Breitbandkabel Landkreis Karlsruhe GmbH (BLK) based in Karlsruhe was founded in 2014. The BLK is owned by the district of Karlsruhe (51% stake) and TelemaxX Telekommunikation GmbH (49% stake), which in turn are owned by the municipality/Stadtwerke Baden-Baden, Stadtwerke Bretten, municipality/Stadtwerke Gaggenau, Stadtwerke Bühl, Stadtwerke Karlsruhe, Stadtwerke Rastatt and Stadtwerke Ettlingen as well as the Stadtwerke Bruchsal and the municipality Stutensee as shareholders.

Complete territorial coverage of essential services

The aim of the BLK is to rent available infrastructures, build missing lines and to thereby be able to provide a continuous backbone network in areas in the district where private providers have no fibre optic expansion plans. The focus is on complete territorial coverage of essential services with fibre optic connections of at least 50 Mbit/s symmetrically respectively in the municipalities participating in the project as a public service.

In the long term, the 2025 expansion target is aimed at transfer rates of 1 Gbit/s in line with the EU target for 2025. The planning work and construction measures is closely coordinated between the BLK and the municipalities on the basis of inter-municipal cooperation and the resulting synergy effects.

Glass fibre backbone – the backbone of the future

In this district model, the BLK builds the fibre optic backbone and the municipalities build the passive infrastructure such as fibre optic lines, MFGs, POPs in the municipalities (access network) and makes it available to the operator, currently Inexio GmbH, who won a Europe-wide tender. Inexio is responsible for operating and marketing in accordance with the network operating contract and provides the actual telecommunications service (Internet, telephony and television) for the end client.

Upon being awarded the contract as operator, Inexio was additionally obligated to enable OpenAccess mechanisms. In relation to this project, this means that Inexio offers alternative telecommunications companies mechanisms to in turn provide their client products to the actual end client via the municipal broadband network.

More information is available at: https://www.breitbandkabel-karlsruhe.de/