In this three-question interview, Andreas Herden, Senior Vice President Germany and Continental Europe, talks about opportunities and challenges for Germany as a digital location and what he believes should be at the top of the political agenda.

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.

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.