The "coverage" they are reporting is not by area but by population. So all the villages and fields that the train or autobahn goes by won't have 5G, because they are in the other 10% because of their very low population density.
And the reporting comes out of the mobile phone operators' reports and simulations (they don't have to do actual measurements). Since their license depends on meeting a coverage goal, massive over-reporting is rampant. The biggest provider (Deutsche Telekom) is also partially state-owned, so the regulators don't look as closely...
Edit: accidentially posted this in the wrong comment: Then there is the problem of "5G reception" vs. "5G reception with usable bandwidth". A lot of overbooking goes on, many cells don't have sufficient capacity allocated, so there are reports of 4G actually being faster in many places.
And also, yes, you can get 5G in a lot of actually populated areas. But you certainly will pay through the nose for that, usually you get a low-GB amount of traffic included, so maybe a tenth of the Microsoft monorepo in question. The rest is pay-10Eur-per-GB or something.
I usually lose connectivity on train journeys across Germany. I'm offline most of the way. Even the in train wifi gets quite bad in remote areas. Because they depend on the same shitty mobile networks. There's a stark difference as soon as you cross the borders with other countries. Suddenly stuff works again. Things stop timing out.
I also deal with commercial customers that have companies in areas with either no or poor mobile connectivity and since we sell mobile apps to them, we always need to double check they actually have a good connection. One of our customers is on the edge of a city with very spotty 4G at best. I recently recommended Star Link to another company that is operating in rural areas. They were asking about offline capabilities of our app. Because they deal with poor connectivity all the time. I made the point that you can get internet anywhere you want now for a fairly reasonable price.
The "coverage" they are reporting is not by area but by population. So all the villages and fields that the train or autobahn goes by won't have 5G, because they are in the other 10% because of their very low population density.
And the reporting comes out of the mobile phone operators' reports and simulations (they don't have to do actual measurements). Since their license depends on meeting a coverage goal, massive over-reporting is rampant. The biggest provider (Deutsche Telekom) is also partially state-owned, so the regulators don't look as closely...
Edit: accidentially posted this in the wrong comment: Then there is the problem of "5G reception" vs. "5G reception with usable bandwidth". A lot of overbooking goes on, many cells don't have sufficient capacity allocated, so there are reports of 4G actually being faster in many places.
And also, yes, you can get 5G in a lot of actually populated areas. But you certainly will pay through the nose for that, usually you get a low-GB amount of traffic included, so maybe a tenth of the Microsoft monorepo in question. The rest is pay-10Eur-per-GB or something.