Citizens should report dead spots

How is mobile phone coverage in North Rhine-Westphalia? Where are there disconnections or even dead spots? From 18 to 25 May, all citizens in North Rhine-Westphalia are called upon to record the network availability of their mobile phone providers with the help of the Federal Network Agency's free dead spot app. Citizens in Bocholt are also called upon to take measurements and report dead spots.

Following the successful first edition of the NRW Mobile Measurement Week last year, as many measurements as possible will once again be taken around Whitsun 2024 in order to obtain an up-to-date picture of the mobile coverage situation.

Minister of Economic Affairs Mona Neubaur is once again supporting the NRW Mobile Measurement Week this year as patron. Neubaur: "Whether at work or at leisure, whether at home or on the move: good mobile phone reception is a basic requirement for our everyday lives - but this is still not possible everywhere without a dropped connection. In North Rhine-Westphalia, we are therefore continuously working on the nationwide expansion of mobile phone coverage. In order to be able to improve mobile communications even more specifically, all citizens are called upon to measure their current reception and detect dead spots during the 2nd NRW Mobile Communications Measurement Week. The first edition of the mobile phone measurement week was a great success last year with over 13 million measurement points. A total of 36,000 citizens took part - we want to increase this further and are delighted that Rhineland-Palatinate is also taking up our idea and organising a mobile phone measurement week at the same time. In order to draw even more attention to the topic of mobile phone coverage, we would like to see a nationwide mobile phone measurement week next year."

The NRW mobile communications measurement week is an initiative of the mobile communications coordinators in the districts and independent cities. With the broadband measurement/radio blackout app from the Federal Network Agency, users can easily record the network availability of their mobile network in real time and thus identify any existing radio blackouts. The respective network availability (no network, 2G, 4G, 5G) is stored on the end device for this purpose.

The results are transmitted to the Federal Network Agency in anonymised form, processed in the radio gap map of the federal government's gigabit base book and evaluated for North Rhine-Westphalia following the mobile communications measurement week. The testing and measurement service of the Federal Network Agency will validate the results on a random basis following the measurement week. The Funkloch app can be downloaded free of charge and without advertising from the app stores. Further information on the mobile phone measurement week and the "Funkloch" app can be found here: www.mobilfunkmesswoche.nrw.

Background: Mobile communications in North Rhine-Westphalia

According to the latest information from the Federal Network Agency, 4G coverage by at least one mobile network operator in North Rhine-Westphalia is 98.2 per cent. 5G is already available in 93.7 per cent of the area through at least one network operator. 12% of the state's area are so-called "grey spots", i.e. areas that are covered by at least one, but not all network operators with 4G or 5G. 1.6 per cent of the country's surface area are "white spots" that are not yet covered by either 4G or 5G. Depending on the mobile network, between almost 5 per cent and almost 10 per cent of the country's area is covered by 4G, depending on the network operator. The basic data on mobile network coverage at district and independent city level in North Rhine-Westphalia is updated quarterly in the dashboard www.mobilfunk.nrw based on data from the Federal Network Agency's mobile network monitoring.

District Administrator Dr Kai Zwicker explains: "I am very concerned about comprehensive and reliable mobile phone coverage. That is why I am once again supporting this year's mobile communications monitoring week. It will help us to uncover further gaps in coverage and continue to improve mobile phone coverage in the district step by step."

Katharina Krimphoff, mobile communications coordinator for the Borken district, emphasises: "The mobile communications measurement week is a good addition to our previous findings on local mobile communications coverage. Overall, the cooperation on this important topic with the municipalities belonging to the district and the mobile network operators is extremely constructive. We are therefore very confident that together we will be able to further improve mobile phone coverage in the Borken district."

Information on mobile phone coverage in the Borken district can be found on the website www.kreis-borken.de/mobilfunk.