Live data from Hacker News

Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

wsj.com

141–150 of 343 posts

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#141
post #37

That speedtest graph in the article is a great example of why averaging statistics is often a bad idea. The US fixed broadband mean is ~120mbps, but the median is more like ~70 mbps [1]. A few people with gigabit-ish connections are hiding the many people stuck with crappy sub-25 mbps connections. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad...

Yeah I checked the source out: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

And the UK is 50th... I feel it should be higher than Germany.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll get hate for this, but whenever things like cell service are suddenly shared with millions of people more, the connectivity is stressed out. Companies like AT&T spend at least 1.5 years from the planning of a tower to it's completion, so reliable growth models are required. Sudden population influxes produce problems.

Are you talking about refugees??

Censored

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#143
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do that with cars as well. I was shocked to figure out how bad some of their cars are compare to Asian or other European brands.

Like the lemons made by BMW, Mercedes and Audi? No single person ever said "I'll pay a premium for an M3"!

Mercedes is what I have the most experience with. There is actually a class action lawsuit against them in the US because of their faulty AC. This is insane, a supposedly premium brand cannot install a working AC. I think I just keep purchasing Asian brands for now.

https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#144

I'm centrally located in Berlin, and have an unmetered 400/12mpbs cable connection for 40Eur/m. I can't say that I'm impressed, but having just lived in Canada which is _far_ worse I'm happy about it not being quite as bad. However, 10 years ago in Sweden I had an unmetered 1000/1000mbps fiber connection for 4Eur/m. I feel like I'm doomed to forever have a shittier connection.

4Eur/m is really really cheap... .

I do have FTTH (Switzerland, outskirts of Zurich) with unmetered 1Gb/s upload & download but I pay 54 CHF/month (cable installed by Swisscom but I'm using another Internet provider).

My parents live in the south of Switzerland, in the middle of nowhere, and for unknown reason one day the local gas & electricity company showed up and installed there as well FTTH (I'll never thank them enough as before the copper cable often did not work at all) and if I remember correctly they're paying ~60 CHF/month for symmetric 1Gb/s (sunrise.ch).

In general I think that in Switzerland we're currently all ok with having to pay ~60 CHF/month for such a speed.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#145
Promises made

2009: Widespread broadband for everyone by 2010

2010: At least 50 MBit/s for most households by 2014

2011: 50 MBit/s everywhere by 2018

2014: Let's hope we can reach this

2015: Digital Agenda -> 50 Mbit/s by 2018

2016: The goal cannot be reached

2016: Gigabit nets by 2025, fastest internet on the planet

2018: The goal cannot be reached

I have a whopping 3 Mbit/s at my home. It's so slow the technician that wanted to sell me a 10 MBit line didn't believe me when I said that I decline because it's not possible. Mind you, I live in an area where most houses are from 2010 or newer so it's not like they had no opportunity to set up decent connections.

On my daily train commute there are two 10 minute patches where I cannot make phone calls...the list goes on.

Pretty embarrassing for a so called industrial nation. I had better connections in every single country I have been to.

A common excuse that you hear is that Telekom had plans to roll out fibre everywhere in the 1990s but had to cut that plan due to the cost of setting up a phone system in East Germany.

tl;dr: it's pretty bad

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#146
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing I think is how expensive internet is, in whatever form, in Germany compared to the rest of Europe while simultaneously being so terrible.

What did Sweden get so right with internet that Germany got so wrong??

Quite a lot: In the 80ies in western germany the then responsible person at the ministry for postal issues (Postministerium) had family connections to a copper producer so everything was build with copper, besides at that time it was clear that there is no long-term future for the technology.

After reunification most areas in eastern germany were rebuild using fibre-optic but the system was a technical failure, too expensive to maintain as the last-mile was still copper mostly and hardware to translate was not available for too expensive - so no fast internet for most east german cities and villages until the mid-2000 as the state did not care anymore:

In the 90ies neoliberal privatisation wave, the privatisation of Bundespost created the Telekom AG that also got most of the infrastructure instead of playing it clever and keep infrastructure in state control like Sweden did and of course they have no incentive to invest in infrastructure because they want to generate profits and opening the ground is expensive - so copper it was again with fiber to the curb at the moment (VDSL) in most cities. The same idiocy was done with the Bundesbahn (rails) - instead of keeping the infrastructure in public hand it was given to the new Bahn AG that destroyed most of it in an insane effort to go public (I'm not joking, destroying trains to avoid having to sell them to the competition, stopping to service rail-tracks to spare some money... the problems are still felt)...

Telekom now behaves much the same way: Unfortunatly they are asshats and when another rural ISP or fibre ISP develops a city the Telekom comes shortly after and attempts to kill their profit instead of doing something about underdeveloped areas. Also the regulators failed to open their new VDSL lines for the market, so you'll have to pay their premium prices.

So that's it for landlines.

I learned that Sweden did the clever thing and build the fiber-infrastructure with public money only once and ISPs can rent the lines and compete with services / price but there is a fiber line to your home.

I don't know about mobile market in Sweden but in Germany there was a huge auction on the start of the 3G technology that cost most ISPs billions of euros for licences, this money is missing and the result are higher rates and less coverage.

Besides that there are 3 big corpoorations having 3 distinct networks (with no roaming, even in sparse areas) - Telefonica with the most budget prices and most users but only good coverage in bigger cities and basically non-existent 4G in rural areas, Vodafone (better, depending were you are) and Deutsche Telekom (best coverage but far from perfect)

Regulators did nothing and so the shitshow goes on....

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#147

>“The whole problem in Germany is the lack of fiber-to-the-home strategy by Deutsche Telekom DTEGY -0.52% and other carriers, No, it is not. The problem could have been solved decades ago. Helmut Kohl of the CDU (conservative party) turned back a decision of his predecessor to role out a fiber network across Germany that would have been constructed from the 80ies until the millenium [1]. Germany could have had fiber…

Hah! That’s exactly what happened in Australia.

There is legit talk about changing the hugest plans here from 100/40 to 120/20. It’s that bad. Which is moot anyway because 40% of the “new” network probably cannot get that speed anyway.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#148

Maybe I'm just behind the times, but I can't think of anything I'd do that would saturate my 20Mbps link, other than maybe downloading an iso or something. I'm using 1 und 1's ultra cheap plan, and browsing works fine, streaming works fine, video conferencing works fine, remote desktops work fine. I work remote, and only once have I experienced an outage.

Transferring data to and from the cloud.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#149
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing I think is how expensive internet is, in whatever form, in Germany compared to the rest of Europe while simultaneously being so terrible.

I'll get hate for this, but whenever things like cell service are suddenly shared with millions of people more, the connectivity is stressed out. Companies like AT&T spend at least 1.5 years from the planning of a tower to it's completion, so reliable growth models are required. Sudden population influxes produce problems.

You're trying to cram a square peg into a round hole here.

Germany's growth rate in 2018 was 0.3%. The birth rate was 9.5/k versus a death rate of 11.3/k as of 2017, and the fertility rate been below replacement rate since the 1970s.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home internet regularly costs $80 in the US, or roughly €72. €40 seems pretty reasonable by comparison.

Really? $80? I haven't seen $80 for internet. In a suburban area outside of Tacoma ~300mbps was about $50, and now just outside of Seattle I pay $75 for 1 gbps . The non-gigabit plans were south of $50. I Googled a bit and most websites said Americans generally pay somewhere between $50-$60.

Comcast, with weak competition from others. $100/mo for 250mbps here ($110 if you rent their modem).
Post reply on HN