Accepting that Germany was years behind other countries in broadband coverage, the German economics minister has called for greater efforts from the telecoms industry to resolve the problem. Responding to this request, German ISPs have called for the government to open up the spectrum presently occupied by analogue TV broadcasters for use by wireless broadband services.
The German economics minister, Bernd Pfaffenbach, said he would not force Deutsch Telekom to lay unprofitable wires into rural areas. But Harald Stoeber of the communications industry federation Bitkom said that Germany's regional states had to be 'encouraged' to relinquish the frequencies that would soon be released when analogue TV is replaced by digital service.
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