Digitalisation has us firmly in its grip, and the Covid-19 pandemic has further strengthened the trend towards working from home. According to a study by Bitkom e. V., more than ten million people in Germany work exclusively from home, while a further 8.3 million do at least part of their work from home. This means that almost half of employees in Germany (45%) work wholly or partly from home, compared with 44% of employees in the UK, according to ONS.
The home office wave in Germany
With the increase in home office workplaces, the need for a stable Internet connection is also growing. However, a survey conducted by finanztip with 2,379 participants at the end of 2021 shows that 46% of respondents regularly have problems with internet quality. Disruptions at DSLregional confirm that DSL, cable and fiber optic connections often struggle with problems and outages.
If the promised speeds are not achieved, this is a further annoyance for customers. According to data from the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), only 25% of users receive the full service at home, while a quarter receive less than half of the booked speed.
Trouble with WiFi not only in Germany
WiFi rage is not an exclusively German problem. According to broadband provider Community Fibre, more than 21 million households (76%) in the UK experienced frustration due to a poor internet connection in 2022. Wi-Fi crashes (36%), slow speeds (32%) and constant buffering (29%) are the main reasons for this annoyance. In Germany, a study by the market research institute GfK shows that 36.6% of people have poor or no Wi-Fi reception in some rooms.
Causes of WiFi problems
However, the problems are not only caused by the provider, as is often assumed, but WiFi and computer settings can also be responsible for Internet problems. According to the finanztip survey, 68% of users already optimise the position of their WiFi router, 66% check their computer settings and 55% contact their Internet provider’s customer service.
