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Traveler with mobile phone on a train
Photo: Hauke Christian Dittrich / dpa
In the future, travelers in Germany should be able to use a stable mobile phone connection more and more often when they travel by train.
Deutsche Bahn and Vodafone have agreed to jointly close the gaps in the Vodafone mobile network that still exist throughout Germany along the railway lines.
Last summer, Deutsche Bahn had already concluded a similar network expansion agreement with Deutsche Telekom.
The third provider, Telefónica (O2), is still being negotiated.
The expansion plan presented in Berlin on Friday provides that Vodafone should provide the 7,800 kilometers of main traffic routes with bandwidths of 225 megabits per second in the 4G network (LTE) by mid-2025.
ICE and IC trains run on the routes.
The Düsseldorf provider also wants to activate its so-called "5G+" network along these routes (more information here), a 5G variant that does not use LTE technology as a basis.
This variant is usually referred to as "5G standalone".
This technology offers particularly short data runtimes.
Vodafone promises to build a seamless 4G network with bandwidths of at least 125 megabits per second by summer 2025 on a further 13,800 kilometers of route with a high volume of passengers.
Telekom has also promised it
Hannes Ametsreiter, head of Vodafone Germany, said nine out of ten rail passengers used mobile internet or made calls on their smartphones.
"And they are still annoyed far too often about annoying dead spots." Together with Deutsche Bahn, Vodafone would now finally remedy the situation.
Deutsche Telekom had already announced in June that it would have a complete supply of mobile communications on the rails by 2026.
The Magenta Group wants to offer a data rate of at least 200 megabits per second by the end of 2024 on the main routes, on which all ICE and the most important IC trains operate.
A data rate of at least 200 megabits per second should also be available by the end of 2025 on the particularly busy routes, on which more than 2000 passengers travel every day.
All other routes are to be supplied by Telekom with a data rate of at least 100 megabits per second by the end of 2026.
mak/dpa