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Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

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Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#181

Post by hef19898 »

geff82 wrote: post #61

I recently did vacation at the North Sea (land side, not the islands). It was heartbreaking. In many areas the iPhone showed "No Service", in most areas we had "Edge" connection with virtually no data throughput. Even when it showed "3G" I was mostly unable to use WhatsApp. And this is a region where people live! And let's not talk about the landline broadband.... our rented appartment had a meager 1MBit download spe…

Oh, not just Iran. 10 years ago Cambodia had already better coverage than Germany. Either mobile or WiFi. Go figure... Positive thing in the Alps is you are quite often close enough to get coverage from Austria. No idea why it has to be that bad.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#182

Post by terminalhealth »

luckydata wrote: post #165
terminalhealth wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have a "Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure" as if expertise in one domain would easily transfer to the other. The only commonality seems to be that things are being transported from A to B via some network, but it pretty much ends there.

I think the money comes from the same budget, and it's both cases infrastructure. At the end of the day you don't need that much expertise to allocate funds, it's more about politics.

Digital infrastructure is mostly privatized (and monopolized).

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#183

Post by ceejayoz »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #177
ceejayoz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Censored

> It looks like Germany's population grew by over 20 million just recently.

Uh, that'll be the fall of the Soviet Union adding ~16M East Germans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification

> Some countries don't even have a census every year

You don't need a census to get a population count. Governments definitely keep records of births/deaths, as well as immigration. Your own link provides population numbers for every year from 1900 through 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statis...

> Facts are so unpopular.

Indeed.

German population in 1998: 82,024,000.

German population in 2018: 83,000,000.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#184

Post by segmondy »

ravenstine wrote: post #72
segmondy wrote: post #64

It's not just Germany. Tons of places in the US have crappy internet connection. I'm average 2-3Mbps on really good days, on a bad day, I see below 1. On Comcast, $40 a month plan, suppose to be at least 10Mbps, it's not my modem. I was getting up to 15Mbps when I was paying $80 and suppose to get 50Mbps. It's oversubscribed or capped by Comcast. No competition, no other providers.

Good grief! I'm using a small ISP that gets me ~250Mbps, but it would be more like 500Mpbs if I didn't buy a cheap router. In fact, they told me they'll be offering gigabit plans next year. And I thought I was getting screwed when I could only get 120Mbps with Spectrum Cable.

I'm in a major city too, not in a rural area. It's freaking ridiculous. I have learned to live with it. At one point, I was using my phone. Downloading things to a VPS and when I visit my folks, I'll download from my VPS to a usb stick. In 2020! If I liked downtown tho 15 minutes away where there's competition, I'll have Wow cable or fiber and much better service. Comcast is garbage.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#185

Post by microtonal »

robert_foss wrote: post #103

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.

I'm centrally located in Berlin, and have an unmetered 400/12mpbs cable connection for 40Eur/m.

We lived near Tübingen and internet was pretty terrible. The options were 50MBit downstream (not guaranteed) VDSL or cable internet. With cable internet we had 200/20MBit, downstream was as promised, but upstream was often actually around 2MBit. Then there were regular service interruptions throughout the region. At some point, internet would be down for a few hours at least one Saturday/Sunday per month or so. (Maybe during the week as wel, but I was at work.)

We moved to The Netherlands a year ago, we have synchronous fiber of up to 500/500 (we currently use 200/200, and fiber is not available everywhere). It hasn't been down a single time over the last year.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#187

Post by alkonaut »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #152
alkonaut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National backbone level internet should be large government infrastructure projects. It’s like roads and railways. Competition works on the roads, but works poorly for constructing them. Infrastructure within cities and to premises can work though.

Germany has at least a dozen "backbones" from different companies. The problems mentioned result from stupid last mile politics and practice, which factually deny affordable access for endusers to these.

Regional nets should be regional politics. Just like for national infrastructure, the best thing for a city to do is probably to invest in subsidizing fiber and then have companies compete providing the service. Having providers dig their own cables and then get a monopoly in them is pretty bad in comparison.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#188

Post by sod »

It doesn't help that German politicians think it's a good idea to let companies bid on frequencies - 5g frequencies just went for 5.5 billion to 4 large companies. So those now have the monopoly on that plus they have to earn it back from the customer. And the highest bidder got the best frequencies. So good coverage can only be achieved by one company.

Same happened with 4g & 3g beforehand. Result being, only profitable areas are covered and competition has no chance to get into the market.

Sadly in German politics it's easier to get voted for tax cuts (because they get money by selling frequencies) then promising good internet coverage :(

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#189

Post by not_a_cop75 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #183
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censored

> It looks like Germany's population grew by over 20 million just recently. Uh, that'll be the fall of the Soviet Union adding ~16M East Germans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification > Some countries don't even have a census every year You don't need a census to get a population count. Governments definitely keep records of births/deaths, as well as immigration. Your own link provides population numbers…

So you mean to tell me there was an immigration crisis in Germany with only 500 thousand people? Germany must be the most backwards nation in the world, if this is true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/03...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#/media...

Especially when you tell me they are a strong nation of 80M people. They can't even tolerate a measly You've really shed a light to me on how extremely bigoted Europe really is! I don't think I'll ever visit that awful place for the rest of my life.

Let alone buy things! We shouldn't buy a single thing from Europe ever again! Thank you, good sir!

What other nations are this bigoted besides these awful nations? I've heard that many nations in the middle east don't accept refugees at all. Is this true? And what about all of Asia?? There really is so much hate in all the world.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#190

Post by Matthias247 »

nesadi wrote: post #67
geff82 wrote: post #61

I recently did vacation at the North Sea (land side, not the islands). It was heartbreaking. In many areas the iPhone showed "No Service", in most areas we had "Edge" connection with virtually no data throughput. Even when it showed "3G" I was mostly unable to use WhatsApp. And this is a region where people live! And let's not talk about the landline broadband.... our rented appartment had a meager 1MBit download spe…

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.

Germany guy living in Canada at the moment: German internet now seems super cheap for me. I had UnityMedia for years. 120Mbit/s and unlimited home phone for 25€ per month. You can triple that sum for Canada (90$ plus tax) if you don’t get any special deal. And deals are annoying, since internet providers randomly increase their prices even if you are on a contract. So even if are not constantly out on the watch for the next deal and complain regularly at customer service you will simply pay a lot.

Besides that the Canadian plans are capped (E.g. at 1 TB/month even at high prices), whereas I never had a capped plan in Germany.

Mobile phone plans are even worse, without even talking about coverage.

So yes, Germany is not great, but it can be worse.

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