The Main-Tauber district is the northernmost district in Baden-Württemberg. With its north-south extension of over 100 kilometers, it is one of the largest of the 35 districts in Baden-Württemberg, but with around 132,000 inhabitants on an area of over 1,300 km², it has the lowest population density of all.
The area is part of the Stuttgart metropolitan region and has the unique feature of bordering three other metropolitan regions (Rhine-Main, Rhine-Neckar and Nuremberg). In order to promote this location in terms of infrastructure, five of the nine expansion areas in the Main-Tauber district have already been expanded with a fast network since April 2017 – supported by the federal funding program for broadband expansion with over ten million euros. Expansion area 1 (Großrinderfeld, Tauberbischofsheim and parts of the municipality of Werbach) will be completed and put into operation at the end of February. The ground-breaking ceremony for expansion area 6 will also take place in February.
The area, which is difficult to connect to broadband due to its large area and low population density, should be equipped and the project completed by the end of 2018. This will connect over 17,000 households and more than 1,600 companies to broadband technology. BASS GmbH & Co. KG will also benefit from the federal broadband subsidy from May this year when the commissioning of high-performance FTTH access takes place. The Niederstetten-based family business manufactures tools for machining internal threads. Its customers include companies from the automotive industry, aviation, medical technology and mechanical engineering.
The implementation of the Industry 4.0 concept and its introduction in all areas is one of the biggest projects since the company was founded, explains Martin Zeller, Managing Director of BASS GmbH & Co. According to Zeller, the use of digital solutions in the work process plays a particularly important role in development, production and sales, for example in the exchange of memory-intensive 3D data. With the FTTH access soon to go live, the company will be able to work with external service providers to further develop systems via remote access, where a lot of additional work was required before the expansion. “The connection with our sales subsidiary based in Shanghai will also be considerably simplified thanks to the high-performance broadband,” says Martin Zeller, who is delighted with the infrastructure measures supported by the federal broadband funding program that will be available to his company in May 2018.
Photo above: BASS GmbH & Co. KG in Niederstetten.
Photo below: A cable reel.
Photo credit above: BASS GmbH & Co. KG.
Photo credit below: Jens Gowasch/aconium GmbH.