Unesco: Germany should create fast internet for everyone

By: MRT Desk

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Unesco: Germany should create fast internet for everyone

Unesco has asked the politically responsible in Germany to create and implement a legal right to nationwide access to high-speed internet by 2025. In a report on Internet development in Germany, which was presented on Tuesday at the Internet Governance Forum in Berlin, the World Cultural Organization points to a “digital rift”. While practically all working Germans (96 percent) are online, only a good two thirds of the unemployed (68 percent) use the Internet. This gap must be overcome.

Federal Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU), who is responsible for digital infrastructure, commented on the Unesco report with the reference that the right to fast internet had long been decided. “With the amendment to the Telecommunications Act, we enshrined the right to fast Internet into law in the spring of this year. Regardless of whether I choose to live in the country or in the city, in future everyone will have the right to fast surfing.”

In addition, the federal government has strengthened the gigabit expansion by accelerating permits and enabling new technologies. “Today, access to fast Internet is one of the cornerstones of social and economic participation,” emphasized the minister. This has recently become very clear in the current Corona situation.

On this point, Unesco sees no reason to complain either. At the highest level, German politicians have acknowledged the right to the Internet for everyone. With a few exceptions, network access in Germany is implemented across the board, stable and inexpensive. “It should be emphasized that, despite the increased use of telephone, video conferencing and streaming in the Covid 19 pandemic, there was no network overload at any time.”

However, in Germany too, factors such as a migration background, non-traditional educational trajectories and employment biographies as well as age put the full realization of all human rights on the Internet at risk, the Unesco criticized. The organization called for greater support for Internet use by people with a migration background and for equality between girls and women in all areas of the Internet. This included educational offers, but also efforts to combat exclusion experiences on the Internet and “digital violence”.

On the forum was a civil society alliance “F5” presented, in which the Society for Freedom Rights (GFF), AlgorithmWatch, the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, Reporters Without Borders (ROG) and Wikimedia Germany have come together. The aim of the cooperation is to promote a new start in digital politics in order to align digitization with the interests of people in Germany and Europe.

The name “F5” alludes to the function key F5, which is used, among other things, to update a website. In the future, the focus should be on the common good, instead of using the interests of authorities and the income of tech companies as a yardstick, demanded the alliance.

Konstantin von Notz, vice-parliamentary group of the Greens in the Bundestag, said that the past few years had been lost years in terms of digital politics: Germany was left behind in almost all international comparisons. Powerful, to this day largely unregulated platforms dominated digital markets and dictated their conditions to the detriment of consumers. “We need a real new start in digital policy and a federal government that is ready to face the challenges.”


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