On Wednesday, after some delays, the Bundestag’s Digital Committee approved the draft of the first amendment to the Ordinance on Minimum Requirements for the Right to Provide Telecommunications Services (TKMV). Parliament said lawmakers had given their “consent” to the initiative. According to this, the minimum bandwidth of Internet access service should be increased from 10 to 15 Mbit/s for download and 1.7 to 5 Mbit/s for upload. The Federal Digital Ministry had already agreed to the move, so the reform can now be implemented.
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Digital State Secretary Daniela Kluckert (FDP) announced at the meeting that the change should now be implemented at the end of this year or early 2025. The CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s proposal, which demanded higher bandwidth, did not receive a majority. Apart from the applicants, only the leftist group voted in favour. In the committee discussion, speakers pointed out that consumers still need to be fully informed about their so-called right to high-speed internet and how to use it. The processes for determining short supply are lengthy. The contact form on the Federal Network Agency’s website also needs to be made more user-oriented.
Thousands of families have registered the need
Traffic light groups agreed to increase minimum bandwidth in June. This really should have happened much earlier: the Federal Government promised the Federal Council as early as 2022 that it would step up the pace of legal authorization in mid-2023. However, the digital ministry had initially insisted that amendments to the TKMV could be introduced only on the basis of assessment and receiving reports. Recently, the survey of minimum data rates used in Germany was updated.
So far, many citizens have not benefited from the entitlements created in 2021. It was only in March this year that the Federal Network Agency intervened for the first time and in May forced a provider to provide Internet to a home in Germany on the basis of regulation. The regulatory authority initially applied the cap size to 330,000 households potentially affected by the short supply. According to the government, this number has now “reduced due to improvements in the fixed network”. Between June 2022 and February 2024 alone, the Federal Network Agency received a total of 5,581 submissions regarding potential short supply. In 29 of these cases, it initially officially identified the relevant deficit. In 13, short-term supply options are said to have been created through mobile or landline networks.
(mho)
