The right to fast internet promised by the grand coalition will be weaker than initially planned. This results from the new draft bill of the Federal Ministries for Economics as well as for Transport and Digital Infrastructure for the major reform of the Telecommunications Act (TKG), which has been planned for months and which heise online is available.

In principle, according to the urgent initiative, the Federal Network Agency must determine which requirements an internet access service available to all citizens must meet. According to the first surcharge of the two houses from the spring, it should “particularly take into account the minimum bandwidth used by the majority of consumers in the territory”. “Other national circumstances” will also be included, such as the effects of the established quality on “incentives for private-sector broadband expansion” and support measures.

Calculation of the average minimum bandwidth According to the new version, the regulatory authority must “at least 80 percent of consumers in the Use the minimum bandwidth used in Germany “as the main starting point for calculating the speed of the extended universal service, no longer that of over 51 percent of households.

This should have a significant impact on the average bandwidth. According to the Federal Network Agency’s broadband atlas, “the spread of broadband connections with high marketed transmission rates” has “increased significantly” in recent years. Consumers are therefore increasingly asking for connections with transmission rates of at least 30 or 100 MBit / s after.

Nevertheless there was 2019 still around 12, 5 million households with bandwidths below 10 to below 30 Mbit / s. The number of private connections with over 100 Mbit / s to less than 1 Gbit / s was only 9 million. The largest share was 13, 4 million households between 30 to below 100 Mbit / s in the middle.

If the Federal Network Agency were to use the average minimum bandwidth of 50 percent of home connections, this would be higher than for over 80 Percentage of consumers. In the second calculation variant, more households with a low bandwidth are included, who do not have fast access at all or who cannot afford it.

In the planned new variant, “more people would be those who have less bandwidth, “confirms the Duisburg telecommunications economist Torsten Gerpott to heise online. This can be seen specifically in the figures from the current market analysis by the VATM industry association. According to this, by the end of the year 47 percent of local customers with a bandwidth of above 50 MBit / s on the way. If you take the planned 80 percent of the customers, the minimum speed would currently be 16 MBit / s.

According to another statistic from Mitte 2019 the average internet speed in Germany when downloading just under 23 Mbit / s, when uploading around 9 Mbit / s. Your original goal, all households by the end of 2018 connections with at least The Federal Government failed to make MBit / s available at least in principle.

Dynamic increase in the minimum bandwidth The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) had already demanded at the beginning of the year that “the legally defined minimum bandwidth that must be made available nationwide should increase dynamically”. It must “be continuously adapted to the speed used by the majority of households (at least 50 percent)”. If the bandwidth used by the majority of private users increases, “the requirement for the universal service also increases”. He pointed out that the term “majority of end customers” should not be defined as 51 percent “in order to avoid far-reaching market distortions” . Instead, the committee had come out in favor of the now built-in 51 percent threshold “in order to minimize effects on competition”.

Lower limit value According to the ministries, the minimum limit for the requirements for an Internet access service remains the EU requirements in the new code for electronic Communication. In addition to e-mails, calls and video calls in standard quality, the use of social media, information searches, online orders, online banking and electronic government services should also be possible.

2016 the EU Commission assumed that 2020 an Internet access service with at least 9.6 Mbit / s would have to be available, is it [called. However, the Federal Network Agency is free to set further quality requirements. A minimum upload rate or a minimum data volume are also conceivable. However, “not every economic participation can be guaranteed via an affordable Internet access service”. The regulatory authority must also regularly adjust the bandwidth to be guaranteed.

Provider associations, the right to fast Internet has long been a thorn in the side. The industry expert Gerpott considers it a pure placebo: By the time the regulator has initiated a corresponding procedure and found and obliged a provider, “a lot of water will have flowed down the Rhine”. The approach would hardly be relevant in practice. It would be more important to use the funding measures for broadband expansion more effectively.

(olb)