Increasing consumer demand for bandwidth for data and video purposes is one factor that Germany’s telcos and cable operators are having to plan for, according to panellists at the opening session of the ANGA COM and Medienforum NRW congress in Cologne.

Opening the event, Thomas Braun, President, ANGA, said it was only cable operators who could offer the necessary bandwidth, suggesting that the “thin copper” of telco networks would never work compared with the hybrid fibre/coax that was the backbone of the cable network.

Lutz Schüler, CEO, Unitymedia, noted that the operator would soon be rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 to address such concerns. “We’re not having to invest 80 to 90 million Euros in digging to achieved this,” he advised. Manuel Cubero, CCO, Vodafone Germany, admitting that the one-time future problem of bandwidth demand had now become a reality. “Cable is the biggest data autobahn,” he declared, nevertheless.

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