Joost Farwerck0:07
Good afternoon, everyone. We will finally turn on 4G in Rotterdam today. I've been waiting for it a long time. It was a month ago already at the southern side of Rotterdam and then I thought, God, the coverage is so fantastic, why don't we do it now? But my technical team assured me: Rotterdam is so important, we want to do it so well, so we needed some preparations to do it properly. Well, I just tested, at the request of Vincent Evers, with the Speed Test, one of the most used apps on 4G at the moment. But it is indeed very fast, at least at this location, so that is a joy. How fast? It was 45 megabits. That is fast.
4G is therefore the new standard for mobile, of course in combination with 2G and 3G. We recently completed an auction and we bought frequencies there, not only for 4G but also for 2G and 3G, and a combination of those assets makes it possible for KPN to position itself in the Netherlands as a very powerful player, which we already are, but certainly with 4G it becomes very beautiful in the Netherlands. We started 112 days ago. We started in the Kop van Noord-Holland, that's why we kicked off in Amsterdam. That was not to step on the toes of Rotterdammers, but because we are rolling out across the Netherlands in one wave. So we roll out our network from where we started, that is the most efficient, and thereby we can ensure the fewest interruptions. So the quality during rollout on 2G, 3G, and 4G, we handle all those networks. It can be a bit troublesome at the borders, and by rolling out that way, we guarantee the best quality.
So for that reason we are in Rotterdam today, and as I said, we would have liked to do it earlier. While we are talking here, our people are of course continuing to build. We are advancing towards Den Bosch, to Eindhoven, and to Utrecht, and at the top to Amersfoort and to Hilversum, and I don't know if you saw the green dots on the map, but every day we add a few, and we do that in that wave movement, and before the summer really starts, which we are all waiting for a bit, we hope to cover at least 50% of the Netherlands. So in the coming time we will also go to Den Bosch and to the other large cities such as Utrecht to celebrate that 4G goes live there. If you get into your car today and you have 4G, you can at least drive to Amsterdam, and if you don't feel like that, to another location within the Randstad and have constant coverage on 4G.
It is an impulse for innovation, and that is the reason we have chosen to invest in it full speed. We are very proud that we started rolling out just 2 weeks after the completion of the auction. That is really fast on the world map. And innovation, I mean not only the speed we are talking about and of which you just saw a good example, but also the services that run over it, and that's why we work together with many companies, with educational institutions, with municipalities, port companies, where hopefully Alderman Lauers and K.J. Scherpenzeel will talk about it themselves in a moment, to make all those new services possible on 4G. Rotterdam is important for us, Rotterdam is important for the Netherlands, an important pillar for our economy.
In Rotterdam a lot of attention is paid to ICT innovation and everything that is possible with new technology, and examples such as Rotterdam City Portal, Rotterdam Open Data, Internet of Things, yes, make Rotterdam truly distinctive in that regard. I am very enthusiastic about that, and KPN hopes to support those initiatives and work together. There is also a splendid project Port Connect, Captain van Scherpenzeel will hopefully say something about it in a moment. Yes, with that we hope to show how technology can make a difference in a port.
4G is called 4G because we first had 2G and then 3G, so logically after that comes 4G, and in the future there will undoubtedly be 5G, but it all started with 2G, calling, voice, where it turned out that it was also possible to send SMS messages to each other, so other types of use over those networks you started to see. The need for 3G arose, more data, more internet, other types of use, WhatsApp, we have talked a lot about it, and now that step to 4G, where the internet is wide open on those smartphones.
