The importance of mobile communications has steadily increased over the past decades. Smartphones have become everyday companions for more than 82% of Germans across all age groups. In addition, mobile networks provide the technological foundation for countless applications requiring fast and secure data transmission. High-speed 5G networks enable mobile internet access, offer an alternative in regions without broadband cable infrastructure, support businesses in Industry 4.0 and IoT environments, and make innovations like smart home technology and autonomous driving possible. A prerequisite for all of this is seamless coverage, ideally based on the highest available network standard and maximum data rates.
Nationwide network coverage: progress with question marks
For many years, decision-makers in Germany faced strong criticism due to the country’s poor international ranking in mobile network coverage. Thanks to the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport’s digital strategy, Germany has now expanded 5G coverage to over 90% nationwide—bringing it closer to Europe’s leading nations.
However, a significant gap remains between the theoretical performance promised by mobile standards and the actual speeds users experience in practice. Even high coverage percentages cannot conceal the frustration of users who suddenly find themselves in a dead zone, making mobile internet use difficult or impossible and disconnecting them from digital services.
Measurement Week Focuses on the User Perspective
These individual experiences are at the heart of the nationwide Mobile Network Measurement Week from May 26 to June 1, 2025. This initiative by federal, state, and local governments aims to generate a detailed picture of mobile coverage based on user-reported data. The findings are intended to help decision-makers better understand the real-world user experience.
The Measurement Week meaningfully complements both the Federal Network Agency’s dead zone map and the Gigabit-Grundbuch by adding a user-centric layer of information. While the Mobile Network Monitoring program is based on coverage data reported by mobile network operators, the Measurement Week crowdsources objective snapshots from everyday mobile users. This results in a neutral yet reliable assessment of the actual state of mobile connectivity in Germany.
‘No matter how sophisticated the network coverage calculations by network operators are, they cannot provide the kind of insight that is possible with the broadband measurement/dead zone app we have developed,’ explains Christoph Sudhues, managing partner of zafaco GmbH in Ismaning. ‘In theory, we have a pool of 69 million smartphone users nationwide who can take spontaneous measurements at any time and in any location.’
zafaco as a competent and experienced technical partner of the initiative
In practice, the app developed and supported by zafaco since 2015 has already proven its capabilities during the regional Mobile Measurement Weeks in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate in 2023 and 2024. In the most recent campaign (May 18–25, 2024), millions of measurement points were collected before, during, and after the official week—helping to identify dead zones and visualize 4G/LTE and 5G availability.
“Germany checks its network – all smartphone users are invited to contribute to the mapping of mobile coverage in their area,” Sudhues explains.
“Thanks to the strong support from the joint initiative of federal, state, and local stakeholders, we’re pleased to see growing interest in this important topic.”
The app is available free of charge on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for Android and iOS devices. It captures the device’s location, the connected mobile network operator, the network technology used, and other technical parameters such as device type. Once started, the measurement of connection quality continues in the background until manually stopped by the user. Data is stored locally first and transmitted anonymously once a sufficient network connection is available.
The evaluation is carried out on behalf of a working group led by the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation and includes representatives from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, all 16 federal state governments, the German Association of Counties, the German Association of Cities, the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, the Federal Network Agency, the Mobile Infrastructure Company, and the German Farmers’ Association. zafaco GmbH is also responsible for processing and analyzing the collected data.
The results are incorporated into the Federal Network Agency’s dead zone map and extend the Gigabit-Grundbuch with a realistic, user-based perspective—providing a valuable supplement to the official data supplied by mobile network operators and contributing to greater transparency in mobile network coverage.