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Mobile or stationary: without a network is bad
Photo: ljubaphoto / Getty Images
For the new year that is now beginning, I am about to introduce a new symbol for our department duty roster. In addition to symbols for absence or news layers, we would need another sign that says: During the marked period, this editor is on the train between Hamburg and Berlin, on the way from one SPIEGEL office to another. This means that the person is considered offline for this period and can only be reached sporadically even by phone.
"At best, I could finish writing my text," a colleague in Berlin is happy to offer for such trips from dead zone to dead zone.
Or he can read something, as long as the text does not have to be accessed online.
Even when my colleagues are on the move within Berlin, I get text messages like this: "I'm still on the subway, but I'll be there in a moment and have the network again."
How can it be that even in the capital you don't have a network in some places?
How can it be that
somewhere
in Germany there is no modern, fast internet?
Delay after procrastination, promise after promise
In our little series at the end of the year, we write about digital topics that have made us angry. For me, that's the Internet supply in Germany, mobile as well as stationary. However, the topic didn't only excite me in 2021. It's been bugging me for a decade.
It has been more than eleven years since I did an internship at SPIEGEL. At that time I suggested the slow expansion of broadband as a topic because the government couldn't keep its promises even then. I've been working in the Netzwelt department for almost ten years now and I still haven't gotten rid of the subject: There followed postponement after postponement, promise after promise - our columnist Sascha Lobo once outlined the series of promises and disappointments here. "Really every single promise has been broken here," was how digital expert Markus Beckedahl recently summed up the topic of broadband expansion in the Merkel era in a SPIEGEL interview. And again and again we have to report how far Germany is behind other countries in terms of expansion - the last time, by the way, on Tuesday.
So I'm not telling you anything new - I just wonder, why don't you burst with anger?
I only observe the relief of the travelers when they get off at Berlin Central Station and can finally use their cell phone again - but apparently not to immediately send an angry email to their network operator, the railway, the responsible ministry or SPIEGEL.
I don't see people demonstrating on the street either, but hear them cursing softly and hastily breaking off conversations with the unironic hint that one is currently on the way and does not know how long the connection will last.
"Hi?
Now you're Gone...".
After such an everyday but unacceptable incident, people may briefly joke bitterly about Germany's digital failure. The word "new territory" could be used. Finally, someone might point out that the Internet in Germany is not only particularly bad compared to other countries, but also particularly expensive. But that's it then.
Somehow it is still considered normal in this country that there is no stable network on the train, while rail travelers in Switzerland zoom through the thickest mountains and surf the tunnels without any problems.
In the Canadian forest or on the Norwegian fjord you can connect with the world, here a trip to the Berlin area is enough to be without a network and not even be able to lock your rental car.
As if Brandenburg, a federal state in the heart of Europe, were so insanely remote.
And even if: In Germany, the Internet must be considered a basic supply like electricity and running water.
After all, they are not entire places without a shower, light or street, just because they are in the countryside.
We need fiber to the milk can
In the Internet, however, an undersupply is often stoically accepted, whether it is the result of the slow network expansion or outdated technology, ignorance, unwillingness or an impenetrable jungle of contracts. In some holiday homes, a fast internet connection is still considered a feature that is often listed separately. Note: It can be quite romantic and healthy to stay offline for a while. But it's never romantic to have to be offline.
Perhaps you remember the quote from the then Research Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) from 2018, which has become famous in the meantime: "5G is not necessary on every milk jug." the sentence reveals a strange attitude that I know not only from politicians: the wait-and-see defensive attitude. When introducing a modern technology, why should you first think about where it - supposedly - is not needed? Perhaps this is also the origin of many past mistakes: In truth, we would need fiberglass up to every milk can. Fiber to the milk can (FTTMC)!
Now there is a new government, maybe things will move a little faster.
However, a tweet was enough to make me doubt it.
In mid-December, the FDP parliamentary group tweeted its top ten list of projects "from the field of transport and digital", and it looked like this:
In first place is "no speed limit".
The two items "fiber optic expansion" and "covering cell phone holes" occupy the last two places, nine and ten - well behind the items "support start-ups", "no ban on the combustion engine" or "subject to new laws for digitization checks".
This prioritization alone takes away my hope.
Therefore, here is my own little "digitization check": Anyone who wants to advance digitization in Germany should proceed systematically.
There are so many digital nonsense projects that are publicly funded, from expensive and useless apps to insecure learning platforms to questionable blockchain frills.
We don't even need most of the stuff.
First we need the internet.
My wish for 2022:
Providing citizens with a modern network should be a top priority when it comes to digitization.
I would like fast internet and stable, dense, affordable mobile communications for everyone - whether they live in a hut, tend sheep on a meadow or sip mediocre coffee in the on-board bistro between Hamburg and Berlin and want to read this text.
