The German mobile experience on motorways and railways: more bars on the Autobahn

You’re driving alone down the Autobahn, you’ve just missed your exit and need directions.  Or you’re commuting by train, trying to join a video call. In these moments, mobile connectivity isn’t a luxury — it’s essential. The good news? In Germany, that experience is getting much better.

The German mobile regulator — the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) — has been pushing operators to invest in improving mobile connectivity along such routes. To show the results of these efforts, Opensignal has analyzed the real-world mobile experience within 100 meters of Germany's federal motorways (Bundesautobahn) and operational railways.

Key Findings

• Telekom rules the road. Our Telekom users have the best motorway mobile experience* across five measures of the mobile experience, but O2 is in first place for Reliability Experience.
   
• Telekom users enjoy the best railway mobile experience. Telekom picks up four uncontested first place finishes for our users’ railway mobile experience*. O2 ties with Telekom for Reliability Experience and Vodafone does the same for Voice App Experience.
   
• Users spend more time on 5G on or near motorways. Our 5G users spend over 30% of their time with an active 5G connection when on or near motorways compared to just over a quarter of their time for users on or near railways and around 15% nationally.
   
• German 5G users are spending more time on 5G than they did a year ago. 5G Availability scores are significantly higher than they were a year ago, rising by nine and eight percentage points for motorways and railways, respectively — around double the four percentage point rise seen nationally.
   
• Our users on or near motorways and railways experience less time with no signal than the national average. Users on or near motorways spend only 0.5% of their time with no signal — compared to 0.6% for those on or near railways and the 0.9% seen nationally. These figures for motorways and railways are down year-on-year (YoY). That’s good news for anyone suffering from a flat tire.
   
• Motorways beat railways and the national average for reliability and consistency. Overall, Germany scores under 900 points on a 100-1000 point scale for Reliability Experience, but that rises to 918 points for motorways and 907 points for railways. Similarly, the national score of Consistent Quality is just below 76% rising to 79.3% for motorways and 77.5% for railways.

*When we refer to the motorway or railway mobile experience or just “motorways” or “railways” in the context of mobile experience, we are referring to the mobile experience of all Opensignal users within 100 meters of either one of Germany's federal motorways (Bundesautobahn) or an operational railway.

Regulatory drivers: meeting the coverage obligation

Providing the infrastructure that underpins a good mobile experience on or near roads and railways is not easy and the economics are often challenging. As part of the 2019 spectrum auction, the Federal Network Agency required the successful bidders meet a number of coverage obligations. By the end of 2022 (which was after our first analysis on this topic), operators needed to provide speeds of at least 100Mbps to:

• all federal motorways
• major federal roads
• major railway lines (> 2,000 passengers per day)

With these targets coverage from another mobile operator could be taken into account.

Additional targets widening the scope of these requirements had to be met by the end of 2024. O2, Telekom and Vodafone are now working to meet the individual targets that were set for them as part of the five-year extension of the spectrum usage rights that were due to expire at the end of 2025. These must be met towards the end of this decade.

While these coverage and speed requirements are driving operators’ investments, there is value in trying to understand users’ real-world experience from a wider perspective. This is why Opensignal focuses on more than just speed. In addition, many applications require far less than 50-100Mbps. For example, Netflix recommends download speeds of 15Mbps or higher for streaming ultra high definition (UHD). Other factors that affect the real-world user experience include jitter and packet loss (as well as latency) — when playing multiplayer mobile games.

With this in mind, this analysis focuses on Video Experience, Games Experience and Voice App Experience, along with availability metrics and those that measure the reliability and consistency of our users’ mobile experience. As the transport-focused coverage obligations do not extend to new entrants, we have not included 1&1 when comparing individual operators.

Who rules the autobahn??

Looking at our users’ motorway mobile experience, Telekom — the most awarded operator in Opensignal’s latest Mobile Network Experience Report for Germany and a Global Leader in two categories in our  2025 Global Awards — performs strongly. It places first across five metrics, namely Consistent Quality, Availability, Video Experience, Games Experience and Voice App Experience. However, our O2 users have the most reliable experience, given their score of 926 points on a 100-1000 point scale.

Only our Telekom users have an Excellent Games Experience (85 or above) on or near motorways. This means that the vast majority of them deem their network experience acceptable when playing multiplayer mobile games over cellular connections. Nearly all users feel like they have control over the game and they receive immediate feedback on their actions. There is not a noticeable delay in almost all cases.

Switching to railways, Telekom again dominates the mobile experience. It is the only operator in first place across Consistent Quality, Availability, Video Experience and Games Experience. On the other hand, O2 is in a statistical tie with Telekom for first place for Reliability Experience and Vodafone is in the same position for Voice App Experience.

Across all three operators our users’ motorway and railway Voice App Experience places in the Good (80-87) category. This means that many users are satisfied, but some users experience minor quality impairments.

Similarly, with both motorways and railways, O2, Telekom and Vodafone earn Very Good (68-78) ratings for Video Experience. This means that our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
 

Users on or near motorways and railways are spending more time on 5G and less time without a mobile signal

Our 5G users have seen a marked up-tick in the proportion of time they spend with an active 5G connection (5G Availability) — both nationally and on or near motorways and railways. Motorways score 31.2% for 5G Availability, well ahead of railways’ 26.4% and the national figure of 15.5%. This matters as the more time users spend with a 5G connection, the more they can benefit from the superior experience that 5G provides compared to other mobile generations.

Our users on or near motorways and railways spend less time with no cellular connection than the national average and this gap has increased year-on-year (YoY). Now our users spend nearly 1% of their time with no cellular service on average, dropping to 0.5% and 0.6% for motorways and railways, respectively.

We notice mobile networks most when they fail — during dropped calls or stuttering videos — which makes reliability and consistency metrics crucial. The motorway user experience beats both the national average and that for railways for both Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality.

While Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality may sound similar, they measure different things.

Reliability Experience measures Opensignal users’ ability to connect to and successfully complete (basic) tasks on mobile operators’ networks. It analyzes how much their experience is affected by the radio access and core network, along with issues that prevent them from connecting to the internet even if they have a connection. It also factors in users’ ability to successfully use lower performance applications including SD video, over-the-top voice calls and web browsing.

On the other hand, Consistent Quality measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical demanding tasks on their devices.

Overall, Germany scores under 900 points on a 100-1000 point scale for Reliability Experience, but that rises to 918 points for motorways and 907 points for railways.

Similarly, the mobile experience for our German users on average meets the thresholds for Consistent Quality nearly 76% of the time, rising to 79.3% for motorways and 77.5% for railways.
 

Operators are making progress

Much of the improvements we’ve shown are due to all three established operators — O2, Telekom and Vodafone — working hard to meet the obligations set by the Federal Network Agency.

In February 2024, Vodafone announced its partnership with Autobahn GmbH. This will provide Vodafone with state-owned land for new mast sites. By the end of 2026, Vodafone seeks to add 150 more 5G mobile sites along its 13,200km highway network and carry out an extra 1,000 construction measures to expand mobile capacity.

More recently, Telekom claimed that it has exceeded the network expansion required by the terms of the 2019 spectrum auction. It said that its only remaining challenge is coverage in some tunnels along federal, state and regional roads, as well as railways.
 

Beyond transport

Looking more generally at the German mobile experience, the country placed 31st in our Global Network Excellence Index  globally, rising to 23rd across markets across Europe and Central Asia and 9th place when only compared against other large land area markets (greater than 200,000km²). While German operators have completed their 3G switch-offs, a recent Opensignal analysis found that Germany had the 10th highest Time on 2G out of European markets. 2G shutdowns are harder to perform once 3G is switched off due to the issues around support for IoT devices and old handsets that don’t support Voice over LTE (VoLTE), but reducing German users’ reliance on 2G would help improve their overall experience.

Look out for more analysis from Opensignal in the coming months, including our mobile network experience report on Germany in the second half of this year.