TIHANY – 2012. Germany has been slower to implement new services than countries such as Hungary despite having Europe’s largest cable market, according to Carsten Engelke.
Speaking in the opening session of this year’s Hungarian cable conference and exhibition in Tihany, the technology director of cable association ANGA provided a brief overview of the industry in Germany, where all professional cable operators have upgraded to digital and 48% of their customers now subscribe to digital services.
Cable serves 19 million households, while IPTV services are received in around 2 million homes, with the majority of these served by Telekom, and DVB-T penetration is only around 5%, with DVB-T2 and HD still under discussion.
Engelke also said that Germany has opted for the 1,800 MHz band for LTE and GSM services, thereby bypassing interference problems that have been found to exist in the 800 MHz band. Telekom, rather than other telcos, is best placed too utilise the 1,800 MHz band.
Furthermore, he called for a pan-European exchange between cable operators and associations on the topic of the digital dividend, as well as cooperation in other areas including CEPT activities and ETSI.
