Status: 02.03.2023 08:00 a.m
Network expansion and speed: Both are missing in many parts of eastern Germany. According to a study, the internet is significantly worse in the east than in the west. That is why Germany is only in the middle in an EU comparison.
According to a study by the German Economic Institute (IW), only 44 percent of east German households have a broadband network, compared to 70 percent in west Germany. City-states such as Hamburg and Berlin are far ahead in a nationwide comparison, each with 97 percent.
“The effects of the corona pandemic showed that high-performance broadband networks are also required in private households,” says the study. Many people would continue to work from home or increasingly use digital applications such as streaming services.
Germany only in the digital EU midfield
When it comes to expanding a high-performance broadband infrastructure, however, Germany is only average compared to other European countries. According to the European Commission, high-capacity networks are particularly lacking in rural areas.
In terms of fiber optic coverage, Germany occupies the penultimate place among the EU member states: only about every fifth German household has a fiber optic connection. The European average is every second household.
According to the coalition agreement, the former federal government wanted to have fiber optic coverage everywhere by 2025. A project that the new federal government also has – but now without specifying a specific date by when the goal should be achieved.
Grid expansion in the east is lagging behind
When it comes to stable and high-performance Internet, East Germany has a particularly large number of disadvantages, reports the IW. Because of the lower population density, there are significantly less densely populated cities and a large part of the population lives in rural areas – where there is no good broadband infrastructure.
Based on figures from the Federal Network Agency, the IW calculated the availability of broadband networks in eastern and western Germany. The result: significantly more gigabit networks are available in the west than in the east. At the end of 2018, every fourth household in western countries had high-performance broadband. By way of comparison: in the eastern part of the country, only 17 percent of the people had a broadband network.
In the east, network expansion increased by around three to four percentage points every six months after 2018, while in the west it increased more significantly and reached 57 percent in mid-2020. On the other hand, the average increase in the five eastern states was only 30 percent.
This gap still exists today: in mid-2022, almost three quarters of the households in western countries were supplied with gigabit networks, in the east less than half. “Apparently, Germany is still struggling to provide sparsely populated areas with gigabit networks, which is delaying the expansion in eastern Germany,” said the German Economic Institute.
Bad Internet hinders East German economy
According to the IW, the lack of a broadband network is an obstacle for the East German economy. “This is still about 20 percent below the West German level in relation to the number of people in employment and in relation to the number of inhabitants.”
Overall, only a minority of companies in Germany are able to use digital data efficiently – 30 percent in western Germany and only 25 percent in eastern Germany. The East German average value is being pushed upwards by Berlin.
“Thus, the digital infrastructure and the use of data by companies prove to be important parameters for closing the remaining productivity and thus income gap between West and East Germany,” says the IW study.
Almost 80 percent of Saxony is supplied with 5G
According to the IW study, “bearers of hope” for this could be the lead in the East in the mobile communications sector.
In the eastern German non-city states, 5G coverage is higher at an average of 68 percent than in the west (61 percent). This is mainly due to the comparatively weak performance of Hesse (43 percent) or Rhineland-Palatinate (50 percent). Saxony has already covered 79 percent of the area with 5G. When it comes to city states, the west is just ahead of the east (88 percent) with 92 percent.