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Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by siddhant on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:20PM (#20615349)
It’s not just the speed. The costs are depressing as well. A 50Mbps connection (DSL, because cable is not even available in this area) at my current location costs €40/month. 40! It’s mind-blowing.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by TheRealSteel on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:23PM (#20615387)
Wow, I wish you could get a reliable 50mbps connection in Australia for that cheap. The government is still installing new Fibre to the node (DSL) there which can max out as low as 12mbps.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by AdrianB1 on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:53PM (#20615695)
Not mind-blowing. Comparing to Romania, where internet is "cheaper" and faster, the salaries in Germany are much higher, so the cable guy costs more. Many times more. So in the end Internet is just faster in Romania, not cheaper, because compared to the salaries it is quite expensive.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by deminature on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:24PM (#20615392)
Home internet regularly costs $80 in the US, or roughly €72. €40 seems pretty reasonable by comparison.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by barsonme on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:34PM (#20615494)
Really? $80? I haven't seen $80 for internet.

In a suburban area outside of Tacoma ~300mbps was about $50, and now just outside of Seattle I pay $75 for 1 gbps. The non-gigabit plans were south of $50.

I Googled a bit and most websites said Americans generally pay somewhere between $50-$60.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by throw7 on Monday August 05, 2019 @03:19PM (#20617647)
I'm upstate ny and pay $80 for internet. This gets me 100Mbit down and a paltry 10Mbit up. I don't consider this "broadband" as the upload speed is so slow. It's also highway robbery... there's no choice here.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by usrusr on Monday August 05, 2019 @07:38PM (#20620447)
Could you get slower for less? Because that's the standout characteristic of the German market, something like 16/1 is almost universally available at about 30€ or less, but going and faster, if available, comes at a steep premium.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by throw7 on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @01:13PM (#20627242)
I did a quick login online to search for current "offers", and they're only offering higher tier speeds. Now, it might be possible, but that takes calling them up and I'm not in the mood.

Also, the way they hide "offers" per customer/location is maddening. For my location, a new internet installation at my current speeds is $45 for 2 years. Meanwhile, look at me paying $80 per month -.- Thank you my senators and reps.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by matwood on Monday August 05, 2019 @04:45PM (#20618738)
Locally, unlimited gigabit with taxes and all is ~$100 USD through ATT. The unlimited portion adds $30, but any TV package also makes the connection unlimited so that's what I did.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by ericd on Monday August 05, 2019 @04:04PM (#20618284)
Comcast, with weak competition from others. $100/mo for 250mbps here ($110 if you rent their modem).
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by deminature on Monday August 05, 2019 @01:19PM (#20616011)
I'm in NYC and after tax, my bill is roughly $80.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by zrav on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:40PM (#20617059)
40 for 50 is not so bad. Some regional ISPs installing FTTB/FTTH offer 100mbps + voice for ~40€, which is a pretty good deal.

Due to heavy oversubscribing cable is an inferior product in Germany (on weekends actual speeds drop to a fraction of the advertised line speed), and the biggest cable provider by far (Kabel Deutschland/Vodafone) has serious user support and service quality issues, not to mention they only offer ipv6 dual-stack lite connectivity.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by siddhant on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:30PM (#20619840)
Interesting. Not sure if it's location dependent, but I've had a considerably better/faster/stabler experience with cable. With DSL the connection keeps breaking all the time. And yes, Vodafone definitely has support/quality issues.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by usrusr on Monday August 05, 2019 @07:29PM (#20620375)
The amount of regulator-enforced competition varies a lot between technology generations. The basic idea is that Telekom cannot deny renting out to resellers what they inherited from their government monopolist predecessor, but more recent infrastructure has no such strings attached (the details are slightly more complicated I think).

This was meant as an incentive for investment ("if you build new stuff it's all yours"), but it has cemented the usual premiums for higher bandwidth as a permanent fixture, instead of something that only hits early adopters before trickling down to entry levels. So now you have a situation where quite a few people would be able to upgrade to something like 50 mbps down, sticking to the 16 mbps contract that does the job as well (when you're not hooked to cloud services yet, something Germans might tend to be wary of anyways, given the data protection mindset). In a market where VDSL is widely rejected (because it would almost double the bill), who would invest in even faster infrastructure?

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by crawdingle on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:23PM (#20616789)
110 CAD (~83 USD) for 7Mbps Down 0.5Mbps Up in Atlantic Canada.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by msbarnett on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:43PM (#20617106)
That’s insane compared to elsewhere in Canada. $95 CAD for 150 Mbps up & down, unlimited data, here.

For $120 I could bump that up to 750 up & down.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by RandyRanderson on Monday August 05, 2019 @03:27PM (#20617786)
Please name your provider, location and url to your plan. I find your claim very hard to believe.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by msbarnett on Monday August 05, 2019 @03:43PM (#20618005)
That’s Telus’ fibre optic offering. You can see an overview of their plans here: https://www.clearwest.ca/telus-home-solutions/telus-internet.... Although this claims they are metered, Telus now claims they are not (at least, in my community).

And a bit more about the 750 plan here https://www.telus.com/en/deals-and-bundles/internet-750. The 150 404s on their website at the moment https://www.telus.com/en/shop/home/product/internet-150-150 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Th exact prices you see seem to vary depending on where it thinks you are, and it requires a street address and unit number to quote you exactly what I get quoted. I’m not going to give you my address to verify my prices, because I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck.

But if you google around you’ll see their pretty typical (eg. googling “telus internet 750 review” will give you a result that links to Telus’ page with Google adding that there’s a price range of $95-$140)

edit: more info, if you’re really curious https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30805481-Telus-fibre-towns...

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by djmips on Monday August 05, 2019 @07:33PM (#20620416)
Telus fibre isn't available in the majority of Canadian locales. Currently only in select communities in BC and Alberta.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by msbarnett on Monday August 05, 2019 @11:11PM (#20621766)
Yeah.

Do you think maybe that’s why I said “compared to elsewhere in Canada” and not “compared to every single other place in Canada”?

I have no clue how you convinced yourself I was unaware of this obvious fact. Two different links in my post clearly spell out every community it’s available in.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by C1sc0cat on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:29PM (#20615440)
So! that's competitive for a 35Mbs (inc phone service) in the Uk - consumer broadband doesn't need more than 35-50Mbs any how.

At least "Duecherbuderpest" is not still fixated on making you all use ISDN. "Duecherbuderpest" is what other Telco's use to refer to the German PTT as.

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by WoodenChair on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:22PM (#20615372)
Why do you consider that expensive? If it’s reliable, it sounds very reasonable to me. 1 dinner out.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by lloda on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:27PM (#20615424)
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.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by rsynnott on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @08:26AM (#20624482)
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 by C1sc0cat on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:29PM (#20615452)
That's connection speed what payload do you get on average.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by lloda on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:47PM (#20615627)
That's why I put the speed in quotes. I get about 900 Mbps both ways on my computer that has only a 1 Gbps port.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by siddhant on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:32PM (#20619858)
My point of comparison is the internet prices/quality in India. Post Jio, fast internet seems to be practically free over there.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by whatshisface on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:25PM (#20615400)
It's all relative to what you can get in the market. It's very expensive compared to what is available in countries with good internet.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by mic47 on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:28PM (#20615436)
well, maybe because in some other EU countries it's 22 EUR for 500Mbit :-)
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by sorokod on Monday August 05, 2019 @12:33PM (#20615488)
100 Mbit/s can be had for 20 euro for first 12 months in Berlin. 40 afterwards.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by ahartmetz on Monday August 05, 2019 @01:34PM (#20616193)
Usually it's best to "cancel" the contract immediately after signing, then when the cancellation comes in effect a year later it's easy to get the new customer rate again.
Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by iforgotpassword on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:14PM (#20616666)
Or if you don't mind the hassle and have another provider available at your location, switch to it via some broker like check24 and get it even cheaper. I'm currently on 30/6 mbits for 11€ for two years, before that I had 120/10 mbits for 17€ over two years. They would turn into 25€ and 35€ after two years.

It is kind of ridiculous how they actually punish loyal customers by making them pay more after two years if you don't do anything. Sure, enough people are lazy enough to make this model feasible, but just imagine the butcher you've been getting your meat at for years suddenly goes like "hey you come here all the time so I'm gonna charge you 30% more"

Re:Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet by Jnr on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @11:24AM (#20625957)
I get 600Mbit for 12 EUR. Greetings from Latvia! :)