Germany coverage

What the Germany numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 63 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 15 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Germany when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Telekom and Vodafone. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Germany

• Telekom Deutschland: Telekom Deutschland won 130 MHz in Germany's 2019 5G auction, 2 x 20 MHz at 2 GHz and 90 MHz at 3.6 GHz, the joint largest holding with Vodafone. The auction ran from 19 March to 12 June 2019 over 497 rounds and raised 6,549,651,000 euros.
• Telefónica Germany: Telefónica Germany, which runs the O2 network, won 90 MHz in the 2019 auction, 2 x 10 MHz at 2 GHz and 70 MHz at 3.6 GHz.
• Vodafone: In the Bundesnetzagentur's figures for October 2025, Vodafone's 5G covered about 75 percent of Germany's land area, against about 87 percent for Telekom and 76 percent for Telefónica, each up about four points on a year earlier.
• 1&1: 1&1 has run Germany's fourth mobile network since December 2023, which it describes as Europe's first fully virtualised Open RAN network. Where it has no antennas of its own yet, its customers are carried automatically on Vodafone's network under a national roaming agreement.
• 1&1: Drillisch Netz, the 1&1 company that entered the 2019 auction as a newcomer, won 70 MHz: 2 x 10 MHz at 2 GHz and 50 MHz at 3.6 GHz.
• 1&1: 1&1 reported switching on a 5G network for public use in December 2022 but missed its obligation to have 1,000 5G base stations in service by the end of that year, citing delays, and said it would reach the target in 2023.
• 1&1: When the Bundesnetzagentur extended the 800, 1,800 and 2,600 MHz licences in 2025, it made national roaming for 1&1 a licence condition, required Telefónica to let 1&1 use 2,600 MHz spectrum for the extension period, and ordered the other operators to negotiate sharing frequencies below 1 GHz with 1&1 where it builds its own network.

Older networks in Germany

• Telekom switched its 3G network off across Germany on 30 June 2021 and moved the frequencies to 4G and 5G. By then its 4G reached 98.9 percent of German households.
• Vodafone began switching off its 3G network in the night of 30 June to 1 July 2021 and finished on the morning of 7 July. By then 3G carried less than 2 percent of its data traffic.
• Telefónica began its large scale 3G switch off on 1 July 2021 and moved the 2,100 MHz frequencies of about 16,000 3G transmitters to 4G by the end of that year.
• Telekom plans to switch its 2G network off completely by 30 June 2028 and reuse the 900 MHz band for 4G and 5G. Areas served only by 2G are due to get 4G or 5G first, and a phone that cannot call over VoLTE or 5G will stop working on Telekom after the switch off.
• Until then, at least one network still provides 2G across almost all of Germany, and about 97.5 percent of the land area has 4G from at least one operator, according to the Bundesnetzagentur's January 2025 figures.

5G in Germany

• Vodafone switched all of its roughly 1,000 antennas in the 3.5 GHz band, in 170 towns and cities, to 5G standalone on 12 April 2021, connected to a separate 5G core, and opened it as Europe's first live standalone 5G network for private and business customers.
• About 95 percent of Germany's land area had 5G in October 2025, up from about 93 percent a year earlier, and around 98 percent had 4G or 5G. Building now concentrates on 5G standalone, with its own 5G core.
• Telekom has offered 5G since 2019. When it announced its 2G switch off, it said 5G already reached more than 97 percent of Germany's population and would reach 99 percent by the end of 2025.

Network notes for Germany

• The 2019 licences required each established operator to cover 98 percent of households in every federal state, all motorways, the most important federal roads and the busiest rail lines at 100 Mbit/s by the end of 2022, with 10 millisecond latency on motorways and federal roads, plus 1,000 5G base stations and 500 sites in areas with no coverage.
• By the January 2023 deadline all three established operators reported meeting the 98 percent household target, but some sites were still missing, especially in tunnels and along transport routes, which they blamed on permits, local opposition and nature protection.
• The 2019 award also required mobile broadband along every public rail line in Germany by the end of 2024, including lines not run by Deutsche Bahn.
• The 2025 licence extension requires at least 50 Mbit/s over 99.5 percent of Germany's land area from 2030, and 100 Mbit/s for 99 percent of households in sparsely populated municipalities in every state and along every federal road from 2029.
• The same decision requires at least 50 Mbit/s on state roads and core federal inland waterways from 2029 and on district roads from 2030, and obliges operators to negotiate with rail infrastructure companies over shared coverage along the tracks.