The Vogtland district can look back on a relatively short history. The Saxon region was only created in 1996 by merging the districts of Auerbach, Klingenthal, Oelsnitz, Reichenbach and Plauen. Since then, a total of 37 municipalities with around 230,000 inhabitants have opened up an area of around 1,400 km² in south-western Saxony, not far from the German-Czech border.
Typical of the Vogtland district is its geographical character due to the foothills of the Ore Mountains. It is therefore largely traversed by a low mountain range landscape, which is particularly evident in the Erzgebirge/Vogtland Nature Park. This extends over the upper areas of the southern Vogtland district and is the nature park in Germany with the largest longitudinal extension of 120 km. Most of the area is densely populated with around 330,000 inhabitants in 92 towns and municipalities and is very well developed for tourism.
Despite this very attractive landscape but challenging location for broadband expansion, the ground-breaking ceremony for broadband expansion in the Vogtland district will begin in mid-2018 as part of a profitability gap model thanks to the federal broadband funding program. The Vogtland South project area will be supported with over 2.5 million euros from the federal funding program. By using existing empty conduit capacities, considerable savings will be achieved when laying the fiber optic cables, which will enable a data connection of at least 100 Mbit/s for over 80% of connections after the end of the project. Over 3,000 households and 31 companies will benefit from the high-speed Internet.
The online portal Vogtlandimmobilien24, which has its main office in the district town of Plauen, will also benefit from the funding measures in the Vogtland district. The real estate service provider bundles rental apartments, land and houses for private or commercial use as well as information on companies from the trades and services sectors on its website. The company is one of the first regional real estate portals to present this offer to its customers through a range of different multimedia applications. Both estate agents and end customers can explore the right property, from videos and property tours to drone images – all in 360° format, as Lars Rupprecht, Managing Director of Vogtlandimmobilien24, explains.
This is not the only reason why the entrepreneur attaches great importance to digital applications: “Digitalization plays a very big role for us. On the one hand, for our employees in their daily work, where proper broadband expansion is essential, as we move very large amounts of data throughout the day. On the other hand, digitalization is very important for our users.” The digital interface between regional brokers and private individuals enables direct data exchange between the portal and the respective broker software. Within his company, Rupprecht and his team have digitalized all processes relating to customer acquisition, support and maintenance through compatibility with the property management programs available on the market. The fully digitalized workflows and the automatic exchange of information with its partners have saved Vogtlandimmobilien24 GmbH very high costs, according to the managing director.
It is therefore not surprising that Lars Rupprecht draws a positive conclusion on the subject of digitalization and is optimistic about a comprehensive broadband expansion in the Vogtland district: “Thanks to digitalization, we are able to reach our users very quickly and effectively, link data and display it in an enhanced form. Without the digital transformation, rapid growth would not be possible.”
Photo: View of the Vogtland.
Photo credit: Shutterstock.