FDP parliamentary group vice chairman Frank Sitta has called on the federal government to pick up the pace in digitizing the country and finally set up a digital ministry. Looking ahead to this Wednesday’s meeting of the Digital Council, Sitta told Deutsche Presse-Agentur: "The Corona crisis has made it abundantly clear what potential lies in the digitization of our country and how important a good digital infrastructure is today. Unfortunately, the federal government has slept through the digital revolution for years."
Vouchers and hatch closure auction
The grand coalition must significantly increase the future portion of the stimulus package, which is estimated at around 50 billion euros: "We need a digital ministry as a central coordinating body and more investment in digital infrastructure and management", said Sitta. He reiterated the FDP’s call for a massive acceleration of fiber-optic expansion through low-bureaucracy gigabit vouchers for households and businesses. With such vouchers for gigabit connections, small and medium-sized enterprises as well as local residents are to be given the opportunity to have their own connection upgraded. The network operator would take over the expansion and be paid the equivalent value of the voucher, according to the FDP’s idea.
Sitta explained that the remaining gaps could be closed quickly and economically by means of so-called gap auctions. According to these considerations of the FDP, frequencies of the areas in which a market expansion is worthwhile should first be auctioned off. Then the proceeds are to be used effectively in a gap closure auction.