Germany pushes fiber broadband expansion and AI‑chip research

The municipality of Auerbach in Bavaria is rolling out a new fiber‑optic network that will serve roughly 920 households and businesses. Funding comes from the Bavarian state and a municipal co‑investment, with Deutsche Telekom acting as the construction contractor. Installation is scheduled for 2024‑2027, delivering speeds of up to one gigabit per second and supporting home‑office, streaming, gaming and smart‑home applications.

At the EU level, the SpikeHERO project is developing a novel AI‑processor chip that combines optical and electrical spiking‑neural‑network technology to improve fiber‑network signal quality. Led by Fraunhofer IIS and Fraunhofer EMFT, the effort aims to raise usable bandwidth from 10 GHz to 30 GHz, cut latency below six nanoseconds and reduce power consumption to 1‑2 W, using the SENNA chip architecture.