Fast, mobile Internet for Jena and the surrounding area

On Wednesday, Valentina Kerst, Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, presented the city of Jena with a funding decision in the amount of €70,000. As part of the Thuringian strategy for the digital society, the state is supporting model projects that create modern infrastructures to make life attractive and maintain competitiveness.

"The funding is intended to enable professional and structured project management so that it can be transferred to other Thuringian regions if successful," said Kerst. She also praised the pioneering role that the city of Jena is taking on with this project: "The city of Jena began developing its concept for networked mobility at a very early stage and I am delighted that telecommunications providers have now been inspired by this idea."

"As part of our participation in the Federal Ministry of Transport's 5x5G innovation competition, we are working with our project partners to develop a concept for innovative 5G applications, particularly in the area of mobility. The 5G development is an important basis for our digitalization projects and also strengthens Jena as a digital location. We are delighted about the partnership-based cooperation and the content-related and technical support from Telekom and Vodafone in our project," explains Benjamin Koppe, the city's Head of Digitalization.

In order to be able to quickly expand the future wireless technologies in Jena and the neighboring Saale-Holzland district, the city has already been working for months with the major mobile communications providers, who will be able to intensify their network expansion in the future. The city of Jena is concluding agreements with the providers Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone this week to support the 5G mobile network expansion in the high-tech region of Jena.

Walter Goldenits, Managing Director Technology, Telekom Deutschland: "Jena has long been regarded as one of the most important educational and scientific centers in the state. We are therefore particularly pleased that, together with the city, we have the opportunity to take further and important steps towards the future. We launched our 5G network in Germany last year and now reach around 40 million people in Germany with this state-of-the-art mobile technology. Jena has understood the importance of mobile communications, especially 5G, for society, business and science and is once again demonstrating its pioneering technological spirit."

Dr. Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO Vodafone Germany: "5G will make people's lives even better. For example, by making traffic in cities and conurbations smarter and greener. With 5G, we will reduce travel and congestion times as well as fuel consumption. Soon in Jena too. The city of Jena's project is a role model. We are delighted to be able to contribute to the 5G infrastructure with our expertise."

Mayor Christian Gerlitz is also pleased that this major step has now been taken. "The infrastructure has changed. Where roads and power grids may have been decisive factors in generating growth and prosperity in the past, data networks have now taken on a much greater role than traditional infrastructure. We as the urban development department also see it as our task to promote and support the expansion of mobile communications."

According to Gerlitz, the difficulty lies in the financing: "Wired Internet access systems such as fiber optic expansion are massively publicly financed and supported. Whereas in the mobile communications sector, providers have to implement this on their own and also raise a lot of money for the licenses for 5G frequencies. Ultimately, customers perceive mobile communications coverage as public infrastructure, except that it is self-financed by companies - and not through taxes. This is an important service that we want to support wherever possible."