"Thanks to investments totaling 600 million euros ($887
million) in 2007 and 2008 ... at the end of 2008, we will be
supplying 96 percent of all households with DSL," board member
Timotheus Hoettges said on Thursday in Berlin ahead of the IFA
consumer electronics fair.
"In concrete figures, this means that 400,000 more
households will be connected to the high-speed network in 2008
and a good 140,000 of them in areas that were previously
without the service," he added.
In July, the European Union's competition chief cleared 141
million euros in German public funding to boost high-speed
Internet usage in rural Germany.
The German plan provides incentives for telecoms companies
to roll out broadband networks to rural areas where investment
would not be attractive on a commercial basis.
"The digital divide between rural and urban areas in
Germany is currently one of the highest among the EU member
states," European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said at
the time.
Almost all Germans in cities can access broadband Internet
DSL networks but little more than half of people living in the
countryside could do so at the end of 2006, the Commission said
in July.
(Reporting by Nicola Leske; Editing by David Holmes)
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