It is difficult to predict how German reunification would have unfolded if the Internet had existed in its current form. However, approximately one in three Germans (30.5 per cent) believes that German reunification would have occurred sooner if the digital global networking had existed at that time. These are the results of a representative survey of 2,515 Germans conducted by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of the eco – Association of the Internet Industry, on the occasion of this year’s German Unification Day.

At the cross-competence group event titled to “IoT Competence Group/Networks CG: Digital Infrastructure as the Basis for Smart Home Applications”, jointly organised with Huawei Germany, eco engaged in discussions with various experts from the IoT and network fields, regarding the importance of digital infrastructure and its necessity for the smart home.

Florian Vierke (mapp), Marius Bauer (Salesforce) and Mathias Ullrich (Adobe) have released the new edition of “Best Practices for Email Marketing” by the eco’s E-Mail Competence Group. The guide explains how to set up your email marketing with simple measures so that the emails really reach the recipient.

The connected mobility ecosystem of the future needs one thing above all: Data. The meaningful linking and intelligent evaluation of the growing amounts of data is the key to innovation and sustainable growth. To pave the way for the digital transformation of the mobility ecosystem and to accelerate the transport revolution, eco has published guidelines for the use of mobility data.

The strategic orientation of companies towards the cloud remains a key element for digitalisation in Germany as a business hub. This is evident in the newly released third edition of the joint study ECN Pulse Check. Techconsult conducted a survey on behalf of EuroCloud Native (ECN), the cloud-native initiative of EuroCloud Germany, in October 2023, involving 255 IT decision-makers from German companies.

The EU Commission's proposal for a CSAM Regulation, including the much disputed chat control, continues to generate much discussion and massive critique. eco now advocates for a fundamental reconsideration of the provisions on proactive search obligations and disabling access, as well as a general revision of the rules on proactive search for the purpose of detecting child sexual abuse on the Internet.

In September 2023, the Internet Security Days (ISDs) once again attracted IT security experts, security managers and user companies to meet together at Phantasialand near Cologne, Germany.  Around 250 participants on each day of the event had a choice of 40 exciting presentations and panel discussions. There were two parallel presentation tracks on four main topics: Achieving the State of the Art, Future Security, Digital Supply Chain Security and Connected Security.

In Germany, the Internet industry is recovering more quickly than expected from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis. This is conveyed in the update of the eco Industry Monitor. In 2023, eco and Arthur D. Little predict a growth rate of 14 per cent. Moreover, in the medium to long term, artificial intelligence promises significant growth in all industry segments.

The Internet is largely self-governing, independent of individual companies or governments. Three out of four Germans (73.9%) concur with this statement: “Independent governance of the Internet is important for the freedom of information and the freedom of expression in our society”. At the ICANN78 AGM from 21-26 October 2023, an independent multi-stakeholder community will make decisions on core functions of the Internet.

Taking responsibility and pursuing sustainability – these are the goals pursued by eco, spelt out in our 2022 Annual Report. For the first time, our report has been published  in a purely digital format. View the online eco 2022 Annual Report here, where you can also zoom in on various topics and videos.

The German Bundestag is expected to adopt the Energy Efficiency Act today, Thursday. The eco Alliance sees great potential in the new act for optimising the utilisation of waste heat from data centres, and thus also for achieving the climate targets in Germany. At the same time, the following is called for: In order to extract the maximum sustainability potential from digital infrastructures and also to make the best possible utilisation of data centre waste heat, the federal, state and municipalities must remedy further political deficits.

The DNS Reasearch Federation & eco’s topDNS Initiative held the fourth in a series of topDNS best practice webinars, showcasing what the domain name industry is doing to fight DNS abuse.

The eco - Association of the Internet Industry has been surveying Germany's IT security experts for over 10 years. In addition to the dominant IT security topics and most important threats, they also assess the ability of German companies to fend off cyberattacks. The IT Security Survey 2024 has now started.

Germans do not adequately back up their photos and videos from family holidays or family celebrations on their smartphones. According to a representative survey of 2,506 Germans conducted by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of eco – Association of the Internet Industry, only 22.5 per cent use cloud services for storing private media.

CentralNic’s Rishi Maudhub on the ICANN Annual General Meetings, gTLDs and DNS Abuse.  

Digitalisation offers the opportunity to make business processes more efficient. In an eco-member interview, Andreas Kupper reports on how Kupper IT harnesses this potential to enhance the value chain.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen today delivered a State of the Union speech, highlighting that Europe must be a pioneer in AI and stand for transparent, ethical development. eco Chair of the Board Oliver Süme is of the opinion that the Commission President focused too excessively on the potential dangers of AI and digital technologies.

For the second time, the leading minds of the Gaia-X scene met in Berlin on 5 and 6 September 2023 for GXFS Connect. While in 2022 the focus was still on the idea behind the initiative and the start of the German funded projects, this year more than 40 speakers discussed concrete progress in the development of a European data ecosystem.

In the run-up to the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, we interviewed Giovanni Coppa, eco Competence Group Leader Mobility and Head of Data Center and Cloud Innovation at WOBCOM GmbH, about his expectations for the trade fair, and his take on current and future challenges in the field of Smart City and Smart Mobility.

We spoke to Dr. Michael Lipka, Senior Manager Technology Strategy, Huawei Technologies Germany, about the crucial role of digital infrastructures and wireless technologies for Smart Home use cases. On 12 September 2023, the eco Networks and IoT Competence Groups  will meet at the Huawei OpenLab in Ismaning to discuss groundbreaking topics of current and future Smart Home applications under the motto "Digital Infrastructure as the Basis of Smart Home Applications" (a German-language event).

Following the long-awaited ruling by the European Court of Justice on 22 September last year, which stated that the German regulations on data retention are incompatible with EU law, the German Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig has now also issued its verdict. eco Chair of the Board Oliver Süme calls on the German federal government on the occasion of the ruling: “The German federal government should now finally seize the opportunity to set a political course and initiate the repeal of data retention.”

How do you become future-proof as an employer? On 23 August 2023, the New Work Competence Group discovered solutions to this question at the summer event in the Microsoft office in Cologne.

Digital services and technologies are the driving thrust for the transport turnaround. 45.4 per cent of Germans attribute a decisive role to digital mobility services in shaping the traffic turnaround. The respondents place great hope above all in artificial intelligence and thus intelligent traffic management.

The German Federal Ministry of the Interior aims to strengthen the resilience of critical infrastructures with the KRITIS Umbrella Act, which is currently being coordinated between government departments. For the first time, this act seeks to establish the nationwide uniform regulations for the physical protection of critical facilities, which are to be implemented in German law as a result of the European CER Directive.

Founder and former CEO Harald A. Summa was appointed Honorary President of the eco Association – Association of the Internet Industry on 29 August 2023 during the eco Annual General Meeting in Cologne. Harald A. Summa retired from eco's operational management at the end of July 2023. Since its foundation in 1995, Summa...

The coalition agreement and the digitalisation strategy adopted by the German federal government a year ago not only promised nationwide broadband coverage via the 5G mobile network and fibre optic lines. However, implementation continues to lag behind. eco and other associations from the digital industry call on the government to “decisively drive forward digitalisation” in Germany.

Many cities and regions have their own top-level domains such as .hamburg, .koeln or .nrw. Such geographic top-level domains or geoTLDs, which represent a regional area, have been available in Germany since 2014. Since then, hundreds of thousands of citizens and companies have reserved their personal Internet address with a geographic domain extension.

Combining being green and being digital to act more responsibly towards the climate, environment and people has emerged as a factor in competitive markets. How data can be used to achieve environmental goals. And how the TANGO project aims to achieve optimal performance with lower hardware requirements. Read more on tango-project.eu.

The new Data Strategy has been finalised by the German federal government and could be adopted by the cabinet today. eco Chair of the Board Oliver Süme is of the opinion that uniform and legally secure handling of data is essential for all data-based business models, which is why the German federal government’s Data Strategy is long since overdue.

More CO2 savings and optimised traffic control through artificial intelligence as well as vehicles that communicate with the traffic infrastructure such as traffic lights: This is the dream scenario of German motorists with regard to digital technologies and services in the automotive sector. This is the result of a survey conducted by Civey on behalf of eco at the end of July 2023 among 2,500 car users – on the occasion of the IAA in Munich at the beginning of September.