BREITBAND LOERRACH

Promoter – Financial Intermediary

ZWECKVERBAND BREITBANDVERSORGUNG LANDKREIS LOERRACH

Location

• Germany

Description

The project concerns the rollout of Very High Capacity Networks in the district of Lörrach / Germany. The long-term target is to connect every household with an optical fibre cable for the provision of Gigabit broadband services by 2030 . The specific focus of this initiative are the non-urban areas, which present in total about half of all households in the district. Such premises are located in rural and in very remote areas, and they include also business districts, schools as well as other public premises. The investments will enable an additional 30 000 homes to be connected with access to Gigabit fixed line broadband services. The project will bring a significant uplift of the broadband service offering, as the customers are today often served by less developed broadband services below 30 Mbps.

Additionality and Impact

The Project concerns the roll-out of Very High Capacity Networks in the district of Lörrach (Germany) to connect 30k households, schools and businesses to Gigabit broadband services. The Project focuses on rural and very remote areas. The Project contributes to the policy objective of Digital Infrastructure. It will lead to the deployment of innovative and secure telecommunication technologies and thus generate positive externalities by enabling more users to benefit from improved and safe access to ultrafast broadband services, enabling innovative digital services and reinforcing digital transformation. These benefits are however not fully captured by the Project revenues, a market failure leading to underinvestment. Moreover, the Project addresses the typical market failures leading to underinvestment in infrastructures, due to significant investment costs, particularly in scarcely populated regions, in front of uncertain revenue flows.

This will be the borrower's first promotional bank loan. It will increase the affordability of the borrower's substantial investment programme into broadband infrastructure by providing a stable funding base alongside public subsidies. The Bank's financing will also offer further important benefits such as a long loan maturity and flexibility with respect to availability period, interest rate arrangements and drawdowns, which will enable an optimal alignment with the implementation modalities of the Project.

Objectives

The long-term target is to connect every household with an optical fibre broadband access line at the latest by 2030. The current rollout until 2025 is focused on areas with no or only limited ultra-high speed broadband coverage. The investments will enable additional 30 000 homes with access to gigabit fixed line broadband services. The implementation will take place from 2021 to 2025. The project will bring a significant uplift of the broadband service offering up to gigabit services.

Sector(s)

• Telecom - Information and communication

Proposed EIB finance (Approximate amount)

EUR 70 million

Total cost (Approximate amount)

EUR 152 million

Environmental aspects

Investments in fixed telecommunications projects (mainly civil works for urban underground cable/fibre roll-out) do not fall under the Annexes of Directive 2014/52/EU amending the EIA Directive 2011/92/EU. The related works typically have limited residual environmental effects as they are mainly carried out alongside existing transport infrastructure such as roads.

Procurement

The Promoter is a public law body operating in the Telecom sector, which is exempted from public procurement requirements. The procedures applied will be verified in detail during the appraisal.

Status

Signed - 29/10/2021