Missing Link: Germany's long road to fiber optics
Good ideas don't always catch on. And some are only forgotten, but would still have a big impact decades later.
(Image: juerginho/Shutterstock.com)
Almost exactly 50 years ago, the "Commission for the Expansion of the Technical Communication System" (KtK) found clear words: the "public telex and data network" should be expanded "without delay" due to increasing demand. At the end of 1974, 24,500 "data stations" were identified in a count that was likely highly accurate under the supervision of the Federal Post Office. Without delay: that didn't really work out – and the slowness was often influenced by political decisions.
1976 was a year of impending upheavals. Standard Elektronik Lorenz (SEL) launched the LO2000, the first electronic telex machine approved by the Federal Post Office for telex, without a rotary dial but with a ten-key keypad. While at the other end of the world Seymour Cray's first supercomputer went into operation in Los Alamos and remained the fastest in the world for six years, the fee collection center of the broadcasting institutions in the Federal Republic began its work. In the GDR, the Fernmeldewerk Nordhausen was working on the development of push-button dialing devices for the Deutsche Post there. All of this is long gone, and yet back then it was also clearly announced in politics what later became a certainty: telecommunications are gaining importance – and alongside telephony, data traffic is increasingly becoming the focus.
This week, former Federal Post Minister Christian Schwarz-Schilling died – a man whose work is still felt today. Because Schwarz-Schilling, for ten years from 1982 to 1992 under Helmut Kohl, was the second-to-last Post Minister of the Federal Republic and the key architect of the gradual privatization of the Federal Post Office. He was also a man of cable issues in the early days of computer networking.
The early 1980s were characterized by what magazines at the time called "coaxial copper euphoria": the Federal Post Office, as a monopolist, largely relied on available copper lines. The Post Minister, ahead of some contemporaries, reportedly did not want to neglect fiber optic technology under any circumstances, but saw no application for it. With the addition of the first private television channels, with which Helmut Kohl also wanted to break the power of the public broadcasters, the emerging cable connections were well usable – but here too: acceptance was low at the beginning. What were German citizens supposed to do with this newfangled stuff?
The era of the expiring telecommunications monopoly was a time of fundamental questions: Is it right for a state authority to have telecommunications operationally and organizationally under its wing? That the answer to this was already "no" in the 1980s was hard to overlook given the many difficulties that arose – both in slow expansion, cost management, and with misguided products like Bildschirmtext (BTX), which were unsuccessful in the market. The KtK report was something like a prelude to what was to come: communication media were denationalized, and the state cashed in what belonged to it.
GDR Post: No Connection
But this is, of course, only the West German part of the story: in the GDR, not even one in five households had a telephone connection, in East Berlin almost one in three, and in the Rostock district only 7.8 percent. The switching technology of the GDR Post was partly still from before the war – which in turn triggered gold rush fever for some in the West with reunification.
Not least because this also provided a reason to actually introduce ISDN. Grand plans were forged within the framework of the Post Union, often discarded again, but partly also realized, such as the "Telekom 2000" plan, which was also intended to bring fiber optics experimentally to the East. But the OPAL technology partly laid there was not easy to reconcile with the next intermediate step: the again copper-based ADSL.
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Freedom Begins at the Main Connection
The question was always: Will there be a technology that is even better, even faster, even more attractive? When Schwarz-Schilling explained in 1988 how the "restructuring of the postal and telecommunications system" was to proceed, the next round in the fight was already underway. Because the "liberalization," the denationalization, began with the division of the Federal Post Office into Post, Postbank, and Telekom – and with a very wild idea: that the sovereignty over the state-operated network ends at the main connection.
There was only one minor restriction: freedom of terminal equipment ended with the necessary seal of the Telecommunications Engineering Central Office (FTZ), and from 1992 with that of the Federal Office for Telecommunications Approvals (Bundesamt fĂĽr Zulassungen in der Telekommunikation, BZT). Without a seal, operating a telephone, fax, or modem on Federal Post Office or Telekom networks was prohibited. And yet, this was a liberalization: before, only renting from the Federal Post Office was allowed.
For citizens, however, the possibilities changed – but the actual use of data networks remained low for now. Because dialing into telephone networks for data transmission remained a costly affair – unless it was available in the same local network. The benefit seemed manageable to many. And the basic requirement of a digital terminal device was also missing in most private households until the late 1990s. In addition, most companies in the early, partially liberalized telecommunications market had no idea what would be accepted in the private sector and what wouldn't – call-by-call prefixes for phone calls. Other ideas came and largely disappeared again as a result.
A Debacle Reveals the Need
In fact, it was primarily a historical accident in the telecommunications market that revealed the long-existing demand for flat rates for data usage in a telecommunications market still oriented towards voice shortly before the turn of the millennium: the 77-Mark Mobilcom flat rate disaster of 1998 – from 7 p.m. users were supposed to be able to dial into the internet via underutilized telephone lines until 7 a.m. The effect: all dial-in ports were occupied in no time, customers were angry – and financially, it was a disaster for Mobilcom and other providers who had also jumped on the bandwagon.
And yet it was a starting signal: the demand for affordable data network access massively exceeded the market-available supply – so much so that even the first Telekom CEO Ron Sommer became a late flat rate friend before he resigned. The always-on idea was also the main reason why DSL and broadband cable suddenly became interesting: classic analog lines were too slow and occupied with modem connections, ISDN was too little widespread and not fast even with two channels.
And yet a new problem arose: both new technologies were relatively inexpensive for operators – because they favored owners of existing infrastructure. For over a decade, Telekom CEOs focused on squeezing the last Mbit out of the copper line – in exchange for good money. But this also involved a partial reversal of provider choice: with the step from ADSL to VDSL, competing providers were thrown out of the house connection again.
While demand continued to rise, driven first by file sharing, then by video platforms, and most recently by streaming services, the market continued to exert pressure: While 100 or 200 megabits are still sufficient for many customers. But only if they actually arrive. The result was that fiber optic infrastructure, which had to be expanded in the background by network operators, moved closer and closer to homes. That it is now also arriving in them seems only logical.
Future Uncertain
The history of data networks in Germany shows some recurring patterns: it is not always the most advanced technology that immediately finds acceptance with providers and customers. But the market of supply and demand also regulates telecommunications – with some delay and if the state is willing to intervene. But as long as there are no clear application scenarios, all parties involved wonder: Do I need this?
This plays a crucial role in the current debates surrounding the expansion of fast data network infrastructure: What usage behavior can be expected at all? How much data at what speed will be needed where and when? How sensible is it at all to lay in-house structures as fiber optics in parallel to fast – naturally connected via fiber optics – mobile data? The answers to these questions are always also a bet on the future. The current bet is: everyone will need fiber optics; neither satellite internet nor mobile communications can match its capacity. Which is why the Telekom copper network is now supposed to disappear, and perhaps also the copper networks of cable operators; in any case, fiber optics are finally supposed to reach homes and consumers.
A Forgotten Idea
But it is not yet clear what the result will be for the very last meters: Will landlords now have fiber optic house networks laid and rent them out to access providers? Will Deutsche Telekom make offers to landlords for fiber optic house cabling that they cannot refuse? Or will the "windhund principle" ensure that someone expands some house because they have found the first customer there? All of these are currently still open questions that the Federal Network Agency as the regulatory authority and Federal Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger as the legal framework provider must now consider – within the framework of the stakes already driven in Brussels.
One thing, Christian Schwarz-Schilling frankly admitted in Wirtschaftswoche eight years ago, surprised him: In 1981, the previous government under Helmut Schmidt (SPD) had made a cabinet decision that empty conduits should be systematically laid. As Post Minister, that was not an issue at all, no one worked on it – and he had never heard of it until 2018. Such reserve infrastructure for future times would have saved a lot of work 40 years later. The recommendation for this comes from the report of the Commission for the Expansion of the Technical Communication System, which is now 50 years old.
(vbr)
