Configurazione di Internet e televisione

Setting up internet and television in Germany involves two problems that pull in opposite directions. The first is that the market is unusually hostile to a newcomer: the line may not exist, the wait is measured in weeks, the credit check assumes a history you do not have, and the contract is designed to keep you. The second is that German telecoms law is unusually protective, to a degree that surprises Germans too. You can reduce your bill when the speed is wrong. You can claim cash for a technician who does not turn up. You can walk away when the price rises. The gap between those two facts is where this chapter lives.

This chapter is about getting connected and not being trapped. It covers what is physically in your wall and why that decides everything, how to get a contract with no German credit record, what the Telekommunikationsgesetz (TKG, the telecommunications act) actually gives you, and what happened to television when the rules changed in 2024. It will not tell you which provider is best, because that depends entirely on your address, and any list of the best deals would be wrong within a year.

The Internet and Television Change Nobody Told You About

If you arrived after mid-2024, you have inherited a different world from the one your colleagues describe, and their advice is out of date. Until 30 June 2024, most German tenants had cable television bundled into their rent. The landlord signed one contract for the whole building, and the monthly fee arrived inside the Nebenkosten, the running costs billed alongside your rent. Television was simply there, and you paid for it whether or not you owned a television. This arrangement was known as the Nebenkostenprivileg, the ancillary-costs privilege.

It ended on 1 July 2024. Under the Betriebskostenverordnung (BetrKV, the operating costs ordinance), the monthly basic fees for a television or broadband connection are no longer allocable through your Nebenkosten. Landlords across Germany had to convert those building contracts into individual ones or drop them entirely. Our chapter on comprendere i servizi di pubblica utilità covers the Nebenkostenabrechnung itself and where this sits in the ordinance, so check there if you want to know whether your statement is billing something it should not.

What matters here is the practical consequence, and it is a real change in your position. Television is now your decision and your bill. If you want cable, you sign for cable. If you do not, you pay nothing and you watch nothing, which for many people is exactly right. The Bundesnetzagentur, the federal regulator for telecommunications, makes three points worth knowing. The cost of operating a shared aerial or a building distribution system can still be billed as a running cost, so a small line for the physical installation is not automatically wrong. A Glasfaserbereitstellungsentgelt, the charge for a fibre distribution system inside the building, is capped at 60 euros a year and 540 euros in total per dwelling, and may only be charged where you are free to choose your own provider over that connection. And if your landlord still supplies you with television, he is legally acting as a telecommunications provider and is bound by the TKG customer-protection rules like anyone else. You may end that supply with one month’s notice, provided your tenancy has run for at least 24 months.

What Is Actually in Your Wall

Before you compare a single tariff, understand the distinction that governs your timeline. A Hausanschluss is the physical line that reaches your building from the street. Aktivierung is the separate act of switching your particular flat’s connection on. These are different things, done at different times, sometimes by different companies, and a newcomer who assumes the second follows automatically from the first will lose weeks.

A German flat may have no usable line at all. The building may have a Hausanschluss while your specific flat was never wired to it. The socket may exist but have been disconnected long ago. The previous tenant may have been on a network that no longer serves the address. In older buildings, in recently converted ones and in some new builds where the developer chose one infrastructure, what you find behind the skirting board is genuinely unpredictable. Look for a TAE socket, the German telephone socket, and a coaxial television socket, and treat their absence as a serious signal rather than a detail.

Ask before you sign. Ask the landlord which connections the flat has and which provider last served it. Ask the previous tenant if you can reach them, because they know what actually worked rather than what the wiring diagram claims. Then check availability against your exact address, not your street and not your district, because German availability is decided house by house. When you do order, expect a Techniker appointment, expect it to be offered as a wide window rather than a time, and expect the whole process to take two to six weeks in an ordinary case and considerably longer where new physical work is needed. Plan for that gap rather than discovering it.

DSL, Cable and the Truth About Fibre

Three fixed technologies compete for your flat, and which ones reach you is not a matter of preference. DSL runs over the copper telephone network, is the most widely available, and slows down the further you sit from the exchange, which is why the same tariff performs differently at two addresses in the same city. Cable runs over the coaxial television network, is common in cities and apartment blocks, is usually faster on download, and shares capacity with your neighbours, so evening performance can sag. Glasfaser, fibre, is the fastest and the most consistent, and it is the one where the marketing has drifted furthest from reality.

Be careful with the word Glasfaser, because it is used loosely. What you want is fibre that reaches your dwelling, sometimes labelled FTTH for fibre to the home. What is often sold as fibre is fibre that reaches a cabinet in the street, with copper covering the last stretch to your flat. There is also a gap between an address the network passes and an address actually connected, and a building can sit on a fibre street for years without a single flat being live, because connecting it needs the owner’s agreement and physical work in the basement.

Rather than quote a national coverage figure that would be stale by the time you read this, check your own address in the federal Gigabitgrundbuch, the government’s atlante della banda larga, which maps what is available where. Treat it as the starting point and the provider’s own address check as the confirmation. Germany is behind much of Europe on fibre, and the honest expectation for most arrivals is DSL or cable at a normal address, with fibre a pleasant surprise rather than a default. Separately, if you find yourself with no adequate connection at all, there is a statutory right to a minimum supply, which our chapter on impostazione delle utenze explains along with the current minimum speeds and the procedure for invoking it.

Getting a Contract With No German Credit Record

Almost every fixed-line and mobile contract in Germany runs a Schufa check. The Schufa is the country’s main credit agency, and the problem for a new arrival is not a bad score but no score. You have no German credit history because you have not been in the country long enough to generate one, and an empty file reads to an automated system as an unknown risk rather than a clean record. The outcome is a refusal, or an approval with a deposit, or an offer of prepaid only. This is not directed at you personally and arguing about fairness will not move it. Our chapter on crediti e prestiti in Germania explains how the Schufa works and how to see your own file.

The practical answers are simple. Register your address first, because an Anmeldung, the compulsory registration of your address, and a German bank account are what start a Schufa record existing at all. Use prepaid in the meantime, which needs no credit check and no contract. Where a provider offers a monthly rolling tariff, take it even at a worse price, because you are buying the ability to leave. And when you are refused, do not apply to five providers in a week: each application can be recorded, and a cluster of them looks worse than the empty file you started with. Wait, build a few months of ordinary banking history, and come back.

Mobile Instead of Fixed, Which Is a Real Answer

Given how long a German fixed-line installation takes, mobile internet deserves consideration as a genuine alternative rather than a stopgap you tolerate until the real thing arrives. German mobile networks are good in cities, a data-heavy or unlimited mobile tariff can carry an ordinary household including video calls and streaming, and a 5G router serving a whole flat is a normal product rather than an improvisation. For a single person or a couple in a city, mobile-only can simply be the answer, and for anyone on a short posting it avoids a 24-month commitment for a flat they will leave.

The honest limits are worth stating. Mobile performance depends on the mast and the hour, and a busy evening in a dense district is where it shows. Some tariffs slow after a data threshold, and some restrict router use or exclude it. Gaming and large uploads suffer from the latency. But your rights travel with you: since 20 April 2026 the Bundesnetzagentur has operated a separate proof procedure for mobile internet under its own Allgemeinverfügung, so a mobile connection that underdelivers can be measured and challenged much like a fixed one, using the regulator’s mobile app rather than the desktop one described below.

The Contract, and How It Keeps You

The law here is better than its reputation, and the reason readers do not benefit from it is that providers do not advertise it. The rule itself belongs to our impostazione delle utenze chapter, which sets out §56 TKG: an initial term may not exceed 24 months, and once that term has expired you may cancel at any time with one month’s notice. What matters in this chapter is the practice, because the practice has not caught up with the law.

Providers still steer everyone to 24 months. That is lawful, but §56(1) TKG also obliges them to offer you a contract with an initial term of no more than twelve months before you sign. That option is real and it is enforceable, and it is almost never on the landing page. You often have to ask for it by name, and it will usually cost more per month. For anyone whose stay in Germany is uncertain, it is frequently worth the difference, because the alternative is paying out a contract for a flat you no longer live in.

The reliable trap is the Vertragsverlängerung, the automatic extension, and the Verbraucherzentrale, the consumer advice organisation, has warned about the tactics around it repeatedly. Your contract renews silently unless you act. The law requires the provider to warn you on a dauerhafter Datenträger, a durable medium, before the extension takes effect, and to tell you that you can prevent it and that you can cancel afterwards. In practice that warning arrives as one email among many, or inside a portal you do not check. Diary the date yourself the day you sign. Note also that when you do cancel under §56(3), it must cost you nothing, and if you lawfully end a contract early the provider may only charge you for retained equipment, capped at its remaining agreed value.

Two provisions almost nobody uses are worth knowing. Under §57(1) TKG, if the provider unilaterally changes your contract terms, you may cancel without notice and without cost within three months of being properly informed. A price increase is exactly this: it is not something to grumble about, it is your exit, and the announcement letter is the thing that opens the door. And §57(3) TKG obliges providers to tell you, at least once a year, which of their tariffs is genuinely best for your usage. Very few customers have ever noticed receiving that advice. Ask for it.

When the Speed Is Not What You Bought

This is the most valuable right in the chapter and the least used. Under §57(4) TKG, where there is a significant, continuous or regularly recurring deviation between the speed you actually receive and the speed the provider stated, you may reduce your monthly payment in proportion to the shortfall, and you may terminate the contract without notice. The reduction is a statutory right, not a goodwill gesture, and one detail makes it unusually strong: once the deviation is established, §57(4) keeps your right to reduce alive until the provider proves it is delivering properly. The burden lands on them.

The condition is proof, and only one kind counts. The deviation must be shown with a measurement procedure the Bundesnetzagentur provides or certifies, which for a fixed line means the regulator’s own Breitbandmessung Desktop-App. A screenshot from a speed-test website is worthless here. The protocol is precise, and getting it wrong wastes the campaign: 30 measurements within 14 days of starting, spread across three different calendar days with at least one calendar day between them, ten measurements on each day, at least five minutes apart, and with a gap of at least three hours between the fifth and sixth measurement of each day. The rules are built into the app, so in practice you follow its instructions and it enforces the timing.

What counts as a shortfall is defined rather than argued. Your Produktinformationsblatt, the product information sheet the provider must give you before you sign, states three figures for download and upload: a minimum, a normally available and a maximum rate. Keep that document, because it is the yardstick. A qualifying deviation exists if any one of three things is true: 90 percent of the contracted maximum is not reached at least once on at least two of the three measurement days; or the normally available speed is missed in 90 percent of all measurements; or the minimum speed is undercut at least once on at least two of the three days. Any one of the three, in either direction of traffic, is enough. At the end the app produces a Messprotokoll, a measurement report, and that report is the document you send your provider.

Then be realistic about what follows. The Bundesnetzagentur does not enforce your individual reduction; it defines the test and offers a Schlichtung, a conciliation procedure, if the provider will not engage. The law says the reduction must be proportional to the shortfall but does not fix the arithmetic, so the amount is negotiable and depends on how badly your use is affected. A customer with a certified protocol quoting §57 TKG is nonetheless in a completely different conversation from one who says the internet feels slow.

Faults, Missed Appointments and Actual Cash

German law puts a price on your provider wasting your time, and the amounts are specific. Under §58 TKG you may require a Störung, a fault, to be cleared immediately and free of charge unless you caused it. The provider must document your fault report and, if it cannot fix the problem within one calendar day, must tell you by the following day what it is doing and when it expects the fault to be gone.

If the fault is not cleared within two calendar days of your report, compensation starts. From the following day, for each day of complete outage, you may claim 5 euros or 10 percent of your monthly fee on the third and fourth days, and 10 euros or 20 percent from the fifth day, whichever amount is higher in each case. If a technician misses an agreed service or installation appointment, that is worth 10 euros or 20 percent of your monthly fee, whichever is higher, for every missed appointment. These are statutory entitlements, not complaints, and you claim them from the provider directly. The exceptions are narrow: you cannot claim where you caused the fault or its continuation, or where the outage stems from force majeure or a legally mandated measure. Where a fault triggers both a reduction under §57 and compensation under §58, the two are set off against each other rather than added.

Switching Provider and Moving House

A switch is run by the new provider, not by you, and that is deliberate. Under §59 TKG the gaining and losing providers must cooperate, must not delay or misuse the switch, and must not leave you cut off. Order the switch through the new provider and let it cancel the old contract; doing both yourself is how people end up with two contracts or none.

The headline rule deserves precision because it is often repeated wrongly. Your service may not be interrupted for longer than one working day. That is one Arbeitstag, not one calendar day, so a Friday switch can legitimately stretch across a weekend. If the interruption runs longer, §59(4) TKG gives you 10 euros or 20 percent of your monthly fee, whichever is higher, for each further working day. Note who pays: the compensation is owed by the abgebender Anbieter, the provider you are leaving, not the one you are joining. A missed appointment during a switch is owed by whichever of the two missed it. There is also a quiet provision worth knowing: where the switch is delayed through no fault of yours, the old provider’s connection charges halve after your contract has ended. Keeping your number is free, cannot be charged for, and you may request it up to a month after the contract ends, although you should never rely on that margin. Portability fails on mismatched details more often than on anything technical, so make sure your name, address and date of birth are identical at both providers.

Moving house is governed by §60 TKG, and this is where a common assumption is wrong. You do not automatically get to cancel because you moved. If your provider offers service at your new address, it must continue your contract there on unchanged terms for the remaining duration, and it may charge a move fee that is capped at its own price for a new connection. Only where it cannot deliver at the new address may you terminate, with one month’s notice, effective at your move-out date or later. If the new-address activation is late, the fault and switching compensation rules apply there too. So the move fee is legitimate, and the answer to a 24-month contract is a shorter contract at the start, not a move you hope will release you.

Internet and Television Bundles, Streaming and What You Can Skip

Start with the part you do not choose. The Rundfunkbeitrag, the broadcasting contribution funding ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, is owed per dwelling regardless of what you own or watch, and it is not television in the sense of this chapter. Our impostazione delle utenze chapter explains the amount, how the bill finds you and the exemption routes, so this chapter will not repeat it. Nothing you decide below reduces it.

Everything else is now genuinely optional, which is the practical meaning of the 2024 change. Satellite reception gives you the German free channels without a monthly fee once a dish is installed, and it is the standard answer for households who want international channels too, though you need the landlord’s permission for a dish. DVB-T2 gives terrestrial reception through an aerial, with the public channels free and the private ones behind a paid service. IPTV delivers television over your internet connection and is what most provider bundles now mean by television. Cable remains what it was, except that you now sign for it yourself. If you already have a solid internet connection, the honest answer for many households is that they need no television service at all.

Streaming carries the mix most newcomers actually want, and alongside the international platforms the German services Joyn and RTL+ carry the domestic broadcasters live and on demand, which is useful both for news and for language practice. Bundles are worth arithmetic rather than instinct: a television package attached to your internet contract is often discounted at first and priced normally later, so compare the total across the full term and not the first-year headline.

One recent development strengthens your hand. On 9 July 2026 the European Court of Justice ruled in case C-234/25, brought against Sky and its WOW platform, that a streaming provider cannot categorically exclude the 14-day right of withdrawal where its offering personalises content to the individual viewer. The court’s reasoning was that a personalised, constantly shifting catalogue is something you cannot properly judge before you pay, so you must keep the right to step back. It is not a free trial: if you withdraw after watching, you owe a reasonable charge for what you used. Our news article on the EU court ruling on streaming withdrawal rights has the detail. If you signed up for one match or one season and immediately regretted it, this is worth reading before you accept a refusal.

Fourteen Days Online, Nothing in the Shop

The Widerrufsrecht, the right of withdrawal, is the strongest consumer protection you have, and it has one boundary that catches people constantly. Under §312g BGB you have 14 days to withdraw from a Fernabsatzvertrag, a distance contract concluded online, by telephone or by post, and from a contract concluded away from business premises, which covers the salesperson at your door or the promoter who stopped you in the street. Withdrawal is stronger than cancellation because it unwinds the contract retroactively rather than ending it going forward.

It does not apply to a contract you sign inside a provider’s shop. A shop is neither a distance sale nor an off-premises sale, so the statutory withdrawal right simply does not arise there, and nothing about the deal being bad changes that. This is the opposite of what many arrivals assume, and it is a reason to sign online rather than in a branch when the terms are otherwise the same. One narrow exception is worth remembering: if you were personally approached outside and taken into the shop to sign, that counts as an off-premises contract after all and the right revives. Our chapter on leggi sulla protezione dei consumatori covers the wider framework. Watch the clock, too: the 14 days run from the contract, so regret needs to be prompt.

Strumenti che aiutano con le pratiche burocratiche

Werkzeu.ge, a browser-based collection of tools for German bureaucracy, is built by Cryon UG, the company behind WeLiveIn.de. One of its tools fits this chapter squarely. The Lettera di dimissioni generator, free without an account, produces a cancellation letter for consumer contracts and covers 30 contract types across eight categories, with Telekommunikation among them. It knows the post-2021 TKG position rather than assuming every contract needs three months’ notice, so it calculates the actual date your mobile or internet contract can end. Its most useful feature here is the triage it performs first: where you concluded the contract online or by telephone and it is less than 14 days old, it flags that you probably have a withdrawal right under §355 BGB and should withdraw rather than cancel, which is precisely the distinction the previous section describes and precisely the one people get wrong.

If your problem is remembering rather than writing, the Fristenwächter is a deadline dashboard that collects contractual and official deadlines in one place and reminds you in advance, with a mobile contract’s cancellation date among the cases it names. It is a Plus tool, so it sits behind the paid tier; current terms are on the Pagina dei prezzi di Werkzeu.ge, and the free tier carries advertising. Be aware of the limits, which the platform states itself: it is in beta until 30 November 2026 and tools may be incomplete, guest inputs stay on your device but anything touching email or storage reaches the server, and none of it is legal advice. A generated letter is a well-formed letter, not a legal opinion on your dispute. For a fight with a provider that is going badly, the Verbraucherzentrale and the Bundesnetzagentur’s conciliation procedure are the routes that carry weight.

What To Do in Your First Weeks

Work in this order. Before you sign anything, check availability at your exact address and ask the landlord what physical connections the flat actually has, because that single question decides your timeline more than any tariff comparison. Then bridge the gap deliberately rather than accidentally: take a prepaid mobile tariff or a 5G router for the four to eight weeks a fixed line realistically needs, and decide once it is running whether you still need the fixed line at all.

When you do sign, ask explicitly for the twelve-month option that §56(1) TKG requires the provider to offer, and weigh the extra monthly cost against the real chance that you move within two years. Save the Produktinformationsblatt the moment you receive it, because without it you cannot prove a speed shortfall later. Put the contract’s end date in your calendar the same day, with a reminder a month before, and treat any letter announcing a price rise as a three-month window to leave under §57(1) TKG rather than as bad news.

If the connection underperforms, do not complain by phone. Download the Bundesnetzagentur’s Breitbandmessung Desktop-App, run the full campaign properly across three days, and send the Messprotokoll with a written demand quoting §57 TKG. If a technician misses an appointment or a fault runs past two days, claim the compensation in writing rather than waiting to be offered it, because it will not be offered. And when you eventually switch, let the new provider run it, check that your name and address match exactly at both ends, and remember that more than one working day without service is the old provider’s bill to pay, not your bad luck.