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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

#261

Post by erichocean »

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…

Germany Population 2019: 83,547,429

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/germany-populatio...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#262

Post by paule89 »

Matthias247 wrote: post #190
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.

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 t…

Well german telecom tried to introduce caps into internet plans ~5 years ago at around 200GB. But that caused so much outrage, that they rolled back on that decision and ultimately you only get a cap on the cheapest of providers. I mean try downloading GTA5 and Red Dead Redemption for PS4/PC, and you have already used up your datacap.

Mobile Plans are so expensive, because we germans auction away the licenses for the Frequencies for billions.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#263

Post by carlmr »

Matthias247 wrote: post #190
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.

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 t…

I can attest to that, having stayed in Canada for 2 years. US is also expensive. Germany is dirt cheap, but slow.

When people say Germany is expensive to the rest of Europe I think they need to check the salary levels in the rest of Europe. German internet and cell is probably cheaper going by percentage of average income.

It's only the lack of coverage (and maybe the blocked YouTube videos) that bother me in Germany.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#265

Post by fyfy18 »

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…

Props to the engineers at BT/OpenReach for making the most of a pair of copper wires. Even at my parents place, built in the 80s, and a mile and a half from the local exchange/cabinet they can get 50mbit down with VDSL2.

However I feel BT as a company needs big changes. They are a monopoly because most people (especially older people) don't realise how easy it is to change. Their prices are consistently higher than competitors, and they get a lot of government incentives.

I now live in Lithuania where most households within city limits can get 1000/1000 FTTH, and even in remote areas you can get decent 4G speeds (50mbit+), and it's costs less than half of what BT charge for the cheapest BT Infinity package. This has all been rolled out in the last few years, and I can't see BT doing anything like that anytime soon in the UK.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#266

Post by dheera »

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…

Sure, but over here in California USA I routinely get no service at all Pretty much all of Skyline Boulevard, Route 1, large swaths of I-5 are big dead zones for me. All regional parks, state parks, national parks are dead too. I've had generally better cell service in Europe.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#267

Post by arvinsim »

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.

I thought that Germany(or at least Berlin) has become a IT hub. How could that happen with bad connections?

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#268

Post by disillusioned »

terminalhealth wrote: post #158
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...

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.

Strictly speaking, aren't they both just series' of tubes? /s

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#269

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #174
pmjordan wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ahea…

Just a suggestion: Do some actual math. It's really not that difficult to not look like a racist asshole if you bother to actually calculate the size of whatever effect you are hypothesizing exists to check whether it could possibly actually be a thing, as opposed to your prejudice leading you to nonsense conclusions.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#270

Post by b3orn »

Glawen wrote: post #57
jrimbault wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me France also has a comparable surface, although with more concentrated population centers.

France has 30 millions less people and is 50% bigger than germany (550000km2 vs 350000km2), so no, it is not comparable. Germany is way denser than France, with a lot big cities.

The population difference is 16 million (67 million vs 83 million), and the France is about 80% larger than Germany (640679km^2 vs 357386km^2). But at the same time the population of France is much more concentrated into a few areas and the population of Germany is spread out more.
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