Digitalization is transforming both the economy and society. Numerous initiatives are currently addressing the framework for digital transformation at the political, civil society, and business levels. United Internet is convinced of the need for everyone to be able to participate in the digitalization process. In addition, topics such as freedom of opinion and information, the protection of privacy, and the right to participate in cultural life are now inextricably linked with the digital space. Consequently, the internet and the digital transformation process also play a critical role with respect to human rights.
As a European internet specialist, United Internet sees its role as building bridges to a digital future. Its goal is to offer consumers and companies broadband internet access and powerful cloud applications, providing full and secure access to the numerous opportunities offered by the internet as a universal infrastructure for information, communication, entertainment, and e-business. United Internet’s Consumer Access, Business Access, Consumer Applications and Business Applications segments aim to contribute actively to ensuring that everybody can participate freely in the digital transformation process, and to give them the space and opportunity to roam the internet safely and confidently. The ability to control one’s own data is part of this digital sovereignty. Customer security when using its products and services is paramount for United Internet.
United Internet’s subsidiary 1&1 AG successfully participated in Germany’s 5G frequency auction in the summer of 2019, laying the foundations for constructing the country’s fourth mobile network. As a new network operator, 1&1 has focused right from the start on innovative OpenRAN technology – a fully virtualized mobile network in the private cloud. United Internet had already proven that Open-RAN technology works by launching its network in December 2022. This was when the Company went live with its “5G at home” service – a 5G fixed network product implemented using mobile technology – at its first mast locations. The next step in December 2023 was to go live with the mobile services needed for smartphone usage. This means that the technology for German’s fourth mobile network is now fully operational.
1&1 is building Europe’s most modern 5G network on the basis of innovative OpenRAN technology. In contrast to traditional network architectures, the OpenRAN approach makes a strict distinction between software and hardware. All network functions for 1&1’s OpenRAN reside in the private cloud and are managed at the software level. Regional edge data centers are connected to the mast locations, which are a maximum of 10 kilometers away, via fiber-optic cables. Applications running on this infrastructure benefit from extremely short transmission routes. All masts are connected by fiber-optic cables and equipped with gigabit antennas.
Another key advantage of OpenRAN technology is its large partner ecosystem. Clearly defined, standardized interfaces in 1&1’s OpenRAN permit flexible cooperation with different manufacturers on the market. In addition, the aim is to ensure efficient network operation by systematically separating software and hardware. The decentralized network infrastructure allows capacity to be adapted as needed to local use frequency. Among other things, this includes automatically switching off servers, antenna components, or entire cells when loads are low (e.g., in industrial estates at night). Cell loads are calculated continuously and predictive power-off mechanisms are activated automatically.
As is the case with conventional mobile networks, ensuring the security of OpenRAN networks requires in-depth risk analysis and continuous monitoring of all security-related criteria. 1&1 commissioned its equipment supplier Rakuten, which operates an ISO 27001-certified security management system, to perform detailed risk analyses. The Company welcomes the study by the BSI (Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security) on security in OpenRAN mobile networks and the security recommendations that this contains, and is in regular contact with the authority. In addition, 1&1 is a member of the international O-RAN Alliance, whose expert bodies analyze the security of OpenRAN technology in depth, and continuously enhance it.
1&1 is working together with international software partners on its active network structure. These partners are responsible for developing the passive infrastructure – the mast locations. 1&1 has entered into an intercompany agreement with its sister company 1&1 Versatel to connect the mast locations with the fiber-optic cables and to run the edge data centers in the new 1&1 OpenRAN. This gives it access to one of Germany’s largest fiber-optic networks. Where 1&1 cannot yet provide its own services during the construction phase for the Open RAN, national roaming kicks in and automatically passes customers through to Telefónica’s network. This means that 1&1 can offer more than 12 million mobile network customers comprehensive mobile telecommunications services right from the start. From the summer of 2024 onwards, the company will have access to national roaming via the Vodafone network and this will be used exclusively once work has been completed – at the latest in October 2024. United Internet announced this partnership with Vodafone in August 2023.
The network development requirements set by the Bundesnetzagentur (the Federal Network Agency) stipulated that an initial milestone – establishing 1,000 5G mast locations – should be reached by the end of 2022. Unexpected and substantial delays on the part of its main supplier meant that 1&1 did not meet this initial milestone until one year later. In more detail, 1,063 mast locations were ready for 1&1 as of December 31, 2023; these are being successively connected to fiber-optic cables and fitted with gigabit antennas. In the meantime, 1&1 is seeing a steady increase in capacity from its four development partners. As a result, the company still has its long-term targets of supplying one-quarter of German households by the end of 2025 and half by the end of 2030 firmly in its sights.
The digital transformation of the economy and society is proceeding faster than ever before in the post-COVID era. No company wants to lag behind the competition simply because their internet connections are not powerful enough to permit them deploy technologies such as cloud or edge computing, the metaverse, or Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Making this a reality depends on having high-performance fiber-optic networks everywhere in Germany.
1&1 Versatel’s fiber-optic network permits economic efficiency and lets society share in more powerful and more rapid data transfer. Today’s state-of-the-art technology now permits internet speeds of up to 100 GBit/s – the most powerful transmission technology by far. What is more, demand for greater bandwidth is constantly rising.
Germany still has some catching up to do when it comes to direct fiber-optic connections, which are not yet available everywhere. This is why 1&1 Versatel is continuously expanding its own fiber-optic network:
The network was continuously expanded in recent years and further enhanced for business customers by adding more powerful network technology. This continuous network expansion means that 1&1 Versatel has one of the largest and most powerful fiber-optic networks in Germany and already provides companies in a large number of cities and municipalities with high-speed internet services. The fiber-optic network was 61,566 km long at the end of the 2023 reporting period (2022: 55,459 km). Regular reports submitted to senior management are used to monitor the number of fiber-optic connections to the network that have been commissioned and produced.
United Internet offers users solutions for secure, data privacy-compliant internet-based communication and cloud services. The Group’s “E-Mail made in Germany” and “Cloud made in Germany” initiatives underscore its commitment to ensuring the secure dispatch and receipt of private e-mails, and to protecting digital privacy in the cloud. In addition, the application portfolio is being steadily expanded and now comprises additional solutions for managing personal data such as appointment and address management tools, office applications, and homepage solutions. United Internet also offers users a broad, freely accessible news offering, since the ongoing processes of digitalization means that more and more people are getting their information and news from the internet. United Internet is aware of its social responsibility in this context, too.
The Group’s GMX, WEB.DE, and 1&1 portals offer users not only e-mail and cloud services but also unrestricted access to content from their own, independent editorial team. 10% of Internet users in Germany use GMX and 12% use WEB.DE every week as sources of news. What is more, 6% of users (GMX) and 7% (WEB.DE) access the two freemail portals to obtain information at least three times a week. These figures are sourced from the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2023.
In order to do justice to the responsibility that this entails, the editorial team has established clear guidelines for its work that are set out in an editorial mission statement. Among other things, it wants to offer content that is relevant for users, as well as always complying with strict data privacy standards and aiming to provide rapid and above all correct reporting in rapidly developing news situations. If errors occur nevertheless, the editorial team corrects them transparently in line with a clear set of rules by drawing readers’ attention to the corrections beneath the article concerned. The list of rules was made available to all users as part of an extensive self-assessment conducted under the auspices of the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI). Consulting firm Deloitte certified at the beginning of 2022 that the editorial department complies with the JTI standard.
The editorial team has issued an undertaking to the German Press Council on behalf of the GMX and WEB.DE brands that it will comply with the German Press Code. Apart from the classic media brands, GMX and WEB.DE were the first major pure-play online media in Germany to take this step back in 2019.
What is more, in 2023, the editorial team for GMX and WEB.DE received the “Nachhaltigkeitspreis Medien Bayern” (“Sustainability Prize for Media in Bavaria”) prize, which was awarded for the first time by the Bavarian Regulatory Authority for New Media. The team won the prize because it had created transparency over a wide area.
The editorial news offering is not limited to the German market, but is also to be found on the GMX brand’s localized national portals in Austria and Switzerland (GMX.at and GMX.ch). Users of other country portals in the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, France, and Spain are offered an automated news feed in the language of the country concerned. Strict rules apply in all cases to adverts in order to protect customers from misleading advertising or offerings from the tobacco industry, for example.
See Medienvielfaltsmonitor (German ony)
See Editorial mission statement
IONOS is Europe’s leading provider of hosting services, cloud services, and cloud infrastructure, with more than eight million customer contracts. It partners with consumers, the self-employed, middle-market companies, and corporates, supporting its customers with solutions that help them to be effective, efficient, and successful in the digital space. Its portfolio comprises web hosting products and eCommerce solutions, its own data centers and cloud infrastructure. IONOS has many years of experience in developing and operating cloud infrastructures, and contributes this knowledge to numerous public research projects and working groups.
See GAIA-X AISBL
See International Data Spaces Association (IDSA):
See Important Project of Common European Interest on Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEICIS)
See European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud
See DOME – A Distributed Open Marketplace for Europe Cloud and Edge Services
See AC3 – Agile and Cognitive Cloud-Edge Continuum Management
See Sequenc – Souveränität für Quantenlösungen in der Cloud
See Pre-PAI
IONOS is playing a key role in developing a secure, interoperable data ecosystem for a number of sectors. IONOS is providing the data space infrastructure for a pool of projects that are being financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and that aim to validate the GAIA-X architecture for data spaces in a number of different vertical areas.
The idea behind GAIA-X is to build a data ecosystem complying with European security and data privacy standards that meets the highest digital sovereignty standards. IONOS is not only a member of GAIA-X AISBL’s (1) Technical Committee but is also actively helping to shape this European initiative. The idea is for the numerous successful local clouds in Europe to cooperate and standardize their operations to create a common federated cloud that will allow both large enterprises and SMEs on the European and German markets to exchange and process data in a trusted, secure, and transparent manner. Customers can choose between multiple hosting providers and – thanks to the planned standards – can switch between them at any time.
IONOS’s employees are providing support in working groups, e.g., on defining standards and the reference architecture, and establishing certifications. Numerous European and German cloud providers, associations, and enterprises are also working on the project in addition to IONOS. In the summer of 2021, Germany’s then Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy held a sponsorship competition and initially selected 11 beacon projects to demonstrate the concrete benefits of Gaia-X. IONOS is involved in six of these projects and is the consortium manager for the Marispace-X project, which is developing a maritime data space:
See Marispace-X
See MERLOT
See POSSIBLE
See HEALTH-X dataLOFT
See OpenGPT-X
See TELLUS
(1) Association internationale sans but lucrative, a non-profit association under Belgian law.
See the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action
United Internet never loses sight of its customers’ best interests and is living up to its responsibilities during the digital transformation process. Youth protection and educating children and young people on how to use the internet are particularly important to the Group. United Internet’s “E-Mail made in Germany” and “Cloud made in Germany” initiatives underscore its commitment to ensuring the secure dispatch and receipt of private e-mails, and to protecting digital privacy in the cloud. In addition to solutions for secure internet communication and cloud services that comply with the GDPR, United Internet takes a variety of measures to ensure internet users’ data sovereignty. These include the netID login standard for greater data control and user-friendliness, among other things.
The effect on humans of electromagnetic radiation from mobile communications has been the subject of scientific research for decades now. As Germany’s fourth network operator, 1&1 tracks the state of the art regarding knowledge of mobile network usage – and particularly 5G – continuously and closely. This means that the company can react responsibly if the need arises.
Germany’s Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (the Federal Office for Radiation Protection) constantly reviews the effect of electromagnetic radiation in mobile communications. According to the information currently available, it cannot yet be ruled out with confidence that the body’s ability to regulate heat may be disrupted if certain thresholds are exceeded, resulting in consequences for health. Nevertheless, the basic principle for 5G is the same as for previous mobile network standards: no impact on health at levels below the applicable limits has been proven. The Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz has confirmed that there is no reliable information at present to suggest that the new mobile network standard could affect human health.
The Federal Government is also attempting to deepen dialog with citizens and address any concerns relating to the new mobile network standard with its “Deutschland spricht über 5G” initiative. The goal is to provide information about 5G so as to further increase trust in, and acceptance of, this technology.
See the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz, "What is mobile communication? 5G”.
United Internet advocates youth protection and educating children and young people on how to act online, since the internet is a key part of their everyday lives and is used for communication, researching lessons, and entertainment alike. However, in many cases children and young people are not media literate or experienced enough to deal with unfamiliar life issues they come across on the internet, or where inappropriate content is involved. At the same time, this means that they have difficulty in assessing the risks and therefore cannot adequately protect themselves. Consequently, that suitable measures and education on possible dangers and risks that are tailored to their levels of development are needed to ensure they are adequately protected, and that they can use the internet in an age-appropriate manner.
United Internet ensures that both its own products and services and its partner offerings comply with the legal requirements for youth protection. Internal reviews are performed during product development and product launches, and any necessary modifications are made. This enables Group companies to ensure that children and young people are not confronted with inappropriate content. In addition, care is taken to ensure compliance with youth protection legislation for both editorial content and advertising, and to find the right balance between providing a comprehensive range of information and protecting children and young people. Among other things, this is done by managing the way in which information is presented and the times at which it is transmitted.
The Group companies have appointed youth protection officers who act as contacts for youth protection. They advise the various departments and functions internally, handle external contacts in this area, liaise regularly with other youth protection officers, and represent Group companies in their dealings with associations and supervisory authorities. An additional youth protection officer was appointed during the reporting period and the officers’ responsibilities focused on one segment each, to the extent that this issue is relevant for the business model concerned. In addition, youth protection mailboxes have been set up for the GMX, WEB.DE, 1&1, and IONOS portals; the details are given in the legal notices and youth protection sections of the sites concerned. These mailboxes allow people outside the organization to contact the youth protection officers with questions or complaints.
Above and beyond this contact information, the portals’ youth protection sections provide information and tips and tricks designed to educate children, young people, and their parents, and to improve their media literacy. The material provided includes links to youth protection programs and information about counseling services and contacts for specific topics and problems associated with internet usage.
See Guidelines on the United Internet Media website.
The GMX and WEB.DE e-mail portals and related cloud storage allow people to access internet services and to participate in the digital day-to-day world. The top priority here is to protect customer data. E-mails and data are processed in line with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and are stored solely in Germany in line with German data protection requirements. GMX und WEB.DE are working together with other companies in data security initiatives such as “E-Mail made in Germany” and “Cloud made in Germany” so as to actively help shape security standards for protecting sensitive data in the market environment.
The e-mail portals work continuously to improve the recognition and filtering of spam – unsolicited or harmful messages – so that it does not reach users in the first place. Spam can be anything from dangerous or harmful e- mails aimed at distributing viruses or at phishing down to unsolicited mails such as frequent mass mailings used for advertising purposes. E-mail providers deployed new methods and data science in the 2023 reporting period, and succeeded in substantially increasing the proportion of spam mails that were recognized and filtered out by continually enhancing their spam scanners. As a result, the proportion of incoming e-mails flagged by customers as spam declined by 36.6% in the course of the year, and by 25.9% year-over-year. This increased both the relevance of the e-mails received and the security with which they could be processed further.
Users have to register for, and provide profile names and passwords to access, almost all internet offerings – from online shops through social media down to app stores. Trying to manage such a large number of IDs and passwords is a major challenge for customers. Single sign-on services offer a solution here, allowing users to register with a large number of online services using a combination of their e-mail address and password.
In March 2018, United Internet, the RTL Deutschland media group, and ProSiebenSat.1 founded the European netID Foundation (EnID) in order to provide a European alternative to U.S. offerings in this area. This independent foundation developed the netID open standard – a central log-in that is “made in Europe” and with which its more than 10 million customers to date can log in to 134 partner offerings at present. The United Internet Group’s GMX and WEB.DE e-mail platforms are netID account providers, allowing their users to register for participating partner offerings via netID using their existing accounts. In addition, netID stores user consents in a stable manner across different devices. Instead of third-party cookies, which are increasingly being blocked, netID uses a stable identifier to recognize users.
netID is governed by the European data protection requirements set out in the GDPR. The foundation reviews all standards, partners, and account providers that are members of the initiative. It also sets high store by transparency and focuses on user data sovereignty. For example, users can independently consent to the use of their data, or revoke such consent, at any time using a “privacy center.” This improves data control in the internet. (1)
(1) Germany’s Data Ethics Commission (DEK) also recommended promoting standardization initiatives such as netID in its October 2019 report. These permit individuals to continuously track and manage the persons and entities to which they have granted data and to which data has been transferred, so as to be able to assert their rights effectively.
See European netID Foundation (EnID)
See netID knackt 10-Millionen-Marke
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