On Monday, March 26, 2018, the ground-breaking ceremony for the broadband expansion in the district of Vorpommern-Rügen took place in the municipality of Kramerhof. The event was hosted by District Administrator Ralf Drescher, Vorpommern-Rügen district. In the morning, he, Christian Pegel, Minister for Energy, Infrastructure and Digitalization of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Tim Brauckmüller, Managing Director of aconium GmbH, the project management agency of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), and Timotheus Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG, met in Klein Kedingshagen to herald the expansion of the digital infrastructure in the first of nine expansion areas on the mainland part of the district.
District Administrator Drescher hosted the event. In his welcoming address, he praised the excellent cooperation between all 63 municipalities involved in the funding projects, which together made the success possible in the first place. Minister Christian Pegel sees the broadband expansion that is now starting as a great opportunity for the region. He thanked the federal government, which is making a decisive contribution to ensuring coverage in the region with the help of federal broadband funding. The fiber optic expansion project in the Vorpommern-Rügen district is one of the most extensive in Germany. In the nine expansion areas on the mainland alone, almost 37,000 households will benefit from internet speeds of at least 50 Mbit/s once the work is completed in 2019. More than 80 percent of them will be able to use 100 Mbit/s or more. In addition, 197 institutions and administrations will be connected to the high-speed network, including 24 schools, 42 other educational institutions and eight hospitals.
The expansion will also benefit the economy: almost 4,000 companies in the region will have access to network speeds of 1 Gbit/s and more. 837 kilometers of civil engineering work, the laying of more than 3,600 kilometers of empty conduits and the installation of 819 new cable junctions are planned for the expansion project in the large rural district. For the construction, 441 kilometers of existing empty conduit capacity can be used. The district will receive 77.1 million euros from the BMVI’s federal broadband funding program for a total of nine different expansion projects on the mainland. The state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is funding the project with a good 28.1 million euros, with a further 12.8 million euros coming from the district’s and municipalities’ own funds.
Photo above: District Administrator Ralf Drescher (Vorpommern-Rügen district, l.) and Tim Brauckmüller (Managing Partner of aconium GmbH, r.) talk at the ground-breaking ceremony for the start of broadband construction in the mainland part of the Vorpommern-Rügen district in Kramerhof on 26.03.2018.
Photo below: Minister Christian Pegel (Ministry of Energy, Infrastructure and Digitalization Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) sits on a trenching machine on 26.03.2018 in Kramerhof at the ground-breaking ceremony for the start of broadband construction in the mainland part of the district of Vorpommern-Rügen.
Photo credits: aconium GmbH / Florian Schuh.