Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

bundeskartellamt.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#21

Post by mistrial9 »

dayjaby wrote: post #7
endofreach wrote: post #4

Way to go germany. Seems like they truly try to weaken all homegrown companies that have any relevance in electronic products whatsoever. Germany & it's economy is just a mere shell of what it was. Their right extremists & nazis gain more acceptance & influence everyday. While the economy seems to be hopeless. Let's just hope this doesn't end up like last time.

If Fritz Boxes would actually be a good product...frequent internet drops, which a simple restart fixes, is that normal for routers from other brands? As a German, I don't know, because I've been forced to use these shitty Fritz Boxes my entire life.

from the evidence here, there is no way to know the reason for these restarts.. the next reply says "no problems for thousands of hours"

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#22

Post by RisingFusion »

dayjaby wrote: post #7
endofreach wrote: post #4

Way to go germany. Seems like they truly try to weaken all homegrown companies that have any relevance in electronic products whatsoever. Germany & it's economy is just a mere shell of what it was. Their right extremists & nazis gain more acceptance & influence everyday. While the economy seems to be hopeless. Let's just hope this doesn't end up like last time.

If Fritz Boxes would actually be a good product...frequent internet drops, which a simple restart fixes, is that normal for routers from other brands? As a German, I don't know, because I've been forced to use these shitty Fritz Boxes my entire life.

I used to have connection issues every few weeks. I got a digital timer plug and reboot my router every night at 3am, that fixed almost all of my connection drops. I was thinking about this XKCD comic after digging through logs to try and trouble shoot the issue https://xkcd.com/1495/ and just went with the timer solution.

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#23

Post by iforgotpassword »

account42 wrote: post #20
iforgotpassword wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working absolutely flawless here, months of uptime. And no, you're not forced to use them, "Routerzwang" hasn't been a thing in almost a decade, ISPs are required to allow you to use any router you like.

Technically you are no longer forced to use them but the IPSs will try to make your life as difficult as they can if you want to use your own router while often discounting the rent for their AVM routers to $0 (meaning it everyone pais for them with their base subscriber fee even if you opt out of getting one).

Not my experience. With o2, the sales guy on the phone even recommended buying a fritz box when I told him I don't want to rent their "o2 homebox" (which is not made by avm and has a terrible reputation) for 2€ a month.

With Kabel Deutschland the process was also painless. I disconnected their box which they lend to you for free (also not avm), connected the fritzbox I bought on ebay and ended up on some form of captive portal where I had to enter my customer information and boom I was online. I've yet to encounter an isp which tries to force you to use a fritzbox. But then again I wouldn't mind since they are reliable and stable. :)

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#25

Post by rad_gruchalski »

imtringued wrote: post #16
dayjaby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Fritz Boxes would actually be a good product...frequent internet drops, which a simple restart fixes, is that normal for routers from other brands? As a German, I don't know, because I've been forced to use these shitty Fritz Boxes my entire life.

I don't know what you are talking about. Every time I got an ISP contract and used their default router I got nothing but problems until I decided to upgrade to their Fritz Box offering and then all the problems disappear. LAN and WiFi just work.

I’m on my 5th fritzbox and have no problems at all.

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#26

Post by riedel »

7bit wrote: post #10
endofreach wrote: post #4

Way to go germany. Seems like they truly try to weaken all homegrown companies that have any relevance in electronic products whatsoever. Germany & it's economy is just a mere shell of what it was. Their right extremists & nazis gain more acceptance & influence everyday. While the economy seems to be hopeless. Let's just hope this doesn't end up like last time.

Oh boi, your comment is nothing but uninformed propaganda. AVM is way past "home-grown" with sales of over 620 millions and a profit of 60-80 millions. The owners have been preparing to selling AVM for a year now, to a private equity investor, which should be closed in the very near future. And above all, AVM broke the law. But from your comment it sounds like law is a concept you do not approve much, do you?

The founders bought back their shares to regain control only in 2006. Now they want to retire and seem to evaluate options [1]. Guess it is far to early to judge what they will do. They seem to care about the company. Recently AVM settled their wifi patent dispute with Huawei [2], so maybe the sale becomes more likely? But I try to be optimistic that we will not have another Software AG like disaster (on a smaller scale) [3] .

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/AVM-Fritzbox-Hersteller-steht-ange...

[2] https://www.juve-patent.com/cases/huawei-and-avm-settle-wifi...

[3] https://technologymagazine.com/articles/ibm-closes-software-...

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#28

Post by dirkt »

dayjaby wrote: post #7
endofreach wrote: post #4

Way to go germany. Seems like they truly try to weaken all homegrown companies that have any relevance in electronic products whatsoever. Germany & it's economy is just a mere shell of what it was. Their right extremists & nazis gain more acceptance & influence everyday. While the economy seems to be hopeless. Let's just hope this doesn't end up like last time.

If Fritz Boxes would actually be a good product...frequent internet drops, which a simple restart fixes, is that normal for routers from other brands? As a German, I don't know, because I've been forced to use these shitty Fritz Boxes my entire life.

I've been using Fritzboxes my entire life, I am on a Fritzbox right now, I never had frequent internet drops, with none of the Fritzboxes I had.

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#29

Post by shmeeed »

tetris11 wrote: post #24

Does this mean then that they will be forced to lower their prices, or not to increase them, or... what does this mean for consumers in the end?

It means retailers will be able to set their own prices and not have them (unlawfully) dictated by AVM. The resulting competition will probably lead to (at least occasionally) lower prices for consumers.

Re: Bundeskartellamt imposes fine against Fritz brand products manufacturer AVM

#30

Post by squarefoot »

mateusz_ wrote: post #27

Fritzboxes made me hate internet when i lived in luxembourg

I learnt to like them after my current ISP moved from Fritz to a (I think) crappy rebranded ZTE. I got all sorts of stability problems that disappeared once I threw it in a drawer (can't throw it on the trash as I'm still paying for it) and got a used 7590 on ebay.
Post reply on HN