The telecommunications provider O2 now supplies more than 82 percent of the population in Germany with 5G mobile communications. Around 1,000 5G locations have been connected to the network since January 2023.
5G: The fast network is growing
Around 200 of the newly added cell phone sites transmit with fast 5G on the 3.6 gigahertz frequency. These locations are in Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Essen, Munich, Magdeburg and around 50 other cities. 600 locations offer 5G over the 700MHz frequency with lower speeds but greater area coverage. In addition, locations with so-called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing were expanded. Here, the frequency spectrum is divided into 5G and 4G depending on user needs. The network provider would like to supply 90 percent of the population with 5G by the end of the year, and by 2025 at the latest throughout Germany.
Half of Germans have never been in the 5G network
The actual use of the 5G network remains far below the coverage rate, according to a representative Verivox survey. About half of the population has never used the new mobile network, another 10 percent cannot say for sure.
“In order to make 5G more attractive for private consumers, not only further expansion is required, but above all cheaper tariffs,” says Jens-Uwe Theumer, Vice President Telecommunications at Verivox. “It is currently not possible to book a 5G tariff for less than 20 euros per month. However, 4G tariffs are still sufficient for the vast majority of applications, which often offer significantly more data volume and cost less than half.”
LTE expansion continues in parallel
The LTE network is also being expanded further in order to improve network quality. In the past three years, the network operator has processed or built around 20,000 locations out of a total of 26,000 in the O2 network to meet the supply requirements. Accordingly, 99 percent of households are now supplied with at least 100 Mbit/s, as is 100 percent of traffic routes. By the end of 2024, mobile communications providers must meet coverage requirements for other transport routes, including state, state and waterways as well as ports.
In addition, O2 Telefonica is also partly working in cooperation projects with other network operators to close the last so-called “white spots” – these are areas in which none of the German mobile phone providers offer data networks.