Consumer protection reveals: This is how much you will save on lousy Internet from December 1st

The new telecommunications law is just around the corner. From December 1st it brings new rights for consumers. Payment reductions are hardly a problem anymore when the internet runs out of steam at home. Consumer advocates have now calculated how much those affected can save.

Saving on the Internet: TKG amendment makes it possible

The situation should be familiar to practically everyone: Whether streaming in the evening or during an important conference from the home office, the Internet is on strike, sometimes it gives up completely, on other days the data packets work their way through the line as if through quicksand – unfortunately not an isolated case.

That’s why consumers can from December 1st reduce your monthly payments in the event of significant or regular deviations from the booked bandwidth or in the event of total failure. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) is now calculating how much Internet customers can save.

To do this, one takes a look at Germany’s four major providers and determines what price reductions customers would have been entitled to in 2019 and 2020. The surveys are based on information from the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA). The connections were checked with the official BNetzA tool (see the Federal Network Agency).

Telekom, Vodafone, 1 & 1, o2: users pay up to 29 euros too much per month

According to this, 30 percent of Telekom customers with a tariff with a low to medium bandwidth (2 to less than 50 Mbit / s) received less than half the booked speed (source: VZBV). Those affected paid an average of 15.21 to 23.89 euros per month without consideration. Such a difference could be retained by customers in the future after the change in the law. With the top tariffs with 200 to 500 Mbit / s, 30 percent of Telekom customers received less than 37.7 percent of the service sold. Using the example of the Magenta Home XL 250 tariff, they paid for this at least 28.78 euros per month too much.

The extremes were particularly noticeable at Vodafone, so the consumer advocates continue. With the small tariffs below 18 Mbit / s, half of the customers paid at least EUR 8.82 too much. With the offers with high bandwidth, 30 percent of Vodafone customers were able to use less than a third of the speed according to the contract. From December onwards, you would be entitled to a reduction of at least EUR 20.00 to EUR 26.67.

The distribution for 1 & 1 is similar, medium tariffs performed better than small or large tariffs. Between 8 and 18 Mbit / s, half of the participating customers could pay at least EUR 8.64 less per month. With the high-speed tariffs, 50 percent of customers pay at least EUR 14.60 without consideration.

Poor internet connection can also be due to the WLAN. We show what you can do in the Video:

Fixed-line internet from o2 noticed exactly the opposite: the tariffs with medium bandwidth (25 to below 50 Mbit / s) would deliver particularly bad results. Half of the customers who checked their connection using a measuring tool arrived less than 50 percent of the booked speed. They therefore paid at least EUR 16.04 more than necessary.

From December 1st: It’s worth checking the Internet

Due to the method and presentation of the results and because the surveys by the Federal Network Agency are based on voluntary, self-initiated participation, the figures are not representative. Nevertheless they show: From December 1st it can be really worthwhile regularly check your own internet speed. You can find out what you have to consider in our article. When it comes to consumer protection, it is hoped that increased demands from users will lead to better services from providers.