Telecom giants Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone will work together to expand high-speed VDSL Internet broadband services in Germany, the companies said on Tuesday. "We are also in talks with other competitors and open for further co-operation," a Deutsche Telekom spokesman said.
The two companies would begin next year by expanding in two German cities - Wuerzburg and Heilbronn - giving about 50,000 households in each city access to the super-fast network. So far, 50 cities in Germany have access to VDSL, a faster version of standard broadband technology with speeds of several tens of megabits per second, enough for high-definition video streaming.
Deutsche Telekom has urged its rivals to help build a VDSL network in Germany and warned the country would lose its competitive edge if it did not invest in broadband expansion.
Telekom and other fixed-line operators are keen to offer more broadband services to compensate for a declining customer base for traditional landline services as they compete against cable companies' all-in-one packages of video, telephone and Internet services. Deutsche Telekom aims to attract around 500,000 customers this year for its television service via broadband, Internet IPTV.