in recent years due to the progress of technology. The Internet makes it possible to overcome distances by exchanging information and data as quickly as possible and without limits.”
The broadband expansion in a total of 92 villages in the Nümbrecht municipal area is being implemented with fiber optic connections directly to the buildings (FTTB). In the tender for the network expansion, which was open to all providers, Gemeindewerke Nümbrecht, a direct subsidiary of the municipality, came out on top in mid-2017 with the most cost-effective offer.
Photo: Gemeinde Nümbrecht
Nümbrecht’s municipal utilities are innovative when it comes to marketing: all broadband products are offered by the “fast Luzie”, who is omnipresent as an advertising figure. The municipal utilities want to impress with performance: all contracts can be terminated on a monthly basis. In addition, there is no set-up fee. And during the transition phase between the old and new provider, new customers (with the exception of telephony, which still runs via the old connection) can use the selected tariff at half price.
To cover the last remaining underserved “white spots”, Nümbrecht has now submitted a further funding application to the project sponsor aconium for 2.6 million euros. This has been provisionally approved; the tender for the last unserved households and commercial enterprises is currently underway.
Photo: Municipality of Nümbrecht
“The broadband funding program has given Nümbrecht a ‘0 to 100’ status,” reports Jan Foerster, who is responsible for this important future topic at the municipality. “Previously, there were actually only ISDN-like speeds of less than 1 MBit/s in some villages and in some cases no broadband/DSL network at all, so we had to switch to appropriate wireless technology – with moderate success, as there are still many dead spots in the valleys due to the topography.” Mayor Hilko Redenius has already noticed noticeable effects of the future-proof fiber optic expansion: “As our municipality is the only municipality in the Oberberg district that can offer symmetrical gigabit connections, several companies have already relocated to Nümbrecht due to the ‘broadband location factor’.” In addition: “Schools can now also focus on digital learning in order to meet current requirements and remain competitive.” However, Redenius and Foerster do not want to rest on their laurels. The next goal is a high-performance Wi-Fi network that can be rolled out at almost any point in the municipality on the basis of the fiber optic network. The busy Nümbrecht residents have already been awarded a further 15,000 euros in funding for this: These come from the EU Commission’s Wifi4EU program, which aims to promote the availability of free WLAN networks throughout Europe.