Your rights with your internet connection

The Telecommunications Act (TKG) gives consumers specific claims in four typical situations: a price reduction, compensation or special termination. Most of these rights do not lapse; they simply go unclaimed.

Four situations, four sections of the law

The claims depend on what goes wrong: persistently too little bandwidth, a complete outage, a missed appointment or too long an interruption when switching provider. Each of these situations has its own legal basis.

What they have in common is that you need to document what happened. Without evidence, such as a measurement report, a dated fault report or an appointment confirmation, your claim will in practice go nowhere.

• § 57 TKG: persistently low bandwidth → price reduction or special termination
• § 58 TKG: outages and missed appointments → compensation
• § 59 TKG: switching provider → interruption of no more than one working day
• § 60 TKG: moving to an address without availability → special termination right (Sonderkündigungsrecht)

Document first, then claim

Always report faults in a way you can prove and note the date and time of each report. For bandwidth problems, you also need the measurement procedure of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). Only with this basis is it worth writing to your provider.

The consumer advice centre (Verbraucherzentrale) provides template letters. If you cannot reach an agreement, the Federal Network Agency’s conciliation procedure is free and the usual next step for consumers.