Germany Tries to Catch Up with Startup World

Re:Germany Tries to Catch Up with Startup World by pyvpx on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:13PM (#13979699)

telephone lines owned by the Government (Telekom, private in theory, owned by the Government on paper), no less!

there is some DOCSIS (cable) service, mostly from Vodafone but also a smaller provider named telecolumbus.

There was versatel, but 1&1 smartly purchased it at what I believe to be an absolute steal. They have what is clearly the widest fiber network reach outside of Telekom, and 1&1 is actually going out there and selling it.

I could, if I really wanted to, get 1Gbps symmetrical for only 500EUR/month. The catch is the ~3000EUR install and minimum 3 year commitment. but, at least the option is there. Telekom, if they have fiber "available" at your address, will offer you 20Mbps for around 700EUR a month, then do this really weird delivery of an STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit, broken out into E3s (45Mbps) to a Cisco ASR1002 (a 5000EUR device, easily), that is converted to a rate limited GigE interface. Oh, and the install fee is about 1200EUR and takes a solid six weeks...but only if you call every day to remind them.

Berlin internet connectivity is a sick and twisted joke.

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Re:Germany Tries to Catch Up with Startup World by expertentipp on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:28PM (#13979837)

This reminds me my conversation with a salesperson in a Deutsche Telekom retail shop in Berlin. The fastest DSL in my apartment was 6 Mbit/s. No VDSL available because "all sockets are taken" probably by the neighbours or by the business on the ground floor - the guy was literally blaming their shitty connection on my neighbours. I was this close to killing him with the chair he was sitting on.

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