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Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

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171–180 of 343 posts

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#171
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are travelling in the USA as long as you stick to the interstate system you pretty much get mobile data the entire way. IF you drift onto smaller highways then that is when things get very spotty outside of metropolitan areas. This really depends on who you are using. When traveling between NorCal and SoCal, Sprint is basically garbage and Tmobile works decently for most of the trip.

I've experienced them all and across all various parts of the country. If you want to know what phone plan to get, just ask a trucker.

So, what phone plan should I get?

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#172

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.

Locally, unlimited gigabit with taxes and all is ~$100 USD through ATT. The unlimited portion adds $30, but any TV package also makes the connection unlimited so that's what I did.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#173

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.

Not necessarily the cloud, it can also be your own server.

That's my problem as a Dutchman in Germany. Server still in NL, hosted at my parents', because it would be impossible here to host at home without registering a company (volatile IP, forced to change very 24 hours, only business connections get a static IP). Right now I'm attempting an off-site backup a second time, which will take a week or so, just like last time. Due to the interrupts and resumptions every 24h, there are lots of unused pack files, which you can prune, but then the system ran out of RAM during pruning and the backup doesn't appear recoverable.

The 4.5MiB/s upload I'm getting is the fastest possible connection in the centre of a city of about 50k people. I checked what it would cost to have fiber installed, and I'm not even sure it would be worth it for a company, let alone for a private person. It's cheaper to hire a moving company and go somewhere else. In the village of 1k people that my parents live in, I can get symmetric 500mbps since 2012 or something, they give a static IP, a /48 IPv6 range, reverse DNS...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Perhaps you'd like to explain how people driving through the country, or anyone else in fact, drives down ADSL speeds to single-digit or low tens of Mbit/s. Or indeed how population fluctuations of about 1-2% might cause cellular networks to develop dark patches or to regress from LTE to 3G or EDGE.

What if suddenly you have 30 times the number of people at every single internet cafe? Also people with less housing availability use their phones more on average not less, because making ideal housing arrangements on a daily to subdaily basis takes time. Willing to be wrong here but last time I looked, DSL was also driven by an oversubscription sales model, meaning they oversell the product and then try to keep ahead of the curve. Perhaps you've never been homeless so you don't realize these things.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your friend falls down a gorge and is unresponsive it seems more than completely reasonable to phone for help.

There are many ways[1] to radio for help already. It's unreasonable and irresponsible to get into that situation with only a cell phone. [1]: https://www.rei.com/c/emergency-electronics

I'm not sure what "that situation" is. inReach-type devices are probably prudent for certain activities in remote areas. Though if someone is unresponsive after falling in a gorge, I suspect S&R arriving many hours later--and many more hours getting to a hospital--isn't going to be of much help.

It's certainly not routine for individuals or even groups to carry such devices in wilderness areas even if cell phone reception is spotty. I can go 2 hours north of where I live and hike on steep trails where there's no guarantee of cell phone reception.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#177

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.

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.

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Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#178
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I have not had fun with DTAG - they seem to adamantly refuse to peer like most other networks and demand additional cost for bandwidth requested by their users..

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#179
post #110
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while in Germany I was paying 30€/month for 10Mbps. Meanwhile other EU countries gave you 1Gbps for ~10€/month. Germany is definitely at the lower end of internet infrastructure.

This is probably the only thing I feel great about in the Indian communication domain! I pay <$2 a month for about 1.5GB 4G every DAY! Speeds generally vary from crap to 11 Mbps

> I pay Of course. But, you have to take into account the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to get the true picture. According to OECD data, Germany's PPP is 0.76 while India's is 18.128 (2019). On an average, there's a factor of 23.85 until prices reach a parity between them. Therefore, just because you pay ~ 2$ a month doesn't make it cheap for India.

https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#180
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.

By what measure is Germany's growth in population large? I get that 1 year is too short. Give us an example where it looks like it's growing fast. We'll wait.
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