Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#241

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 1:52 AM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #233

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 in Canada and my plan is 20Mbps down/1Mbps up for $193/month but with TV, no cap since I am grandfathered in. Then I see my ISP has 100Mbps (up is ?) for $85 and a cap of 1TB. I guess I should look at my ISP website more often.

Most of my friends are moving toward pirate TV boxes.

I'm thinking about it for my mom: the cableco's STB shows every channel in the guide, whether you get it or not. And you only realize it when you try to go to the channel.

They have updated the box to show more ads in the guide though... Argh.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#242

Post by nesadi » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #71

nesadi wrote: 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.

It's far cheaper than the US. I get 6MB/s downloads for 15€/month. For mobile, there's a chart making the rounds on Twitter, and it seems to me Germany is very much in line with other countries. Of course it's more expensive than it is in poorer countries in eastern Europe, as everything is.

From what I've seen, compared to France, the UK and Austria, which aren't poorer countries, Germany still has comparatively expensive plans with less volume.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#243

Post by nesadi » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

cc81 wrote: post #154

nisa wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You had a similar spectrum auction with 5G recently and that got very expensive as well. That seems to be a problem in a lot of Europe and something the hardware providers like Ericsson complains about as that hinders the service providers ability to buy things from them because they spend so much money on the auction.

It's telling that only the four biggest providers in Germany were able to take part in the auction because of how expensive it is. Not a lot of companies can throw billions at some spectrum before even building any towers or other infrastructure. It really distorts the market and makes it far less competitive.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#244

Post by blunte » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

Some Netherlands internet is garbage too, even the 4G. And a whole lot of US internet is garbage.

Meanwhile, I've experienced reliable high speed (both direction) internet in Thailand and even Bali. Perhaps I got lucky, but imo there's no excuse for shit internet in US or NL (or Germany).

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#245

Post by msbarnett » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

djmips wrote: post #228

msbarnett wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s Telus’ fibre optic offering. You can see an overview of their plans here: https://www.clearwest.ca/telus-home-solutions/telus-internet... . Although this claims they are metered, Telus now claims they are not (at least, in my community). And a bit more about the 750 plan here https://www.telus.com/en/deals-and-bundles/internet-750 . The 150 404s on their website at the moment https://www.telus.com/en/shop/home…

Telus fibre isn't available in the majority of Canadian locales. Currently only in select communities in BC and Alberta.

Yeah.

Do you think maybe that’s why I said “compared to elsewhere in Canada” and not “compared to every single other place in Canada”?

I have no clue how you convinced yourself I was unaware of this obvious fact. Two different links in my post clearly spell out every community it’s available in.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#246

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:40 AM UTC

dylz wrote: post #178

nisa wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Triple A rating as in absolute arrogant assholes. Not every single one of them, but enough. "Beamtenmentalität" (bureaucratic mentality).

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#247

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #164

lonesword wrote: post #41

I recently moved to Germany. I used to work as a software dev in India before this. I was horrified to learn that (urban) India has way better internet than Germany. When it comes to mobile data it's even more depressing - back in India I used to get 1.5GB _daily_ 4G mobile data for 200 rupees (around 2.5 euros) a _month_. Even after adjusting for purchasing power, 2.5 euros a month for virtually unlimited mobile dat…

Are you aware of https://freenet-funk.de/ ? That's basically one GB per day for 99ct, no contract, only available per app, though no roaming, and no tethering, only for mobile devices, and using Telefonica/O². They got some bad press recently for kicking some users which overused it, and accusations of retroactively changing their terms of use. https://www.golem.de/news/funk-unlimited-freenet-kuendigt-ku... https://w…

Sorry, mispaste. The fourth link should have been https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missbraeuchliche-Nut...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#248

Post by msiebuhr » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

nextos wrote: post #193

sc11 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even very close to big cities like Frankfurt, having an uninterrupted phone call is a difficult thing to have. The German Minister for Economic Affairs has stopped taking calls with foreign colleagues during car trips because he was too embarassed by the constant interruptions...

I have had the same experience both in Germany and in some areas of the UK, like downtown Cambridge which was shocking. In contrast, both Scandinavia and many parts of Southern Europe have great mobile and landline Internet. I guess it has something to do with the structure of the market before EU enforced massive privatizations.

AFAIK, most of the Danish cellphone infrastructure was built after TeleDanmark (now TDC) was privatized.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#249

Post by swimfar » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

This is an old anecdote (~2010), so not completely relevant to the current discussion. But I was living in Germany and the only internet option I had was dial-up. I could hardly believe that such a thing still existed anywhere in Europe, but even more surprising was that it was pay-by-the-minute. There were a bunch of different providers that had different pricing plans where sometimes there would be a connection fee, but lower per-minute rates, and sometimes the rates would go down after so many minutes of connection. The landlord set me up with some software that would try to minimize the cost of an internet session. It would tell you which provider to go with based on an estimated connection duration that you gave it. You could also configure it to hang up and dial into another provider if rates changed enough based on the time of day.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#250

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 5:01 AM UTC

jupp0r wrote: post #230

It's not only the average/median that's bad, it's the lower percentiles that are the most embarrassing. My parents live in a central, fairly dense neighborhood of a town of 40k people. Their only option until 2017 (!!!) was 64k dialup or very flaky 3G. It wasn't only their street that was affected, but the whole part of town, including a newly developed (but mostly empty, what a surprise) business park built from EU…

TBH i'm missing ISDN a little, though i still don't need it ;-> The dialing was instant, which isn't the case with VOIP or mobile, at least i haven't seen better ones so far. The quality of voice was also good, which isn't always the case with VOIP or mobile either. Then there is the aspect of resilience, you could have a simple ISDN phone powered over the line from the exchange, which was protected against loss of power. Good for emergencies. All this is being built back, which seems like loss of quality to me, because mobile base stations aren't that well protected either. And even if, in case of larger emergencies often overloaded? I guess you understand "Dienstgüte und Verfügbarkeit"?

As to the thing with the schools, that depends? There are (even public) schools where laptops or tablets are mandatory, which lead to discussions how kids with not so rich parents could afford them. In the 90ies i tought some interestd teachers how to network, installing and administering gateways, proxies, and so on. So don't overgeneralize this, please. I bet it's not evenly distributed in the whole of CA either. Furthermore, what educational use do cell phones have for teens, when they are distracted by viral videos of degrading nature, or texting while not following the teacher? You could call me a luddite in parts, while i would answer with anti-consumerism. It all depends... HTH