We are in Munich today, from 07.09. The IAA Mobility will take place here until September 12th, 2021. And what is special this year is that the IAA is taking place in the Munich city area for the first time. We at Telekom, together with Messe München, have ensured that the exhibitors at their exhibitions in the city center are provided with high-speed internet. And how that works, how fiber optics and 5G get to the exhibitors, let's take a look now! A few days before the start, work in downtown Munich is in full swing. In some cases, a completely new network had to be set up for the IAA exhibition in the city. Cables are laid between construction sites, vehicles, farmers and tourists, as is the case here at Odeonsplatz, and fiber optics are fed. Our technicians are in constant use, sometimes under difficult conditions – noise and hustle and bustle around them. When working in the open spaces, they too face new challenges. I meet Jochen Bauer from the Deutsche Telekom field service and Daniel Senkblei from the technical branch south.

The two lead me through the Open Spaces and explain to me what Deutsche Telekom is expanding for Messe München for this year's IAA Mobility. Hi Jochen, you have already accompanied many trade fairs for Telekom. What is special about this year's IAA? Unlike other events, the IAA does not only take place on a trade fair site with a hardwired infrastructure, where there is a network, where there is a LAN or a telephone system, but it takes place in the whole of Munich in new places where we do not have a suitable infrastructure for a trade fair hold up. And that's why we have to think about how we can upgrade these places for a trade fair. And we were asked by Messe München to get involved in 2020. And together with the colleagues from the technical infrastructure, we have developed a concept to upgrade these places for trade fair operations, such as in the IAA. And today we offer various products for the exhibitors in these places. Can you explain, what specifically do you offer the exhibitors here at the Open Spaces? We offer the exhibitors on the new squares in downtown Munich products based on Telekom.

These are 50, 100 and 250 megabit connections. In addition, we also offer professional DCIP connections with a bandwidth of up to one gigabit. The whole thing is wired. But if the customer wants additional cabling services, we also offer these. Like WiFi for example. The controller is based on Cisco, the customer can obtain it from us and the customer also gets it here at the IAA. How long have you been working on the expansion, the open spaces and the fair in general? Yes, the plans go back to 2020. We then sat down together with the colleagues from the technical infrastructure and developed a plan at the beginning of 2021, in January/February. The planning then went into implementation from May and the last distributor went online 14 days ago and was bookable. And since then, the technical field service has been busy bringing and connecting the stands and these distributors with fiber optic cables.

And we're going to take a look at just such a power distributor! Instead, Daniel and Jochen show me around the Odeonsplatz. In total, Telekom has placed eleven such network distributors at various locations in the city centre. In this way, 67 FTTH and five DCIP connections were implemented. One of these orange boxes can provide up to 32 Internet connections. The last cables are just being pulled from the network distributors to the exhibition stands. There are a number of obstacles to overcome. For example, the cables are laid on the other side of the street with the help of bridges. Hi Daniel! Can you explain to us how many kilometers of fiber optics we have laid here? Here at the IAA, we as Telekom have laid a total of 17 kilometers underground, i.e.

In the civil engineering area or moved in and above. What we see here now: we laid six kilometers of cable at the trade fair. Can you explain to us where did you get the glass fiber from? How is the network structured here in the Open Spaces at the IAA? Yes, we set up a new fiber optic network here at the IAA trade fair. Extra for trade fairs. Not only for the IAA, of course, but also for other trade fairs. In this case, we simply rebuilt a main cable from a switching center and then routed it to our 11 mobile network distributors.

And the network will then remain for future events, or how will it be continued? Yes, the network should remain in place for future events. This means that we will of course dismantle the upper part, which can now be seen here, and we will leave our cables inside the cable ducts. This means that we can set up and repair our network for other trade fairs in the future as quickly as possible.

You said you laid a total of 17 kilometers of cable in the city. What were the challenges you faced during expansion? The challenge was actually not the civil engineering, but rather the laying in this constellation with the ongoing traffic, which is still here. Or laying the cables above ground. That means bringing the cables through trees to the stands. That was much more of a challenge and above all the aspect that we had a very short planning time. And the implementation time for us to set up the boxes in the so-called time was short. And it was very tight. Daniel, who took care of the fiber optic rollout in his team, shows us how such a mobile distributor is set up. So here is our underground cable. That arrives here, then goes in here and here we have the individual splice cassettes. There our underground or main cable is then spliced ​​onto this yellow inner cable, as you can see here.

So here's the underground cable — it comes in here and then it goes in here. And this is where the inner cable comes out and that is then placed here on chains, so to speak. Here we see it quite nicely. This is our inner cable. This is now going into the nets of the cassette. I'll take that out now.

You can rotate that too. Here you can see the splice and it is then wound up again. Then go around the back on this path to the stretcher. At this point, the service technicians take over and activate the connection at the customer's site. This has not yet happened at this network distributor. That's why we're changing locations. Telekom service technician David Limbach works on this NVt at Odeonsplatz. The supply of the customer via this network distributor is special. A separate underground cable was laid at the exhibitor's stand, which is now to be connected. Our technician therefore removes the so-called One Box from the power distributor. It contains the individual splice cassettes. You can take her to the exhibitor's stand. The connection cable for the box is first prepared there. Then the individual fiber optic connections are spliced ​​together. All this at around 30 degrees, construction sites, noise, visitors and hustle and bustle in downtown Munich. After the splicing work has been completed, the One Box will later be installed in the customer's booth.

The customer booked a DCIP connection for this exhibition stand. The One Box will therefore later be linked to a network termination point. At another booth, our technicians are already a step further. The FTTH connection installed here is tested in advance and can then be handed over to the customer. The demands on our technicians are diverse. Depending on the location of the exhibition grounds, different challenges await. I've retired a bit now. At the front of the open spaces, work is still in full swing. It's really unbelievable what the stand builders and our technicians achieve there. If you liked the video, leave a like. And if you have any questions, please leave us a comment. Until then, take care and ciao..