The specifications must be met at least once on three of the five measurement days. If they don’t, the reduction claim applies. Conversely, the consumer advice center considers it “incomprehensible” that only three out of 30 tests could be sufficient for the network to be rated as sufficient. The measurement tool is becoming “a toothless tiger,” Pop complains, pointing out that discrepancies between claims and reality in the telecommunications sector have been a consumer nuisance for a long time.
Pop demands that the tests not only reach 10 to 25 percent, but 90 percent of the contractually guaranteed maximum bandwidth. In addition, she is against a differentiation between town and country because this contradicts the idea of a nationwide mobile Internet supply.
The Internet industry association VATM takes a different view and warns against exaggerated specifications. VATM Managing Director Jürgen Grützner points out that the network operator only has a very limited influence on the utilization of a radio cell. “It is not really possible to make a professionally justifiable reference to an individual fitting from a technical maximum value under optimal conditions.” When signing the contract, the users are “quite aware that this maximum value cannot be achieved everywhere in every situation, at any time, at any base station and with any capacity utilization”.