How powerful is Germany’s fixed-line network really? In their annual fixed-line test, CHIP and NET CHECK have once again examined the quality of the country’s major internet providers. Based on nearly 25 million measurements from over 1,000 mini-computers and around 87,000 speed tests, the result is a comprehensive picture of contract fulfilment, stability, and speed in the German internet market. With this, CHIP and NET CHECK, quality leaders in internet provider testing, are raising the bar even higher.
Deutsche Telekom wins overall ranking
In this year’s test, Deutsche Telekom prevails over the other three national providers: Vodafone, 1&1, and O2. In the key categories of contract fulfilment and network availability, Telekom achieves top scores, being more reliable and delivering more performance than its competitors, sometimes even exceeding the contractual promises. The company offers the most stable connections among all tested providers. 31% of Telekom connections experienced at most one brief outage per month during the entire test period—a top result in comparison. In contrast, O2, at the bottom of the ranking, only achieved this in 14.5% of connections.
Vodafone excels in speed and value for money
Vodafone remains the speed champion among the national providers: with high download speeds and excellent value for money, Germany’s largest cable provider clearly dominates these categories. Customers get more Mbit/s per euro than with the competition—on average, around 9.3 Mbit/s per euro in download. Vodafone owes this high value primarily to its widespread TV cable infrastructure.
Regional providers on the rise
Regional fiber-optic providers are also gaining importance. Deutsche Glasfaser takes first place in five federal states, TNG wins in Hesse, and wilhelm.tel in Schleswig-Holstein. Cable provider Pyur wins in Berlin and Saxony and stands out with the’ most attractive price-performance ratio among all providers.
How the test was conducted
The evaluation is based on two major data sources: Around 1,000 mini-computers using Raspberry Pi technology monitored the connection quality of German households under real operating conditions over several months. In addition, tens of thousands of speed tests from CHIP.de and crowdsourced data from more than one million app users were included in the analysis. The assessment considered factors such as contract compliance for download and upload speeds, connection availability, and outage duration and frequency.
Technology at the limit: VDSL reaches its boundaries
The results show that DSL connections reach their technical limits at higher bandwidths. This is particularly evident with 100—and 250-Mbit/s plans, where the actual measured speeds fall significantly below the providers’ download promises. Cable and fiber-optic connections perform considerably better. This is also reflected in contract fulfilment, where Vodafone cable, for example, scores up to 99% of the promised maximum download speed for 100-Mbit/s connections (as measured by the mini-computers).
Stability and transparency are gaining importance
“Our test provides consumers with guidance for choosing the right internet provider. Today, stability is just as important as speed – especially for remote work and streaming,” says CHIP editor Markus Mandau. “Anyone who wants to avoid frequent outages should closely examine how the provider performed in the test.”
All test details and results are available at chip.de/festnetztest.
About CHIP
CHIP is Germany’s largest consumer portal and the leading source for independent technology and product reviews in the German-speaking region. The platform from the digital publishing house BurdaForward provides information about everyday products – from smartphones and household appliances to food trends. CHIP also offers a large selection of free software and app downloads and is one of Germany’s most important online communities. CHIP.de reaches more than 23 million unique users per month (Agma).
About NET CHECK
NET CHECK GmbH was founded in 1999 to improve the quality of communication networks. Its core competencies include international network benchmarking (comparative measurements), network planning, and fault analysis. NET CHECK also operates one of Germany’s largest crowdsourcing platforms, generating over 144 million data points daily. NET CHECK is part of the NC Group, headquartered in Berlin. More information at www.netcheck.de.
