Mobile communications
Network agency boss: Compulsory nationwide mobile phone network
The Federal Network Agency wants to push ahead with the expansion of a nationwide mobile phone network in Germany. Photo
© Jan Woitas/dpa
Germany’s mobile phone networks are improving, but there are still problems in some places. The Federal Network Agency wants to ensure that the connections improve with relatively strict requirements.
Federal Network Agency President Klaus Müller has confirmed the plan, Germany’s established mobile phone providers are required to expand their mobile phone network nationwide by 2030. “No counter-argument has convinced me so far,” Müller told the German Press Agency in Bonn. In mid-May, the regulatory authority proposed that by 2030, the mobile phone networks of the established operators must cover 99.5 percent of Germany with a download speed of 50 megabits per second. In cities and some rural areas, this benchmark has long been exceeded, but not in other areas.
Telekom boss Tim Höttges rejected such a requirement as disproportionate and “hardly feasible”, especially since it would not benefit customers. Regulator Müller takes a different view. Such an expansion requirement could be met and it would be important for people in Germany, for example in rural areas. “If 99.5 percent were achieved, Germany would have good mobile phone coverage right down to every milk can.” In Müller’s view, this is necessary in the data-driven digital age, in which mobile phone networks enable technological innovations and can make work in agriculture easier, for example.
The expansion requirement should be 99.5 percent and not 100 percent, because in some places in the mountains or in other impassable areas, good cell phone reception is not possible, even from the network agency’s point of view. Sometimes there is simply no one who wants to rent a piece of land for a cell phone tower. The established network operators should commit to the 99.5 percent area requirement and other regulations and in return receive an extension of certain usage rights for frequencies.
A consultation phase on the Federal Network Agency’s proposal will run until July. After that, the agency will make a final decision on the catalogue of requirements and thus on the guard rails for the future expansion of the mobile phone network in Germany. Compared to the usual household requirements – i.e. the expansion obligation measured in households and not in area – the new requirement would be more stringent.