German Village Drives New Digital Revolution

Too isolated and with few inhabitants, the tiny village of Loewenstedt in northern Germany is simply too small to show up on the radars of national internet operators.

So the villagers took their digital fate into their own hands and built a broadband internet network of their own. Peter Kock, who runs an agricultural technology supply firm in the village, couldn't be happier.

Data files that used to take two hours to load onto his computer screen now appear in just 30 seconds. “It's brilliant. There's no comparison,“ he enthused. And that benefits his customers, too, be cause thanks to the new high-speed connection he can check the availability of parts much more rapidly.

Surrounded by wind power generators and fields, 30km from the Danish border, the picturesque brick houses and gardens of Loe wenstedt, with its population of just 640, are spread over about 500 acres.

With around 22km of network needed to link up all of the houses to the high-speed data highway , “we would never have found a company willing to supply the necessary fibre-optics,“ said mayor Holger Jensen. Some 58 other communities in Northern Friesland face similar difficulties and so the idea was born of clubbing together -businesses, individuals and villages -to secure access to a modern technology that is taken for granted in most German towns and cities.

Mounted on the walls of Kock's store room are two white boxes bearing the initials BBNG or Citizens' Broadband Network Company , set up in 2012 to collect the funds and build the fibre-optic network.

The firm with five staff has collected more than $3.4m in funds, thanks to its 925 shareholders who each contributed a minimum of $1,363, said BBNG chief Ute Gabriel-Boucsein.

Source: Agencies