A new survey reveals that Germans are extremely dissatisfied with their mobile and landline networks. According to a survey conducted by management consultancy BearingPoint, only 13 percent of German customers are satisfied with the performance of their mobile network, while the figure for the remaining European countries included in the study is 64 percent. In terms of satisfaction with stationary telecommunications services, the country is the worst of everyone surveyed.
The study surveyed 10,850 consumers from Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and is considered representative of the population aged 18 and over. The happiest customers of telecommunications providers are in the Netherlands: 85 percent are satisfied with the performance of the mobile network and 81 percent with that of the fixed network.
The study reveals that the lack of understanding of technology and an unwillingness to pay is one of the reasons for Germany’s poor performance. Consumers do not know the advantages of new technological advances such as 5G and fiber optics, and 35 percent state that they do not know the advantages of the new generation of mobile communications.
In contrast, 58 percent of users in other European countries see no reason to complain about speeds and availability of home connections. With new technological advances, industry experts suggest that they need to communicate the advantages to customers and present convincing fields of application.
While 29 percent of respondents in Germany are willing to dig deeper into their pockets for quality improvements and new services, 42 percent of participants would even accept a higher tariff for smooth video streaming, and a higher willingness to pay for video calls (27 percent) is evident.
In terms of sustainability, 42 percent of German respondents consider it important that providers focus on sustainable networks compared to an average of 55 percent of the other countries included in the study. However, 24 percent of German participants stated that they did not want to adjust their usage behavior in favor of more sustainability in the telecommunications industry.
In an OECD comparison, fiber optic networks in Germany are still very low. According to the regulatory authority, the comparatively low fiber optic quota is due to the high level of coverage with existing infrastructures such as VDSL vectoring and cable networks.
