TABLE 2  E Commerce Sales, 2000 

B2B trade in 

B2C trade in 

% E commerce 

US$M 2000 

US$M 2000 

Sales of GDP 

2000

Germany 15,171.02 

3,185.51 

0.98 

France 6,170.95 

1,119.60 

0.57 

Italy 5,544.70 

841.43 

0.60 

United Kingdom 

13,815.62 

3,873.00 

1.25 

EU 15

53,734.62 11,735.30 

0.84 

United States 

118,457.20 

44,084.29 

1.63 

Source: IDC, Internet Commerce Market Model, Version 8.1 (2002). 

Information Infrastructure 

Germany leads Europe in terms of the total number of broadband connections, which has 

increased at a rate of 15 times over the last two years, partly because deployment of services 

began earlier there than in many other markets, as well as an aggressive strategy pursued by the 

telecommunication service providers. In 2002, 3.9% of all inhabitants or 3.2 million high speed 

broadband connections were established in Germany. In comparison, only 2.3% of the 

population in the U.S. had access to digital subscriber lines (DSL) (EITO, 2002). 

Since becoming one of the first European countries to unbind its local loop, competitive access is 

technically available. In addition, Germany is one of the first European countries to offer 

commercial line sharing services. Competition, forcing the reduction of local voice tariffs and 

the increasing reliance on mobile services, is the major inhibitor of growth in the fixed line area 

in Germany. Carriers are looking for alternative ways to generate revenues, including DSL 

services (EITO, 2002).  

In the mobile area, data still represent a small amount of the overall traffic, but that is expected to 

change. German mobile carriers already offer some mobile applications, which include GPRS 

based location based services and Internet access. More advanced mobile multi media services 

(MMS) are also available on GPRS networks. These services combine text messages with sound, 

pictures and video. In March 2002, German mobile phone operator E plus was one of the first in 

Europe to launch location based I mode services that allow subscribers to search for restaurants, 

cinemas, ATMs, hotels, etc. on their mobile phones (Beck et al., 2003), (EITO, 2002).

Aside from the overall availability of e commerce enabling technologies at the country level, the 

usage of e commerce solutions at industry levels is also entering an advanced stage after the 

completed first usage and experimentation phase. 

The overall e commerce readiness in German industry is high when considering the figures in 

Table 3. However, it must be kept in mind that this survey represents only advanced users, rather 

than German firms as a whole.  It is worth noting that the observed readiness is not only present 

among large firms, but also SMEs. While often the existence of a  digital divide  or  digital 

gap  is mentioned in the literature, only slight differences are evident between SMEs and large 

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