“We are the fast ones” – with this, Mayor Inderthal emphasized another successful step towards a competitive future. In the Lahn-Dill district of Hesse, the ground-breaking ceremony on May 25, 2018 marked the start of broadband expansion in the Niedersolms industrial estate. Member of the Bundestag Hans-Jürgen Irmer, District Administrator Wolfgang Schuster, Mayor and Spokesman for the Mayors of the district Frank Inderthal, Project Manager Klaus Bernhardt, Manfred Henning, Regional Manager of aconium, the sovereign project sponsor of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), and representatives of the telecommunications companies joined forces in Solms to break ground.
The connection of the commercial area to the fiber optic network is an important milestone for the expansion project. Under-served residential areas as well as all schools and clinics will also be supplied with fiber optics once the project is completed, reported District Administrator Wolfgang Schuster. The expansion is being funded with almost 5.7 million euros – 50 percent of the project costs – by the BMVI’s federal broadband funding program. A further 3 million euros will come from the state of Hesse and just under 2.7 million euros will be provided by the municipalities of the Lahn-Dill district. On completion, 4,887 households, 113 schools and 712 companies will be supplied with transmission rates of at least 50 Mbit/s; 117 companies in the project area will have access to bandwidths of 1 Gbit/s and higher in future with the help of the funding. A total of 890 kilometers of fiber optic cable will be laid in the Lahn-Dill district.
At the ground-breaking ceremony, Mayor Inderthal and the managing directors of the local companies pointed out the great added value of the fiber optic expansion for the citizens, the economy and thus the entire region. The expansion of the digital infrastructure is the basis for creating jobs and increasing the quality of life, thus promoting the attractiveness of the location in the long term. Regional Manager Manfred Henning, aconium, also emphasized the necessity of broadband expansion: “Broadband is a hard location factor – the expansion of gigabit networks will be the basis for the prosperity and economic development of entire regions”.
Photo r-l: Klaus Bernhardt (Project Manager Lahn-Dill Broadband), Mayor Frank Inderthal (Solms), Manfred Henning (Regional Manager aconium), Member of the Bundestag Hans-Jürgen Irmer, District Administrator Wolfgang Schuster (Lahn-Dill district), Harald Ortmann (Telekom Deutschland) at the groundbreaking ceremony in the Lahn-Dill district on 25.05.2018.
Photo credit: aconium GmbH / Teresa Klug