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Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

wsj.com

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Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#201

Post by walshemj »

GordonS wrote: post #191
rayiner wrote: post #45

Germany's internet is slow because it relies heavily on unbundling, implemented poorly: https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/f... . Telekom has little incentive to invest in upgrading its infrastructure because it has to lease it out to its competitors anyway. Contrasting Germany and the U.K. offers a really good illustration of how important it is to set incentives correctly. The U.K. also reli…

Here in the UK, widely available fast internet access still feels fairly recent. I've had a 80/20 FTTC connection (~£23/m) for 5 years or so, but before that it was ADSL, starting really crappy and ending up at something like 8/1 IIRC, and it took forever to get that - people were complaining for decades about BT and OpenReach's slow rollout of ADSL, and then FTTC. All the time I was painfully aware that people elsew…

I would agree Fiber to the CAB is really all that home users need. A lot of the whining in places like Faringdon Central London is one or two business wanting to do freeload off consumer BB.

I helped my last company move at super short notice < 2 weeks and we got Last mile ethernet 70Meg as a stop gap before our 100 Meg line was delivered a month early

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#202

Post by walshemj »

newaccoutnas wrote: post #86
rayiner wrote: post #45

Germany's internet is slow because it relies heavily on unbundling, implemented poorly: https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/f... . Telekom has little incentive to invest in upgrading its infrastructure because it has to lease it out to its competitors anyway. Contrasting Germany and the U.K. offers a really good illustration of how important it is to set incentives correctly. The U.K. also reli…

I would not discount government 'incentives' to BT. Hundreds of millions have come the public purse for contracts that were supposedly put up for public tender. BT got about 95% of them. edit: there are other issues in the UK, like fibre tax, that makes the situation even more difficult for competition.

None of the other providers wanted to serve low value customers is the blunt reason.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#203

Post by MordecaiMaxwell »

robert_foss wrote: post #109
MordecaiMaxwell wrote: post #108

I mean, almost every country should. I live in Russia and it baffles me how much faster and cheaper internet is here, compared to the most western countries.

What speeds/types/prices are available where you're located?

I pay around 8 dollars per month for unlimited internet. Speed varies between 90-100 Mbps + they gave me a free Wi-Fi router.

I live in Moscow. I've heard you can find even better deals here, but it all depends on your location. One block of a city is usually covered by 3-4 internet providers, so you have a choice, most of the time.

Customer support is top notch, they installed it the same day, never had any problems.

My providers is OnLime is you are interested.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#204

Post by merb »

rayiner wrote: post #45

Germany's internet is slow because it relies heavily on unbundling, implemented poorly: https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/f... . Telekom has little incentive to invest in upgrading its infrastructure because it has to lease it out to its competitors anyway. Contrasting Germany and the U.K. offers a really good illustration of how important it is to set incentives correctly. The U.K. also reli…

> Telekom has little incentive to invest in upgrading its infrastructure because it has to lease it out to its competitors anyway.

that's not always true. It's still not clear if they are allowed to upgrade without putting new cables in.

if the last-mile is on copper you can replace it with vectoring (FTTC+Vectoring) the problem is that it is only legally allowed if there is a second network, because LLU and vectoring is currently incompatible. and the telekom of germany needs to sublicense. and fttb (or better) is basically not feasible. (exceptions prove the rule)

actually all cities between karlsruhe and freiburg will be gradually changed to use fttc+vectoring which will improve data rates up to 300mbit/40mbit (most often to 100/40 or 50/10)

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#205

Post by [deleted] »

hannob wrote: post #20

Just a bit more background from Germany: This article largely focusses on broadband connections. It doesn't even begin to adress the even bigger issue, which is that mobile internet is extremely bad compared to most other european countries. Also interesting that even the reporter fell for one of the lamest excuses: "Among them are the country’s large geographic area". Northern neighbor Sweden, which happens to be on…

[deleted]

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#206

Post by plazmatic »

This article may as well be about the United States. They primarily speak of internet issues outside of the big cities in Germany, which is exactly the case in America.

Furthermore, the Germans average internet speed is only 3mb slower than that of the U.S.

Sorry. Anti-German articles are so poorly done, it's kind of sad.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#207

Post by MordecaiMaxwell »

robert_foss wrote: post #109
MordecaiMaxwell wrote: post #108

I mean, almost every country should. I live in Russia and it baffles me how much faster and cheaper internet is here, compared to the most western countries.

What speeds/types/prices are available where you're located?

The highest speed offered that i've seen is 800 Mbps for around 15$, but that is some unique offer by only one provider.

The city average is 200-300 Mbps.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#208

Post by ghaff »

robohoe wrote: post #197
ghaff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference: http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun... It's quite the read. It's also recommended reading if you go to the US West and your expectations are mostly informed by tooling around the countryside of Western Europe (or the eastern US for that matter).

Other articles by Tom Mahood are a great read as well. Highly recommend subscribing to his blog. There is lots to learn from his piddling around the American Southwest.

Just the "subscribe to blog" brought a small smile to my face because such a thing still exists. Thanks.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#209

Post by ckris »

groundlogic wrote: post #156
magic_beans wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Looking back to the mid-to-late 90s, when this all started... The government was all in, very early on. There was this giant tax deduction scheme in 1998 where every employed person had this opportunity to buy a computer to get online at like half price, since all the taxes (income tax, employment tax) were waived. I used that scheme to buy an outrageous $5k PC at "half price". (Dual Pentium 333 Mhz, Dual Voodoo2 - t…

In Stockholm it was decided to connect all public housing, which was ~25% of the housing stock at the time. Owned apartments being coops, and presumably being able to make majority decisions, probably helped as well. That said, I don't think it is that impressive these days. Most digital or infrastructure things are very "1.5" compared to for example some parts of Asia.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#210

Post by gdy »

robert_foss wrote: post #109
MordecaiMaxwell wrote: post #108

I mean, almost every country should. I live in Russia and it baffles me how much faster and cheaper internet is here, compared to the most western countries.

What speeds/types/prices are available where you're located?

FTTb, unlimited 100 Mbps for about 7 euro per month. Not Moscow.
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