“In the district of Südwestpfalz, we are dealing with an overall project that has been cleverly coordinated from the outset: Households, schools and commercial areas will be supplied with fast Internet and thus keep pace with the challenges of digital change,” emphasized State Secretary Randolf Stich (Ministry of the Interior and Sport, Rhineland-Palatinate) at the symbolic ground-breaking ceremony for the start of broadband expansion in the district of Südwestpfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) on Monday, 26 March.
Stich was joined in Waldfischbach by District Administrator Dr. Susanne Ganster, Member of the Bundestag Anita Schäfer, Member of the State Parliament Alexander Fuhr, association and local mayors as well as Manfred Henning, Regional Director of aconium, the project sponsor of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI). “Broadband is a hard location factor – the expansion of gigabit networks will be the basis for the prosperity and economic development of entire regions,” emphasized Henning. He praised the consistently exemplary and targeted cooperation between the federal government, the state and the district of Südwestpfalz. The regular dialogue during the process of market exploration, through the application process to the current start of expansion has been excellent. He presented District Administrator Dr. Ganster and the district coordinator, Hans Dietrich, with the final amount of funding for the broadband expansion.
Eleven schools and more than 5,600 households, which will be able to use data transfer rates of 50 Mbit/s and higher in future, are to benefit from the measure. The project will also benefit 400 companies. After completion, they will be able to access connections with transmission speeds of at least 1 Gbit/s.
The district of Südwestpfalz is receiving a total of 2.32 million euros in funding from the federal broadband funding program to implement the expansion of the digital infrastructure. The state of Rhineland-Palatinate is contributing 1.16 million euros and the district’s own contribution amounts to around 387,000 euros.
Photo: State Secretary Randolf Stich (Ministry of the Interior and Sport, Rhineland-Palatinate), District Administrator Dr. Susanne Ganster, Anita Schäfer (MP), Alexander Fuhr (MP) and Manfred Henning (Regional Manager aconium) (l-r) at the ground-breaking ceremony in Waldfischbach (district of Südwestpfalz, Rhineland-Palatinate) on 26 March 2018.
Photo credit: aconium GmbH