Germany's broadband infrastructure is not ready to cope with the new Internet-connected devices and services currently being previewed at the IFA show in Berlin, such as high-definition 3DTV and TV sets with built-in video conferencing, according to the FTTH Council Europe.

"Consumers already understand and have started to complain about the 'up to' offerings available in Germany today, which cannot provide the speed advertised," said Hartwig Tauber, Director General of the FTTH Council Europe.  "Furthermore, the limits on uploading data to the Internet are real bottlenecks for consumers who want to upload and share videos or work from home."

Faster broadband using fibre will be necessary for Germans to experience many of the new devices and services on display at the show, the organisation adds, as the country is "lagging behind" other Europe nations in terms of FTTH deployment.  Only 140,000 subscribers in the country are believed to be currently capable of receiving broadband through a direct fibre connection - less than 0.4% of the country's 40mn homes.

By comparison, nations such as Sweden and Norway have already connected more than 10% of their households to fibre, and although other major European economies such as France and Italy also feature in the FTTH Global Ranking, Germany is described as being "still a long way" below the 1% threshold needed to join.

The three largest Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks in Germany are currently NetCologne in the Cologne and Bonn regions, Wilhelm.tel in Hamburg, and M-Net in Munich and Augsburg.  Meanwhile, Deutsche Telekom announced earlier this year that it plans to cover 4mn households in the country's 50 largest cities with FTTH by the end of 2012.