German village takes digital fate into own hands

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 there, 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, because thanks to the new high-speed connection he can check the availability of parts much more rapidly. Around 30-kilometre (18 miles) from Danish border, the brick houses and gardens of Loewenstedt, with its population of just 640, are spread over about 200 hectares (500 acres). With around 22 km 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 5 staff has collected more than 2.5 million euros ($3.4 million) in funds, thanks to its 925 shareholders who each contributed a minimum of 1,000 euros, said BBNG chief Ute Gabriel-Boucsein. 94 per cent of households, like that of Kock and his family, pledged to sign up to the network for 2 years before it was even built, according to AFP.