German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/224,
pp. 28402-28403.
Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues.
Dear viewers in the galleries and at the screens.
The government has put forward a draft law which shall
modernize telecommunications. As I said twelve months ago at the first reading:
“It is going forward, but by pussy-footing.” For the first time might services
and performance factors be described with a functional assessment [Ansatz] and not alone with, verbatim, “a
technical assessment”. The Federal government thereby limps behind the market
by only some ten years. For the market long since implemented the functional
description. How otherwise shall technology-open be described than by what was
wanted in performance?
Yet some positives. My suggestion to describe as more
functional and more technology-open the term “networks with high capacity”:
Yes, this suggestion was implemented. There is not only fibre optic.
Unfortunately, there are however again no concrete statements on broadband and
availability in the draft law. The real music thus plays further in the
appendices to the law and in the general decrees and determinations of the
Federal network agency.
As already mentioned, there is among some colleagues a
preference for fibre optic. Yet simply inquire of various of the larger savings
banks. Many have again pulled out the self-same Fiber- to-the-Desk because no
Power-over-Ethernet was possible. That is the practical experience. With this
fixation on one technology, you remind me of Erich Honecker, who also thought
that with one, single technology he had achieved the final breakthrough; he was
thinking at that time of the 1 megabit chip. The finale appeared fully
otherwise. The freedom came and we too require freedom in the area of
technology and telecommunications.
The Chancellor also wanted no freedom and therefore in the
years 2010, 2012, 2017, thus three times, declared IT and broadband to be an
executive matter – thus again one of an attempted state breakthrough in
technology. What however has really happened this time? In the year 1999,
Siemens Mobile received a large contract from China for the construction of a mobile
phone network. Today, we here in Germany are considering whether we want to
deliver ourselves over to a Chinese state concern, Huawei, so as to receive a
modern mobile phone network. We have for long warned of it. Of Siemens Mobile,
there is already for long no more talk. In the construction of broadband in Europe,
we are in place 25, Herr Lämmel, behind economic powers like Slovenia and
Latvia. What a testament of poverty for the world’s fourth largest economy!
Right honorable Federal government, it pains me that I must
say to you: Kindly leave this, this you certainly cannot do.
What we need, among other things, is a defined reliability [Ausfallsicherheit]; for, since the
conversion to IP telephony, the end customers’ telephones are automatically
dead with a failure of electricity. The earlier, the better, and herein we
again need that the telephony functions even during an electricity failure.
Gustav Herzog (SPD): The AfD is for the dial phone!
Not everyone has a mobile phone. Believe me, with this
energy transformation, electricity failures are guaranteed. In paragraph 2 of the
draft law, where it concerns emergency provisions, need be laid down reliability
or availability. The penalties, when a public network operator violates the
emergency provision duties of §§183 ff., of one million euros maximum are much
too little. That is peanuts for such businesses.
To the draft law were associated a total of five motions. We
will, in reference to the issues, vote against, vote for, reject and abstain.
Prepare to be surprised. This draft law however in its present form, we reject.
It is too little and much too late.
And again, dear Federal government: Your balance in
threefold executive matters:
First: Place 25 in broadband construction.
Second: There is no longer a domestic telecommunications
manufacturer.
Third: There exists a real danger of becoming dependent on
Chinese technology.
Fourth: We are already today technologically dependent on
the U.S.A.
You simply cannot do it. It could be thought that you are
systematically destroying the infrastructure and capability of Germany.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
