On Wednesday afternoon, POST Luxembourg held a press conference at LuxExpo during the FTTH (Fibre To The Home) Conference 2016 and announced that 50% of homes throughout the Grand Duchy are now connected to high-speed Internet via the fibre-optic network of POST Luxembourg.

Claude Strasser, Director or POST Luxembourg, announced the important milestone that has been reached and presented an insight into the future connectivity of the remaining 50%. He stressed the issue of high-speed connectivity being of critical importance in the years ahead due to the move to digital/mobile devices which support the high-speed development of online services.

Gaston Bohnenberger, Director of POST Technologies, presented the status of high-speed broadband coverage throughout the Grand Duchy. He stressed that Luxembourg leads the VDSL European coverage with 90%, even in rural areas.

As early as 1997 POST Luxembourg realised the advantages of fibre-optic technology for residential subscribers and since then has been developing and laying “hybrid cables” – data transmission cables that contain both regular copper lines and fibre-optic. The aim was to create the conditions to be able at a later date to offer far faster data transmission to POST customers via a still-to-be-created FTTH network.

For ten long years the fibre optic “slumbered” beneath the ground but, in 2007, when the time was ripe both technically and financially, it was finally activated. This enabled POST Luxembourg to reach around 20% of Luxembourg households with its GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) optic fibre network practically overnight.

6-7% of homes connected yearly since 2010

In order to offer an open network that allowed other telecom operators access to customers’ fibre-optic, “point-to-point” architecture was used, and thereafter each customer had up to 4 fibre-optic lines available. In 2010 the day of the new P2P FTTH network (Point to Point – Fibre To The Home) dawned; since then 6-7% of all Luxembourgish households have been connected yearly.

Since 2010 POST Luxembourg has laid over 13,000 km of fibre-optic cable with more than 800,000 km glass fibres – if these glass fibres were laid around the Equator they would encompass the globe 20 times!

50% of all homes connected - 25% in active use

Thanks to this forward-looking plan by POST Luxembourg, it was possible to connect 50% of households to its high-speed network by the end of 2015. FTTH network technology enables POST Luxembourg to offer its customers a high-speed Internet service with transmission rates of 1 Gbit/s download and 500 Mbit/s upload, putting every comparable network in the shade.

Around 25% of connected households are already actively using the “ultra-fast Internet”, including the cloud and TV services of POST Luxembourg, as well as WiFi services set up for citizens by the company on behalf of local authorities, are also largely benefiting from the phenomenal transmission rate.

50% of new connections have therefore already been created – however POST Luxembourg will continue to work intensively to equip the Grand Duchy for the information technology future. And it is already possible to forecast that the 60% mark will be reached in 2017. Claude Strasser stated that it is unlikely to reach 100%, but the growth will be consistent. The annual investment amounts to between €80 - €90 million; this covers not only fibre conenctivity but also the Internet backbone.

Photo by Geoff Thompson (L-R): Gaston Bohnenberger, Director of POST Technologies; Claude Strasser, CEO of POST Luxembourg; Luc Welter, Director of Marketing & Communication at POST Luxembourg