
Telecommunication in Germany
Compared to the European Union, Germany is at the forefront of the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +49, there were a total of 145.70 million connections in 2020. Among them were 107.40 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.3 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.With about 20.04 million webhosts, Germany is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 8.11 million million of these, or about 40 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Germany
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 71.58 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Germany ranked 43rd in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 23.83 Mbit/second was significantly lower (61st place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 44th place.In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, Germany comes 29th with a download speed of 52.18 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 10 Mbit was only enough for 58th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in February 2022 from 180 countries.
The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the Internet in Germany from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in Germany 2000 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Germany Total | Germany percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 74.76 m | 89.81 % | 379.48 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 36.22 m | 43.51 % | 163.72 m | 36.56 % |
Landlines | 38.30 m | 46.01 % | 160.15 m | 35.76 % |
Mobile cellulars | 107.40 m | 129.02 % | 540.56 m | 120.71 % |