VIENNA -- Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO Telekom Austria Group, today presented the company’s plans for the further expansion of its network infrastructure at the “A1 for Austria broadband Rollout Plan”event. “Broadband rollout is not a luxury, but an essential infrastructure requirement for any country. We are constantly expanding our mobile and fixed net networks and are the uncontested infrastructure leader in Austria. We are the only domestic provider that offers a full-coverage ADSL network with transmission speeds of at least 2 Mbit/s countrywide. By 2015, we will provide two thirds of all Austrian households with gigaspeeds.” he said.

Doris Bures, Federal Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology pointed out in her keynote: “We want to catapult Austria to the top of the ICT nations. I personally stand for equal opportunities for all Austrians – access to broadband is one of the conditions. The Austrian broadband strategy is designed in a way that ultrafast broadband access will be reality for all Austrians by 2020.”

The Telekom Austria Group has pushed ahead with the further development of its domestic network infrastructure in recent years. However, the surge in data traffic, with data volumes doubling every 1 to 1.5 years, will require massive investments going forward. Within the framework of a comprehensive broadband rollout plan for Austria, the Group’s domestic subsidiary A1 will gradually rollout its future-proof GigaNet based on fiber-optic to meet the ever-increasing demand for higher data volumes also in the next decades. By the end of 2011, 2.1 million Austrian households and commercial businesses will be covered by the company’s high-performance GigaNet, which corresponds to 50% network coverage. By 2015, this high-speed network will be made available to 2.75 million or 66% of all Austrian households in both urban and rural areas.

The year 2012 will also see the beginning of the countrywide rollout of the next-generation mobile technology LTE, which allows transmission speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s. By 2015, all Austrian provincial capitals and urban centers will be covered with this leading-edge mobile technology.

Telekom Austria AG (NYSE: TKA; Vienna: TKA)