12 Jul 2011Germany Broadband Overview

Germany has the largest broadband market in Europe. After several years of strong market growth, the country has now entered a phase of consolidation, increased market competition and saturation of demand for basic broadband access. Major ISPs are currently trying to move broadband services onto a new digital plane that allows service convergence by pushing ahead with cable network upgrades and VDSL deployments.

The German regulator summed up the current state of the German telecoms market in 2009. VoIP and mobile telephony services competed strongly against the classical fixed telephony service offerings. Broadband take-up keeps growing, especially unbundled offerings. Mobile data services are becoming increasingly popular. German consumers view cable telephony and mobile broadband as an attractive alternative to DSL-based services.

The growing broadband market has opened new revenue streams for Germany’s telecoms operators. Despite falling consumer prices, total revenue from the telecommunications market grew by EUR 16.1 billion from 1998 to 2009. However, this long-term view masks a gradual decline from 2005 to 2010 when telecoms revenue fell from an estimated EUR 67.3 billion in 2005 to EUR 59.1 billion in 2010. The German incumbent Deutsche Telekom (DT) and alternative telecoms operators share total revenue streams at the ratio 46:54 respectively. This marks a gradual erosion of DT’s share of the revenue stream which fell from 74 per cent in 1997.Overall revenues gained by DT’s competitors reached EUR 31.8 billion in 2010, down by EUR 0.6 billion from end-2009.