Information and Communication Technology Companies in the Capital Region

  • Roughly 5,700 IT companies with almost 50,000 employees
  • Annual turnover of more than € 10 billion
  • Largest broadband communications network in Europe with 1.4 million DSL accounts in Berlin alone
  • Largest pool of IT and telecommunication professionals in Germany
  • Leading industry meeting place and home of the Berlin Web Week, Droidcon, LinuxTag
  • Highly concentrated, state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure including several data processing centers

Infrastructure
  • Largest digital communication network in Germany - Berlin is the first fully digital city!
  • Broadband, 862 MHz cable network for 1.4 million households. 
  • Over 200,000 km of fiber-optic cable (accounts for about 60 percent of the entire fiber-optic network in Germany)
  • Hotspot capital of Germany
  • Comprehensive UMTS coverage

Research

  • Research network with a 2.5 Gbit/s fiber-optic network (used by over 170 technology-oriented research institutions)
  • About 30 research institutions focused on telecommunications or computer systems

Strengths of the Sector

  • 106 telecommunications service providers in Berlin
  • Over 100 companies working on mobile broadband applications
  • Strong technical universities and high-tech research institutions (Fraunhofer Institutes, Institutes of the Technical University, Max Born Institute)
  • Strengths:
    - Mobile communications/UMTS
    - eGovernment
    - XML initiatives
    - High-tech security solutions and IT-security
    - Geolocation services
    - Multimedia

Funding & Financing

The Land government of Berlin, banks, stock exchanges and several initiatives support the IT and media sector with capital, subsidy programs and investment grants.

  • The "Joint Task for the Promotion of Industry and Trade" program of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology provides for investment grants awarded to small and mid-sized businesses in order to strengthen the regional economy. 
  • Project Future (Projekt Zukunft) - "Berlin's Path to the Information Society" supports companies in the communication and media sectors.
  • Special support for research and development projects
  • Tax-deductible investment allowances
  • Diverse and numerous opportunities for personnel development

Financing from the capital market

  • The capital region is Germany's top venture capital market in the multimedia and communication sectors. 
  • 30 percent of venture capital flows into these cutting-edge sectors
  • 270 companies in the information and communication technology as well as the media sectors receive support from the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the Technologie-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH (tbt) nationwide.  43 of them come from Berlin.
(Source: Information from Berlin Partner GmbH, 2010)