MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - According to a Deloitte survey, the speed of private Internet connections in Germany is particularly slow compared to other Western European countries. Among the seven most populous countries in Western Europe, Germany scored the worst according to the results published by the management consultancy on Thursday. Only 27 percent of the 2000 respondents from Germany stated that they surf with a bandwidth of at least 250 megabits per second (Mbit/s). This proportion was more than twice as high for the front-runner, Spain.

It is not only the speed of Internet connections that is comparatively worse in Germany; according to the survey, people in Germany also struggle most with the reliability of their connection. Just under a third of those surveyed had connection problems at least once a month. This puts Germany in last place here too, according to the management consultants. However, the differences between the countries compared in terms of connection problems are significantly smaller. Although France leads the comparison, around a quarter of respondents there also have problems with their connection at least once a month.

Nevertheless, over three quarters of respondents in Germany are satisfied with their DSL provider, according to the survey results. Satisfaction is therefore not much lower than among those who already have a fiber optic connection (84 percent). The management consultants assume that faster transmission rates have not yet been able to be used for many applications and have therefore not made a big difference to users.

According to Deloitte, around 13,000 participants from the seven most populous countries in Western Europe were asked online about their internet connections for the representative survey./tre/DP/zb