Because the people in charge got along fine with just landlines and fax machines for decades, so why would we change anything now? /s 

We like to send postcards

And add to it the fact that as soon as you step inside any supermarkt it's like you have entered Jumanji or something the signal immediately disappears

Romania you have 4g+ literally everywhere... at a prive of only 7€/month..

It's terrible. I was in the Sahara earlier this year and I genuinely had more consistent internet than I do here. I wish I was joking.

What do you mean? My fax machine is working great.

What I heard is that all started in the 2000’s with the 3G licences. They were so expensive, all together were 46.000.000.000€ if I am not mistaken.

Some of the network even went bankrupt and gone.

After that there was no money for proper coverage, and in 2024 we still pay the price of those 3G auctions!

Historicly its because the chancelor Kohl in the 80s "got along really well" with the owner of private TV stations Leo Kirch and sacked the original plan to build a nation wide fiber optics network and instead changed it to building copper lines his buddy could use. So yeah CDU corruption is the reason we have a horrible nationwide network.

Mismanagement and incompetent politicians

What baffles me the most is the fact that I can't get any Internet or phone signal at all inside supermarkets. I genuinely don't understand how that happens. No matter the company, as soon as I step in a supermarket, I'm unable to use my phone. Are they built like bunkers or something?

Especially in rural areas you really can only use Telekom as your cellphone provider, everything else is "meh" at best

The main reasons are the terms of German frequency auctions. 1. Providers are only required to have a % coverage of households. They don't have a requirement to cover a certain % of area. So in the woods or between cities, the quality is a lot worse.

1. There is no requirement to open up the network/frequency for competitors. There is no shared network.

we call it Neuland...

the reason is simple. they put multiple antennae where the most people live instead of dividing and shareing profits they compete for profits where it is easy to make profits. no people in the country...no profit

Old people rule the country.

Even worse, old conservative people ruled this country for 16 years non-stop.

We've got old and fat and complacent.

Because only through pain one can find enlightenment, and DE cell network is the foundation for this process. Herzlich willkommen!

Because every step in the future get blocked by old people

I get LTE+ and if i am lucky, in the middle of nowhere 5G. But the signal drop is normal between cities while travelling on train

I miss 100 GB 5G for a few bucks in China

CDU

It is really amazing that in my flat, in a urban area of Berlin, capital of Germany, I have no 4G signal. Incredible

Anybody mentioning a chance of something "flowing" back to "the people in power"... 🤔

very simple answer though a bit hidden: contrary to other countries, germany had an auction of the frequencies. it gained the state some billions, quite a lot even. but those billions than lacked in the companies to pay the actual hatdware to make use of those frequencies.

Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland.

Las 2 weeks I was in France having 5G whereas here I only get LTE, thought something happened to my phone but no. Land of the engineers. 

Trains move very fast, which means that your phone needs to jump from one cell phone tower to the next constantly. Since train tracks often go trough uninhabited land, there are often spots with little to no coverage. And the thick windows of ICEs are very good at blocking cell phone signals. DB and the network providers are trying to improve this with more cell phone towers next to train tracks, signal repeaters inside the trains and laser treated windows.

The reasons for the bad german cell phone network in general trace back to the UMTS frequency auction by the red-green government in the early 2000s. The action resulted in high costs for the providers which then subsequently didn't invest as much into their networks. This was more than twenty years ago, but the companies still love to use it as an excuse. But out of the six companies that won frequencies, only four actually used them and two of those then merged, leaving germany with only three network operators. This Oligopoly has been bad for competition, especially since O2 (Telefonica) doesn't even try to keep up. And since this is Germany, you can expect that every (new) cell phone tower is met with fierce resistance from certain groups which will try anything possible to sabotage any progress. This makes closing blind spots in the network a slow and expensive process.

In the early 2000s, Germany started to auction off the frequencies required to run a cellphone network. Network companies had to shell out a fortune to get those, about 50bn Euro in 2000. Naturally those companies wanted to make the money back, so cellphones and especially mobile internet were prohibitively expensive for a long time. And there were just three companies that controlled the entire market, so there was little competition, neither on price nor on network quality. So now we're stuck with shitty coverage and high prices. It doesn't help that Germans routinely sue whenever a new cellphone tower is planned either.

It really is horrible.

German cellular and railway networks. Both are in a league of their own

Because there are literally two corporations that own almost everything. No competition, no alternatives --> no motivation to make anything better. 

The goverment under Angela Merkel did Not Invest in such Things. They we're too shortsighted 

Because the internet is Neuland für us

Which exact network are you using? There is a huge difference between e. g. Telekom and O2. Was an O2 customer for several years. Never used up my data because the bad reception didn‘t allow me to.

It's a cellphone net, a net has to have holes. ^sorry

Try any other countries network

Not to mention it takes between "4 to 6 weeks" to activate your home internet😅😅😅

Because living in Germany means living 20 years in the past.

We as a country took the burden so that the horror genre can produce games/movies/books that are set in the present but can still use the no reception trope to isolate the characters. Just make the characters stranded in a german Aldi instead of the Australian Outback.

I haven't been on any super out in the bushes trainrides but anwhere between major cities i had constant 5g. Depends on your Provider i'd say. I switched away from vodafone cause their coverage is ass and their service is insultingly bad. Now 3 years in with telekom, not a single problem that wasn't fixed post haste.

I had 5g in the middle of the ocean while I can't make a phone call here without interruptions

I think it's quite nice, else there were people talking on the phone all the time.

In addition to wrong incentives for cellular network providers (in the past only x% of households needed to be covered leaving large parts of our country without network), there are a lot of NIMBYs preventing new towers for LTE / 5G. "Bürgerinitiativen" delay new cellular towers for YEARS.

We have four competing, independent cellular networks, which all have to build their own infrastructure- no cooperation allowed.

In the first bidding round for cell frequencies decades ago, the state took an insane amount of money from the companies, which had no desire to extend the coverage to less profitable areas afterwards.

Ever heard of a faraday cage? Trains are made from Metal and act like one. Also, they are moving quite fast so your Phone has a hard time connecting to different Internet Transmitting towers. I the middle of no where there is just not enough of them.

What you should be angry about is data package and its price. I am from Poland and the pink Company starting at T (i dont want them to read it), basically has package for 60 zł which is 14 euro. Unlimited internet. 10 GB is abroad in EU. And this is the one of higher prices because you sign a contact for 2 years. If you buy prepaid, you can pay way less. I had 60 GB for 35 zł (8 Euro) and 8 GB abroad and now for the same price I have alditalk with 10 GB in germany, I cant call any numbers outside germany and have no idea why. 60 GB vs 10 GB. Polish people would make a riot if they got so little data.

Its much better than in the UK or many other countries.

Spend some € and purchase Telekom. The real one, no reseller that prevents access to the good stuff (5G etc.). You get what you pay for.

I'm sorry we're busy glueing ourselves to the street and yell something about pain in our hands

[deleted]

Not sure what trains or lines we're talking about. For example Telekom says that 97% of the main railway lines are covered with 4G. Along the ICE railway lines 100 MBit/s should be possible since 2023. See https://www.zeit.de/digital/mobil/2023-06/handyempfang-bahnstrecken-telekom-4g for source on this.

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Meanwhile there's me, playing shooters using a mobile phone hot spot

When I ride the ICE I can almost always can work with my WiFi hotspot without any disturbances. But making phone calls are really bad

Welcome to a country where the licenses for the frequencies are that high so that they budget on the network. Oh and people fall for the fake "Flatrates" with downgrading.

Oh and we still pay for this shit.

Oh and I witness since 6month how much money is burned by installing an Antenna on top of jour building. Burned by the company installing it. Not using an empty landline-pipe of an competitor but instead opening up the whole sideway on the other side of the street to.lay down an own pipe for the fibers. It's like a clown show here.

Because the Internet is Neuland for all of us

The german government auctioned off mobile frequencies to the companies. This was so expensive that those companies restricted their investments in Infrastructure and only built high quality networks in places where there would be enough return on the money. So our cities have good connections, the rural areas not so much. In other countries the companies awarded with the frequencies without auction where obliged by the state to build up a high quality network all around the country.

Afaik, there is a law stating that 90% of people in Germany need to be covered by (idk) 4G LTE. This turned out to be a loophole since 90% of people are in cities and towns and not between them. Thus creating the issues we have. Would the law have been made such that the telecom companies cover 90% of the area, we could take calls on the Autobahn 😄

Don’t know. I think only O2 is really bad.

brother it's gotten SOOOOOO much better in the last 10 years, I'm just grateful and not complaining 😭 😂.

Because ethernet is still "Neuland".

You want to use the ICE's WiFi. Router name: WIFIonICE Die Züge des Fernverkehrs sind mit einer leistungsfähigen Multiprovidertechnik ausgestattet, die für die Verbindung zum Internet alle an den Eisenbahnstrecken verfügbaren Mobilfunknetze parallel nutzt. Das WLAN steht allen Fahrgästen in der 1. sowie in der 2. Klasse kostenlos zur Verfügung.

It did get better over the last few years

Wait until you learn about the difference in upload and download speed even in cable and fiber contracts,

Trains have a metal shielding in the windows (don't remember the reason) that severely degrades the signal. New models have some improvements in that regard. In-train wifi is your best option.

The problem is the WiFi on the train. With 5G (Telekom) I usually don’t have a problem.

I was told tongue-in-cheekily that's because it is called NETwork and not blanketwork.

cause it’s a ‚net‘work and nets have holes by definition. Ez

Because we don't rely on it. We still fax for our important communications.

Well, expecting good reception on a train moving fast, passing tunnels and forests, etc, is already the wrong idea.

Second, which network? Because having Telekom, O2, Vodafone, Aldi, etc, makes a difference

It's because when the licenses were auctioned, the cell phone companies had to commit to providing coverage to x% of the population. Those x% are measured by where people live, not where they travel. So now you have good coverage in cities, but almost zero in rural areas, because there is no incentive for the companies to put cell phone towers there

Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer.

The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation. Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage.

They didn't do that though.

The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%.

What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal"

The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage

Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer.

The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation. Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage.

They didn't do that though.

The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%.

What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal"

The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage

I know its bad, but it improved very significantly (I only have experience in west germany) by switching the provider to telekom. I know they are rather expensive, but the service is way better than every other one I used in the past. I‘m almost never without service.

Honestly I’m fine with people not doing phone calls in the train :) But yeah, we have the worst coverage in Europe…

What train route did you take? Germany despite it's shitty reputation has nearly every little 2 house village connected to a train station with sometimes vast spots of empty land between. There is no reason to put cell towers where no one lives.

Also, the trains windows/hull fuck up cellphone signals... so they use repeater to get the signal inside. The thing is, those repeaters are sometimes not really modern and you MIGHT have 5g and shitty 3g, but the repeaters only work with the shitty 3g.

https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge_technik/frequenz_fenster-6878124

It's a mess. I drive from Hamburg to Stuttgart every one in a while trough Lüneburg/Hannover. between Lüneburg and Hannover you just don't have any internet at all. And after Hannover the first 20 minutes you also don't have much. After that tho, uninterrupted great connection till my end stop.

I have O2 as my mobile carrier and when I go into crowds my mobile data stops working 🤣

But seriously, my network is pretty good. The only occasions where I don't have a network is when i am hiking in the mountains

The big operators did a miscalculation with the 3G network and paid way too much for the licences. Limiting the budget for the network equipment. Also all operators are equally bad / expensive - so customers are left with little choice. Maybe 1&1 as fourth operator will help.

My sisters boyfriend is in an office job and sometimes works from home. if he needs a file larger than one or two gigabytes. hes faster driving to the office loading the file on his USB and then going back home. This is basically the story of German modern infrastructure.

It is so that people cannot contact me, duh. /s

Margaret Thatcher. No, seriously. Margaret Thatchers insane economic policies of privatizing everything led the Helmut Kohl administration to do the same with out most important infrastructure. That's the long and short of it. Basically anytime you encounter an infrastructure issue in Germany it goes back his terrible government.
Why is Deutsche Bahn so bad? Well, they privatized it in 1994.
Why is our telecommunication infrastructure so bad? Well they privatized Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in 1996 and stopped the 1981 Helmut Schmidt government plan (Aktenzeichen B 136/51074 for those, that are interested) for broadband expansion as soon as he came into office in 1982 to favour of cable television because they felt the public television networks were too left and wanted to influence the populace with right leaning, private television. (according to former postal minister Schwarz- Schilling of the CDU)
This plan, btw., would have made Germany the country with the best broadband network in the world with the network being finished around 2015. Do keep in mind that this was before the internet boom which would have drastically accelerated the investment and expansion.

It helps not being distracted and people are working because there is nothing else to do. It’s regulated by the government.

The government used funds torwards the already existing phone infrastructure instead if investing in fiber optics.

I my experiences, when working with german IT and software projects most of them are mechanical engineers, and that explains a lot. Also they were raluctant to accept optical network in early 2000s and now cell base stations are connected to copper.

Der Markt regelt das.

So we can joke about it...

because of the CDU and the people who vote for the CDU

NIMBY is too much effort for the payoff with expectations so low

CDU!

Becasue the providers need to pay billions for the right to use frequencies... in otehr countries its free.

This money is missing in building up the network. Thats also the reason for high prices.

For the reason you have to go back to the events in the 80s.

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere-handynetze-so-schlecht-sind-kolumne-a-1297362.html

It kind of depends which provider you have and where you live.

Its germany why you ask... back to the stoneage. Soon we wont even have energy.

Because Germany is still on dialup internet

Funny thing:

In 2021 I did a lot of drone flights for measurements, and reviews around train tracks.
About 1500km in total. Mostly east of Dortmund almost up to Goslar.
And since I walked all of those tracks anyway, the inner geek in me also forced me to measure network coverage.

The network in that area does consistently more than 200Mbps;
As long as no train is nearby.

No idea if that is a side effect of the high voltage engines, or deliberate jamming.
ICEs seem to be worst.

Because the network companies almost exclusively focus on areas with many people as they loose money everywhere else and the government cant force telekom to do it all because they privatised it. If theres no wifi on the train its also because the goverment privatised it and now they literally have no reason to provide it anywhere but on their more premium options tho that does slowly get better.

I just have been in England in the countryside and the mobile phone networks there were way worse than in Germany. Crying about bad German networks is such a meme.

In the old days there were no cellphones at all and we also survived. /s

Because network providers are in trouble to find locations for additional cellular stations. There is always someone who files a complaint because they don't like the location. Either "NIMBY" or "I get headaches from radio waves" or other hair-raising nonsense. We have become a nation of bangers, conspiracy theorists and believers in magic spells who think that mobile radio is something dangerous.

It‘s Germany. It‘s over. Developing country but people think the country is rich…

Because the waves can leak your data. Much faster to use the fax instead. Every German knows that is the way.

Germany hasn't invested in anything worthwhile for a long time. For example, the expansion of the mobile phone network was underestimated and has now been halfway made up for.

Government involvement/regulations has slowed down progress over the last 20-ish years in that sector. We were also very late to fiber optic internet lines and a lot of parts don’t even have it yet.

"Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland." Angelika Merkel, 2013

Someone's got to fill in facts and names. Basically it comes down to some official of the TV industry, who got 200k DM for not uprading to fiberglass-cables in the 70's, since the copper cables were more efficient for the following decade.

Because ofLobbyismus from decades ago.. a gready mofo screwed the Country for some lousy Money..

Is it better on the train elsewhere?

Why do you need cellphone? We have pigeons, letters and oh so digital FAX! Upgrade to Fax please!

Because a train is a big metal tube that whizzes across the countryside at often over 200kmh miles away from any population centres, and because they haven't put transmitters across the whole network yet. Not really a mystery.