BERLIN, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Complaints from companies and households about slow internet connections are piling up in Germany as the country struggles to make the transition to a glass fiber infrastructure.
According to a recent study by Bertelsmann institute, less than seven percent of German households have a glass fiber connection, in the countryside that number drops to a mere two percent.
In Spain for example, that number is more than seven times as high -- 50 percent have access to a glass fiber connection.
Germany's slow internet is starting to cause economic damage as well. "We have a problem with the digital infrastructure," says Marcel Fratzscher, head of the German institute for economic research (DIW).
Although Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised to invest more than 100 billion euros (120 billion U.S. dollars) until 2025 to advance "in the gigabit-zone" and to reach the minimum target of the government to establish a 50Mbit threshold by 2018, there is still a long way to go as many network provider in Germany are still relying on outdated copper wire technology.
"In five to ten years at the latest, such an infrastructure will not enable modern companies to survive international competition," Fratzscher continues.
The German chambers of commerce and industry (DIHK) is recording complaint from German companies that see their business damaged by slow internet connections. Some of the cases, like film producers who have to drive from the studio to their homes in order to upload the material from USB sticks, do not correspond to the global image of the economic powerhouse of Germany.
Another study by the German Fraunhofer institute, has confirmed that Germany has a problem with its internet. Although Germany ranked fourth place in the overall "innovation indicator", it only reached 17th place out of 35 industry nations in the sub-category "digitalization".
"Germany is lagging behind by international comparison, especially in the development of glass fiber infrastructure," says Rainer Frietsch, author of the study.
