Radio telescopes for even shorter wavelengths in the millimetre and submillimeter range were built by MPIfR, namely the 30m IRAM telescope on Pico Veleta (Spain) and the 10m Heinrich Hertz telescope on Mt Graham (Arizona/USA). The latest instrument is the 12m APEX telescope in the Chilean Atacama area, which started in 2005 with radio observations in the submillimeter regime. APEX is a precursor to the international ALMA project (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) for high-resolution studies in the highest radio frequencies accessible from ground.

The low-frequency regime in radio astronomy is covered by LOFAR, the "Low Frequency Array", a European radio telescope at meter wavelengths with a number of stations in different European countries connected via fast internet. The first German station with 96 dipole receivers was recently built at the Effelsberg site. LOFAR is the European precursor for the SKA ("Square Kilometer Array"), the international project for radio astronomy in the next decade.