Germany: 1 MBite/s Broadband almost everywhere

 99.1 % of German households benefit a basic 1 MBite/s broadband coverage, according to a report from the standardisation body TüV and made public today by the Minister of Economy. It still slightly misses the 100% target that should have been reached by the end of 2010. Most of the progress has been done in rural areas where 92% of the 4.2 Millions households are covered since the beginning of 2012. The rate reaches 99.9 % of the households in the big cities Berlin,Hamburg and Bremen. Also, a significant 8% increase of households covered by the 50 MBite/s digit rate occurred during the second half of 2011 to reach now 48 % of all German households. The Government targets 75% coverage by 2014. 8,5 Million of households are now covered by the LTE, the radio telecommunication mobile technique that can reach a 3.9 MBite/s speed.

 Threat of a copyright enforcement on small online citations in Germany

 A new German law backed-up by the government that could be soon voted would force online news aggregators to pay a fee for the use of small citations to online publishers.

 German court condemns facebook for infringing privacy

 The German consumer association Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverein (VZBV)'s claim against facebook for not respecting EU privacy rules was well received by the Regional Berlin court . It stated yesterday that the terms and conditions of facebook applying to its Friend finder service were not informing enough the users to obtain their consent on the fact that all their email addresses were imported, and that invitations to join Facebook were sent even to people who are not members of the network.  Facebook is excpected to appeal.