Europe's largest telecom operator Deutsche Telekom announced Tuesday to expand its fiber-optic-cable network in Germany with an investment of 12 billion euros (about 16 billion U.S. dollars).

This Project would "prepare Germany for the Gigabyte-Society", said Rene Obermann, CEO of the Deutsche Telekom. With the new technology Vectoring, fiber-optic-cable network can supply households with internet speeds of up to 100 megabites per second.

According to the company, it is not just bigger cities which are considered in this investment, "we also take care of smaller cities und rural areas."

Currently, Deutsche Telekom serves with its fiber optic network more than twelve million households, and the company expects the number of households to double by 2016.

By 2016, internet speeds of up to 100 megabites per second would be accessible to 65 percent of the german population, and it should be 80 percent in 2018, said Obermann, hoping that his company could keep a market share of more than 40 percent.

In addition to Deutsche Telekom, the major current fiber-optic-network providers in Germany are the telecom operator Vodafone and the cable operator Kabel Deutschland. (1 euro = 1.3172 U.S. dollars)