On March 12, the symbolic ground-breaking ceremony in Esklum (municipality of Westoverledingen) in Lower Saxony marked the start of civil engineering work for broadband expansion in the district of Leer. The district will be successively developed in over 134 project areas.
The district of Leer (East Frisia), located in the north-west of Lower Saxony, is aligning its broadband expansion with the Weser-Ems Regional Action Strategy 2014 – 2020. District Administrator Matthias Groote, together with Mayor Theo Douwes (municipality of Westoverledingen), other colleagues and representatives of the telecommunications companies carrying out the work, the Office for Regional Development and the Broadband Competence Center of Lower Saxony, were positive about the fact that the broadband expansion in the district of Leer will now provide more than 10,000 households, 87 schools, 14 fire departments and 260 companies with future-proof connections.
This means that internet speeds of at least 50 Mbit/s will be available throughout the district after the expansion in mid-2019. The companies will have symmetrical connections of 1 Gbit/s for download and upload. For the infrastructure project, 1,008 kilometers of empty conduits and 365 kilometers of fiber optics will be laid and 400 cable distributors will be installed. The district administrator emphasized: “We are delighted that so many households and companies in the district are being made fit for the digital future with this expansion project”. The expansion in the district of Leer is being implemented with federal funding of over 11.8 million euros from the Federal Ministryof Transport and Digital Infrastructure(BMVI) as part of the federal broadband funding program, as well as co-financing of 2 million euros from the state of Lower Saxony from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). The district of Leer and the towns and municipalities belonging to the district are responsible for the non-funded portion in order to cover the total funding requirement of 40.6 million euros.
Stefan Molkentin (Regional Manager of aconium GmbH, the BMVI’s appointed project sponsor) added at the subsequent ground-breaking ceremony in the Esklumer Straße/Am Alten Siel project area that today marks the start of another forward-looking broadband expansion in Lower Saxony; users of the high-speed Internet will now also be equipped for all future requirements.
Photo: Stefan Molkentin (aconium, second from left), District Administrator Matthias Groote (seventh from right) and Mayor Theo Douwes (municipality of Westoverledingen, sixth from right) at the ground-breaking ceremony with other colleagues and representatives of the telecommunications companies carrying out the work, the Office for Regional Development and the Broadband Competence Center of Lower Saxony on 12.03.2018 in Esklum.
Photo credit: Landkreis Leer