In the corona pandemic, a well-functioning internet connection is more important than ever. If the data doesn’t run as smoothly as promised, the home office becomes torture.
More than a third of people in Germany feel slowed down by internet problems almost every day.
This is the central result of a representative opinion poll by Yougov, which was commissioned by the Frankfurt Internet node DE-CIX. 38 percent of consumers in the Federal Republic struggle with noticeable delays in Internet use several times a week or even daily. Only eight percent of those surveyed stated that they never experienced impairments when accessing the Internet.
Young adults and those working from home see themselves as the victims of the technical problems. But more than a third (34 percent) of the age group over 55 years reported in the survey that Internet connections often lagged. Surprisingly, people in urban areas (cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants) complain more often about speed restrictions than people in rural areas (residential areas with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants).
Problems especially with streaming
In the survey, those affected blame external causes for the poor network quality. 41 percent named network congestion as the reason for the delays they experienced, 32 percent poor local network expansion and 19 percent said their internet provider didn’t offer enough bandwidth. 12 percent suspect the reason for the problems with slow servers from content providers such as Netflix. Only 10 percent of those surveyed see the causes in their own household, such as the use of outdated laptops or smartphones.
Respondents most frequently find the problems after work when the video or music streaming with Netflix, Spotify, YouTube or other services is jerky (35 percent). A good fifth (21 percent) experience speed problems when working from home, for example with video conferences, webinars or using cloud applications (21 percent). But even applications that don’t actually require a large bandwidth are sometimes disrupted. This includes transactions such as online banking and online shopping. Here, 18 percent of those surveyed complain about a bad internet connection.
Worse internet quality than last year
In the second year of the corona pandemic, the quality of the internet has deteriorated somewhat according to those surveyed. In a comparable survey last year, only 33.5 percent of respondents reported problems, almost five percentage points less than the current value.
DE-CIX operates one of the world’s largest internet nodes in Frankfurt am Main. The Hessian company is also active at 31 other locations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. DE-CIX connects almost 2500 network operators, Internet service providers, content providers and company networks from more than 100 countries.
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
