Telekom, Vodafone and O2 in the big test network: which mobile provider is best for commuters in Hamburg?

In Hamburg, it is the fastest way to reach Germany by mobile phone. Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich see in terms of speed and network coverage only the tail lights of the Hanseatic city. But what is the quality of the mobile network in the Hamburg area?

With "Net Check", the computer magazine "Chip" has closely examined the mobile networks of Telekom, Vodafone and O2 nationwide. Although Hamburg is doing well despite some shortcomings, the situation seems much worse south of the Elbe: who wants to ride the road on the move often has to be patient.

Especially on the railways between Lower Saxony and Hamburg, the mobile phone network is extremely slow and technically obsolete. Watch a series of the favorite series during the long S-Bahn ride? Talk and surf on the way to the office? This is the most difficult for O2 customers.

Nearly 13% of connections still use the old GSM network. It was commissioned in its original form in 1991 and offers maximum data transmission speed via EDGE (2G) technology.

20% of all data transfers via the UMTS (3G) network, contemporary LTE (4G) reception is in the O2 network only two out of three connections.

The winner on the railway lines in the vicinity is Vodafone. 88% of the time the testers spent here with LTE reception. After all, Telekom's customers still benefit from fast speeds in four out of five cases. After all: complete connection failures are very rare among the three network operators.

The situation is more relaxed for motorists. Anyone who surfs and calls here at Deutsche Telekom or Vodafone is almost always on the LTE network. With 99.9% (Telekom) and 99.5% (Vodafone), both providers provide almost continuous 4G reception. O2 customers still have a disadvantage: their share in 4G is only 83%.

Overall, this means that if Telekom (95.3% of 4G shares) and Vodafone (97%) already operate a sufficiently developed mobile network, O2 still has a long way to go. Only a fourth connection is established via 4G.

Among them, the quality of calls also suffers: 7.4% of all calls arrive in O2 outside cities. In Vodafone, the network fails 1.4%, Telekom only 0.3% of phone calls.