Germany is downgrading

True but thats a separate issue maybe you need to ask your MEP why they cut the budget for BB rollout to rural areas in the EU - But didn't cut the CAP subsidy for farmers

Linus Torvalds: "Q: How do you know you are in the middle of nowhere in Finland? A: Sometimes your cellphone downgrades from HSPA to 3G." https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/LuhjmWpAgVi

First of all, I moved to Berlin 9 months ago and in general I'm pretty happy with the service uptime and promised speed etc.

BUT the activation time of your connection is something unacceptable in Germany. Four weeks seems to be the normal case for a landline connection to be up and running. FOUR WEEKS, are you kidding me?

And the same problem is ahead of you if you're moving to another flat.

As I did. I moved one month ago. And I didn't know the new address until 1 week before the end of month. As soon as I knew about it I went to the ISP & asked them to make the switch to the new address.

I had to pay extra (which was ok) and WAIT ANOTHER FOUR WEEKS (which was not ok at all).

So in effect I was without internet for 3 weeks while paying the connection to my old address at the same time.

Someone was saying that here the bottleneck is on Telekom's end. And maybe so? The guy who eventually came after 4 weeks was from Telekom - he basically came around for max 10 minutes (probably 5) and made some magic tricks and voilà - internet working.

EDIT: Wild guess #1: the problem is just too few people at Telekom.

Wild guess #2: If Telekom would offer a service that you pay 100EUR extra to get the connection in two days, they 1) could do it, 2) have loads of customers wanting that service and 3) give jobs to more people and 4) have more money in the pocket

Although it's a US Territory it's pretty far from what you'd get in 'the states'. It's an island, they don't have the same kind of providers or infrastructure, something like only half the households in PR have a computer and only a little over half of those have broadband.

It's just nothing like you would have in say Florida, Texas, or another state.

Fact: Magyar Telekom has the worst customer service of all telecom operators in Hungary according to government funded studies, year after year. I was involved in QA for a few months on a contract basis, bc the parent company (Deutsche Telekom) is apparently freaked out by this fact. So anyway, here are some tips on how to deal with them, unfortunately you can't avoid them forever, but I haven't been in a store for years.

Going to a store should be your last resort. Use My T-Mobile/My T-Home (on their website). If you have a really special problem, call them. Also, never buy anything in a store or on the phone, unless you're very, very good at negotiating, you get 10% off of your orders automatically on the website. Customer service agents use the very same interface (with more privileges of course) but you can do pretty much anything you would want on My T-Mobile. E.g. I know for a fact (I'm also a customer) that you can disable receiving premium texts and having an Internet connection altogether. It's worth checking out every service if they're enabled or disabled at least once, so you can avoid unexpected charges and activate things that you know you might need some day. Btw, your options are very clearly described, much better than how an agent would explain them to you.

If you absolutely must see someone in person, here are some more tips. Always go to T-Pont stores, those are the official reps of the company, never go to a store with a big T-Mobile sign, those are resellers, agents there receive poor training and all they want is to sell you stuff. Don't go to a store in the late afternoon/evening hours, they have the most customers then and you have to wait more. 30 min waiting time is actually not very common, if you go any other time you either won't have to wait or only have to wait a few minutes. Also check on My T-Mobile if you're a 'gold' or 'platinum' client. If you are, always choose that on the first screen in the in-store queue ticketing system, and you'll get to someone in a few minutes even if there are loads of people in the store, bc most people don't know about this.

Yeah, it's ridiculous that you have to know all these to get a good service, but you don't have to put up with it, e.g. Telenor's customer service is pretty good, or so I've heard.