Deutsche Telekom hits its September homes deadline early, but now must provide coverage on major roads.
Germany’s telecoms regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) confirms Telefonica Deutschland has met its interim coverage goal from the 2015 multi-band spectrum auction.
The operator failed to cover at least 40% of 7,600 unserved locations by 30 June 2020 and faced a penalty of €600,000 if the stipulated areas had not received coverage by the end of July.
The regulator is satisfied that Telefonica met this deadline by adding 3,040 LTE sites into operation so will not be fined.
It must now cover another 1,900 locations by the end of September.
Moving target
Deutsche Telekom (DT) reached its homes coverage target, supplying at least 97% of homes with 50Mbps or faster speeds in every state, according to BNetzA but must still provide coverage of main roads by the end of the year.
Vodafone also has to meet the same September and December coverage deadlines.
Playing catch-up
Earlier this year all three German operators were found to have missed the coverage targets that were conditions of their 2015 spectrum licences, including:
• providing mobile data speeds of at least 50Mbps to 98% of households nationwide and 97% of households in each federal state by 1 January 2020,
• coverage along main routes.
Hence BNetzA gave all three the deadlines of the end of June and September to ensure they met the deadlines by the end of 2020 or be fined.