HEIDELBERG (dpa-AFX) - Three out of four mobile phone users in Germany experience dead spots when surfing or making calls with their smartphone while on the move. 18 percent of cell phone users even regularly end up in a dead zone. This is the result of a survey conducted by the opinion research company Innofact AG on behalf of the comparison portal Verivox in Heidelberg.

For the study, no analysis was carried out using measuring vehicles or other technical equipment, but the population was asked about their own experiences. A total of 1,010 people took part in the online survey in March 2024. The survey is representative of the population in terms of age, gender and state of residence.

The answers to the question of whether network problems are a regular annoyance depend heavily on the age of the respondents. Young people feel most affected. 94% of respondents under the age of 30 report network problems on the move, 25% of whom complain of regular outages. 41% of the youngest respondents and as many as 23% of the over-70s say they are occasionally stuck in a dead zone. Overall, 74% of Germans say that they experience outages or disconnections when using the mobile network. Only 22% of respondents say they have never experienced a dead zone.

In the survey, it was not only young adults but also families with children who reported network problems more frequently than average (84%). In households without children, this figure drops to 71%. More than a quarter of families with children (26%) regularly have to deal with network outages or disconnections - this is significantly less common among respondents without children in the household (15%).

"Those with children are often on the move just as often as working people," said Verivox telecommunications expert Jorg Schamberg. "Almost every child owns a smartphone by the time they reach puberty at the latest. Young people naturally assume that they can be "always on" - but the network supply will not allow this even in 2024."/chd/DP/zb