The German cabinet has approved a change to regulations which will allow frequencies in 700 MHz spectrum, currently used for television, to be used for fast internet connections in rural areas, Reuters has reported.

At the moment, only 20 per cent of the country’s rural areas have access to wireless broadband.

The government has also given the green light to an auction of new frequency bands.

Last month telecoms regulator Bundesnetzagentur said it would auction radio spectrum in the 700 MHz band in May and June of this year, as well as re-auctioning frequencies in the 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz part of the spectrum, where licences expire in 2016.

The auction could bring in as much as €4.5 billion and the government wants to use the money to invest in the expansion of broadband and digital infrastructure.

Germany launched its ‘Digital Agenda’ in August, committing to provide all homes with minimum speeds of 50 Mb/s by 2018.