Following a comprehensive series of tests, the Germany consumer organisation Stiftung Warentest rated E-Plus as having the poorest mobile data service.
This finding came as part of a much wider investigation into German mobile communications undertaken by the consumer organisation. The group established that voice quality and coverage was good across the country with little difference between Telekom Deutschland, Vodafone Germany, O2 Germany and E-Plus.
Stiftung Warentest reported that Telekom Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom's German arm, was marginally ahead with voice services, while E-Plus needed more attempts to connect in rural areas.
However, its mobile data measurements found much larger differences between the four operators, with Telekom Deutschland and Vodafone clearly being the leaders in mobile data coverage, while E-Plus provided the poorest coverage and by far the slowest download speeds.
Of note, while rural data coverage remained poor for all operators in comparison to city centre and urban coverage, Vodafone provided the best service of the four service providers. It took Vodafone's network 10 seconds to download a standard web page in a rural area, while it took 16 seconds for Telekom Deutschland and O2. It took E-Plus's network 24 seconds to complete the task in an urban environment, with an average of 37 seconds in the countryside.
For more:
- see this Stiftung Warentest article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Telecom Paper article (sub. req.)
Related Articles:
Report: iPhone and iPad dominate German mobile data traffic
O2 Germany chief hints at market consolidation
E-Plus to trial TD-LTE using equipment from ZTE
E-Plus low-cost data tariff could trigger German price war