Right to fast internet: First provider obliged to provide minimum coverage
After a long delay, the Federal Network Agency has for the first time obliged an Internet provider to supply a household with minimum bandwidth – without cable.
Idyll without the Internet.
(Image: ThomBal/Shutterstock.com)
The Federal Network Agency should have ordered the first providers to offer households in Germany that are not connected to the Internet a minimum service based on the right to "fast" Internet that has existed since the beginning of June 2022 by the beginning of March 2023 at the latest. At that time, it was already clear that in at least a dozen cases, no telecommunications company was able to provide an adequate internet connection. After a delay of one year, the time had come: in March 2024, the regulatory authority obliged an internet provider to supply a household in Lower Saxony with internet and telephone services for the first time.
This was stated by the federal government in a recently published answer to a question from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The MPs accused the government of not implementing the right to fast Internet. The Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs (BMDV) contradicts this, without providing details.
According to a report by Netzpolitik, the issue relates to a plot of land in Mittelstenahe near Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony. None of the providers expanding in the region – Telekom and EWE – had been instructed to provide minimum coverage, but rather the satellite provider Starlink.
Thousands of households feel underserved
Between June 2022 and February 2024, the Federal Network Agency received a total of 5581 complaints about a possible undersupply, according to the government. Most of the complaints came from citizens and legal entities in Lower Saxony and Bavaria. Since 2021, 6451 cases have been closed without proceedings.
Since June 2022, the regulator has identified an undersupply in 29 cases, affecting around 46 locations in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Hamburg and Bavaria, writes the BMDV. The lion's share of 16 decisions were made in Bavaria, where old buildings were affected. According to the response, eleven findings concerned Lower Saxony and one each concerned North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg. With one exception, these were new buildings.
13 declarations of undersupply have since been revoked as the basis for a formal obligation decision no longer applied. In all of these cases, "short-term coverage options" via mobile or fixed network have been created or will be secured in the foreseeable future.
Higher minimum bandwidths are a long time coming
The Network Agency initially put the number of households potentially affected by an undersupply at up to 330,000. The BMDV now assumes that this figure "has fallen due to improvements to the fixed network". It should also be noted that coverage options via satellite and mobile communications were not included in the initial exploratory study.
In mid-2022, the Federal Government promised the Federal Council that it would increase the minimum download bandwidth associated with the legal entitlement from the current 10 MBit/s to at least 15 MBit/s and the minimum upload bandwidth by mid-2023. The latter is currently 1.7 MBit/s. The government has still not kept its promise.
The BMDV insists that an amendment to the ordinance on the minimum requirements for the right to the provision of telecommunications services (TKMV) can only be initiated based on an evaluation. The latter is now "well advanced" after several expert opinions have been obtained.
(mho)
