Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has revealed that more than 95% of the country’s 41.6 million households were able to access broadband speeds of at least 50Mbps as of mid-2021. In addition, almost 90% of homes could access rates of 100Mbps or more, an increase of 3.9 percentage points year-on-year, with this proportion standing at 69% in rural areas, representing a rise of over 460,000 homes since mid-2020. When it comes to even higher speeds, the Ministry reports that around 62% of German households have access to gigabit connections, an increase of 2.6 million connections compared to mid-2020 and 14.5 million connections since the end of 2018.
In rural regions in particular, the federal government supports the expansion of faster fibre-optic networks through the federal broadband expansion programme, for which around EUR12 billion (EUR13.7 billion) has been earmarked. Roughly EUR9.4 billion has already been committed, with the aim of enabling around 2.7 million high speed broadband connections for households, companies, schools and hospitals nationwide. So far, over 800,000 connections have already been completed.