Germany, united fiber optic country? It would be nice! Because politicians have preferred copper lines – vulgo: the old telephone cables – in the past, the fast and sustainable glass strands now have to be laboriously expanded. Only one person still has a pretty good laugh: Vodafone. Because the German subsidiary of the British group owns the largest TV cable network in Germany. This can also be used for the Internet since the extensive digitization. And at pretty high speeds.
But do the providers keep what they promise? What comes from promises of speed? The providers always provide them with a smaller printed “up to”. The magazine chip has in an elaborate test examines the state of landline connections. The specialist editors not only evaluated 132,000 speed measurements from readers, but also sent 553 mini-calculators to volunteer testers, who were supposed to use them to deliver even more objective results. Because experience has shown that Internet users often measure their Internet speed when things are not going as expected. The mini-computers, on the other hand, do this in a time-controlled manner.
Vodafone was the price-performance winner at national level. The people of Düsseldorf can calculate their tariffs comparatively low because most of the cables to the end customers are already in the ground and installed in the houses. After numerous customer complaints during the pandemic, Vodafone also invested in more fiber optic lines to make the main network – the so-called backbone – more reliable. Philippe Rogge, who has been head of Germany since last summer, calls the result of the test “confirmation of the work and improvements made by our technicians over the past twelve months”. Because of her, the network is now delivering the high quality that customers deserve, he told the SZ.
Vendors raise prices
With end-to-end fiber optic connections into the house, on the other hand, the providers have to redo everything: the lines and the house connections. One company in particular is particularly active in this regard, DeutscheGlassGlass. The company, which has been endowed with billions of dollars by international investors, is primarily targeting rural areas and the suburbs.
In the federal states in which the company is active, it is also in the price-performance ratio – i.e. gigabit per euro – mostly ahead, even ahead of Vodafone. However, this can also be seen in other federal states where there are strong regional providers. In Hamburg, for example, Wilhelm Tel tops the list, while in Bavaria the Munich-based provider Mnet comes right behind the German fiber optics and Telekom. When comparing countries, the results of the mini-computers could not be taken into account because the number of them was too small. For the next test, she wants chip spend more of these devices.
Even if Vodafone is ahead nationwide, with their fastest lines, customers almost never reach the advertised maximum number of one gigabit per second (Gbit/s), that is 1000 megabits per second (Mbit/s). However, the experts point out that 600 Mbit/s on a line that should actually deliver 1000 Mbit/s is still better than 250 Mbit/s over a DSL line, which costs the same.
In a nationwide comparison come after Vodafone Telekom as well as O2 and 1&1. Unlike the other competitors, Vodafone relies on coaxial cable and a different transmission standard called Docsis. That stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification and shares the bandwidth with the signal for the television pictures. Therefore, you also need a special modem for this, it is not connected with the usual network cable, but with a coaxial cable similar to an antenna cable. Since many households already have a TV cable connection, Vodafone usually does not have to lay any new lines and can therefore offer cheaper tariffs.
Vodafone has also recently increased the prices. Initially only for new customers, but since this Wednesday existing customers have also had to pay more. Telekom has also been demanding more from new customers for a few weeks now, and the old prices only apply to the most expensive tariffs. Vodafone and Telekom dominate the fixed-line Internet market together with around 70 percent, with 1&1 and O2 accounting for 17.5 percent. Regional providers such as Deutsche fiber optics, Netcologne or Mnet share the rest among themselves.