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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

#301
post #295
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is partly down to inept politicians and the concessions they dictated to the mobile networks. In Norway, they demanded the networks cover 97% of the geographic areas. It's why you might get 3G or even 4G in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain, wherever you might drive. However, in the UK the inept politicians demanded 97% of the population, not geographically. So all the UK networks just built perfect cove…

> However, in the UK the inept politicians demanded 97% of the population, not geographically.

Which is completely backwards. You don't need mobile where you live (as long as you can get a landline), you need it everywhere else.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#302
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…

> 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.

Of course this applies to other providers too - why would you invest and add infrastructure if you have to share it with your competitors anyway? I think allowing providers to use their network contributions exclusively for a certain time, let's say 2 years, is a worthwhile incentive.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#303
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…

I agree with your comment but the same is true for San Francisco / Silicon Valley. The connection is often times terrible and try having a VOIP call on the 101.

That’s probably more about overloaded towers, not lack of coverage.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#304
I really cannot concur. I live in the depths of Bavaria in a small village with ~2000 residents. Our apartment is connected by two 100MBit/s DSL and 500MBit/s Cable lines, set up in failover configuration in case one goes down (which always only happens on Cable for a few minutes, and that setup exists only because I work 100% remote). The village is located in a mountainous region, yet everywhere I go, I have +100Mbit/s LTE available, safe for the completely unpopulated areas between mountains.

For all of this I pay

- 39,99 for the cable - 29,99 for the DSL - 30,00 for unlimited LTE

On the other hand, there are very small villages with population < 500 with only 10 or 20Mbit/s DSL available. However, I think that this is to be expected in these areas and any complaint about it is, at least in this day and age, a first world problem and your own fault for living in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#305
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you consider that expensive? If it’s reliable, it sounds very reasonable to me. 1 dinner out.

I pay about that for ‘10 Gbps’ in CH. I don't even have a machine with a 10 Gbps port, but there isn't anything cheaper here that makes sense.

Does the ISP equipment even have a 10Gbps port? I know someone here (Ireland) who had an early consumer 1Gbps FTTP connection. The ISP provided equipment had 100Mbps ports and 802.11n...

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#306
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some Southern European countries still have pretty crappy internet overall - average to low for mobile, and really bad for landline (Italy, Greece, Croatia). Eastern European countries mostly have great internet (especially landline, probably above average for mobile). I always assumed it must be because they came later to the party and went directly for modern technologies. As opposed to Germany who had telephone li…

Eastern European countries are ...complicated.

The state-owned telcos were privatized in 90-ties, because the state is a bad owner, by ...state owned telcos from the west (Deutsche Telecom, Telefonica, etc). Of course, the first thing they tried was to move the obsolete equipment from their home countries to Eastern Europe for the price of a new one and for the money to get the new equipment in their home countries.

That didn't work out, because new competitors appeared, that built FTTH/Tripple Play networks from the scratch, with very low red tape at the time. That made the old DSL equipment not competetive in the cities (some even wanted to charge based on data transferred via DSLAM, making the flat-rate FTTH even better deal), so the ILECs had to do something with it - which meant to build their own FTTH network. DSLAMs were relegated to country side.

That's how Eastern Europe got fast and cheap fixed-line Internet in their cities. In the country, it is still mixed bag, better bet is LTE & 3G.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#307
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the 6MB/s or 6Mbps? Is that the average or minimum guaranteed?

Can you ever really have a minimum guaranteed speed when often times the limiting factor is the remote's ability to upload?

At 6 MB/s, you won't hit that limit yet, with most services.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#308
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

actually they do not prohibit tethering just using the simcard in a 4G router for home wifi (to prevent users from using it as a replacement for crappy DSL). Tethering from the phone should be fine.

Why would you prevent sharing it when you're already double dipping by introducing a datacap?

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#309
post #304

I really cannot concur. I live in the depths of Bavaria in a small village with ~2000 residents. Our apartment is connected by two 100MBit/s DSL and 500MBit/s Cable lines, set up in failover configuration in case one goes down (which always only happens on Cable for a few minutes, and that setup exists only because I work 100% remote). The village is located in a mountainous region, yet everywhere I go, I have +100Mb…

Sorry but your setup seems to be outragouesly unique. Often times you have either cable or dsl. But not both. Also what about your upload speeds? probably only 20MBit/s or 40 max.

I dream of a land with 10Gbit symmatrical networking for an affordable price. It would be future proof. I could role my own server. Heck i could probably start a cloud business and scale up if i wanted to somehow by buying more fiber lines.

Re: Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet

#310
The only Good Thing about German Internet access is the FRITZ!Box. Best basic Internet Router with minimal required setup. Still missing some things, but they do their job much better than what any provider can give you (or they are rebranding the FRITZ!Box itself)
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