Germany active fixed broadband lines
Germany active fixed broadband lines stood at 38.8 million lines in 2025, according to Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). It is one of the indicators in the Telecommunications market table (Value · Annual), with a complete series running from 2003 to 2025. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the Telecommunications market table
| Indicator | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total active broadband lines5 | 38.8 | 38.6 | 38.4 | 37.5 | 36.9 | 36.2 | 35.2 | 34.2 | 33.2 | 32 | |
| DSL | 22.7 | 23.6 | 24.5 | 24.7 | 25.4 | 25.4 | 25.3 | 25 | 24.7 | 24 | |
| Hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.6 | 8.7 | 8.8 | 8.7 | 8.3 | 8 | 7.7 | 7.2 |
Understanding germany active fixed broadband lines
All active fixed-line internet subscriptions across residential and commercial premises are consolidated within this aggregate, establishing the overall boundary of the nation's retail wireline and stationary wireless market. Coverage spans every commercial subscriber contracting for broadband delivery regardless of physical medium, incorporating copper telephone lines, coaxial television networks, pure optical fibre, fixed cellular gateways, and dedicated enterprise data paths. Inactive drops, dark fibre strands, unbundled wholesale inputs, and standard mobile handset packages remain strictly excluded. While subsidiary rows decompose the customer base into discrete physical transport channels, this overarching total reflects net retail market adoption without duplicate counting across intermediary wholesale agreements.
Tracking this metric on an annual balance date removes intra-year fluctuations, making year-on-year evaluation the sound approach for monitoring long-term expansion across the broadband sector. Revisions occasionally occur when network operators correct retrospective billing databases or adjust retail customer counts following corporate consolidations. A key pitfall involves conflating total active subscriptions with household penetration rates, as enterprise accounts and secondary premises hold multiple commercial lines while some residential subscriptions serve multi-generational living units. Furthermore, comparing this aggregate directly to infrastructure deployment figures misleads, because deployment metrics monitor physical reach rather than customer billing status.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this aggregate include broadband delivered to smartphones?
- Mobile telephony and mobile data subscriptions on handsets are excluded from this metric, which restricts coverage strictly to stationary premises connections.
- How are wholesale line resales handled in this overall count?
- Each subscription is recorded once at the retail customer level, preventing duplication between network wholesalers and retail service providers.
- Why does total subscription volume differ from the number of connected households?
- The measure tallies both residential and business contracts, while single residential contracts frequently deliver connectivity across multi-person domestic units.