Fiber optics for all by 2030: Ravensburg district focuses on the future

37 of 39 municipalities form the special-purpose association for broadband supply in the district of Ravensburg – strong commitment to comprehensive and sustainable broadband supply with gigabit connections

The Zweckverband Breitbandversorgung im Landkreis Ravensburg is working with the towns and municipalities to build a future-proof fiber optic infrastructure and aims to provide every building in the association’s area with a direct fiber optic connection by 2030. The special-purpose association represents almost all – 37 out of 39 – municipalities in Baden-Württemberg’s second-largest district – that is around 210,000 households. In the long term, all private customers, businesses and institutional customers in the association’s area are to be connected with fiber optic connections directly to the buildings.

Now that the special-purpose association has almost completed the backbone network in the district, it is pushing ahead with the FTTB expansion in the individual member municipalities and will be primarily responsible for leasing the network in future.

The expansion in the district is being consistently driven forward even in coronavirus times. In the municipality of Bodnegg, the fiber optic network was handed over to the leaseholder and operator of the network, NetCom BW, in mid-May. The company will now equip the network with the missing components and then put it into operation. After that, the high-speed Internet will be available to citizens and companies.

A combination of federal and state funding is being used to implement the project. On the occasion of the network handover in mid-May, the special-purpose association was pleased to receive the first advance payment from the federal broadband funding, which aconium GmbH is responsible for as the project sponsor on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI).

“This was possible thanks to the competent and very cooperative support from the federal project sponsor, aconium GmbH,” praises Oliver Spieß, Chairman of the Zweckverband Breitbandversorgung im Landkreis Ravensburg.

Bodnegg’s mayor Christof Frick also emphasizes this: “I am really pleased that we are being supported by the federal and state governments with this funding for the necessary broadband expansion.”

As part of the FTTB expansion, the Wollmarshöhe psychosomatic clinic has already been connected to the fiber optic network in advance due to the particularly urgent need for a high-speed Internet connection. And the Rosenharz specialist center operated by the Liebenau Foundation, which cares for people with special assistance needs – for example with psychological or neurological impairments – will also be supplied with a gigabit-capable fiber optic connection in the coming months. “Now that the foundation stone for the broadband expansion in Bodnegg has been laid, we want to connect other underserved areas in Bodnegg to the network in line with our financial resources,” announces Mayor Frick. This is an enormous feat for a large municipality like Bodnegg. The Zweckverband Breitbandversorgung im Landkreis Ravensburg intends to consistently pursue its ambitious expansion targets in the future. Expansion projects are already underway in Bad Wurzach and Fronreute as well as tenders for fiber optic expansion in Kreenried and the town of Bad Waldsee.

And in Argenbühl, the ground-breaking ceremony for the multi-million euro fiber optic expansion in the municipality was celebrated at the beginning of June. According to Mayor Roland Sauter in the Schwäbische Zeitung, digitization is an indispensable element of future development and at the same time a mammoth task, especially in Argenbühl with more than 200 hamlets, most of which have only a few households. CDU member of state parliament Raimund Haser even spoke of a “happy day for Argenbühl” and praised the joint funding from the federal and state governments, which is secure despite coronavirus. “Corona has shown us how important broadband expansion is,” affirmed Association Managing Director Roland Fuchs, who is also the mayor of the municipality of Königseggwald. “Especially in times like these, it is clear how urgently the economy and society need high-performance fibre optic connections as the basis for digitalization,” emphasizes Fuchs. “Our work is therefore an active public service for now and the future.”