Germany to be DSL world beater, says Deutsche Telekom

Speaking at the telco's 10th Internationales Presse Kolloquium in Berlin yesterday, Sommer claimed that this availability surpasses the rest of the world.

In the UK, DSL services have been stuck in a quagmire of confusion, with a number of BT's rivals threatening to pull out of co-location initiatives and set up their own local loops.

Telekom's Sommer rejected claims the German incumbent is actually holding up the progress of internet usage. Criticising regulators, he said there isn't a level playing field with other European nations, and his company currently faces lower access charges than set elsewhere, for example in comparison to BT in the UK.

Sommer said connecting the country's 36,000 schools to the internet will be completed ahead of schedule, and praised the efforts of the 7,000 Telekom employees who have trained around 26,500 teachers in internet skills.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems and a guest at the event, said bandwidth is a bottleneck for remote learning.

Chambers said e-learning "isn't quite there yet", but predicted that in the future "the bandwidth factor" will have a dramatic impact on education. He said world leaders he has met with in countries such as China, Singapore, Australia and the UK understand this revolution and its knock-on effect on GNP.

Manfred Overhaus, from the German finance ministry, said he is pleased Deutsche Telekom is meeting universal service obligations, catering for schools and older citizens.