As an American living and working in Germany as an engineer for the past year or so (in a large city, at that), this really shocked me actually. I thought that maybe my landlady was cheap, but it turned out there were actually virtually no better options available. It seemed kind of out of phase with the image Germany tries to project. So many other utilities and services here are really much better than their counterparts in the States. This was kind of a shock.

As a German I say:

German engineering is still of really high quality and there are lots of companies (especially in mechanical engineering) that make use of this knowledge.

But the German gouvernment has missed the information revolution and many powerful companies (Deutsche Telekom, TV companies, etc.) see anything that has to do with the internet as danger for their business models - thus they lobby a lot for laws against anything that endangers their business models and especially internet startups. See for example > http://www.uni-muenster.de/Jura.itm/hoeren/materialien/Skrip... to see how complicated the law has become there - full of legal mines.

For the same reason the idea to found a public corporation that builds a modern fiber network which internet providers can rent on equal terms (an idea that is discussed) will probably never be done.

Even though a lot of infrastructure (i.e., Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom) has been privatized, it is interesting how the former state monopolies are just still de facto monopolies within Germany. They also compete well internationally. I am personally looking forward to the US privatizing some more of its infrastructure and hope the results are positive. Also, I agree about German mechanical engineering... but I am biased. I work for a mechanical engineering consultancy out here. There is a very high level of professionalism among the Diplom-Ingenieur graduates from German universities. It is also nice how there are more jobs for mechanical engineering out here that aren't so tied up in the defense and aerospace industries. It's good for the soul.

why not use http://www.kabeldeutschland.de/? their service is available in most rural areas and goes up to 100Mb/s. i am actually surprised the author doesn't even mention them...

Kabel Deutschland is throttling as well. Unity media just revealed that they dont have any plans to do so. They also off 128 mbit for 60 eur per month.

Unfortunately Kabel is not available in my region (south bavaria, west from munich)

Don’t live in a rural area then. With the money it takes to connect a few homes in the middle of nowhere to the high-speed network, you can easily equip many more with fiber in the middle of a decently sized city.

Which is kind of funny because here in rural Canada we have access to fibre in farmhouses, but if you look to the neighbouring cities it is almost non-existant in residential areas.

> Don’t live in a rural area then.

So I should choose my preferred living place on the premise of maximizing profitability for my ISP? I don't think so.

No, but you should assume that your ISP will choose it's fiber/DSL/whatever rollout strategy to maximise it's own profitability.

And even if it gets subsidies (which is the case here), I would expect it to spend the public’s money well instead of building kilometres upon kilometres of wiring to connect those three farm houses in the Black Forest.

Ha! Try moving to a rural area in the States, then. Soon you won't even have mail service if Congress has its way. But cable or Internet? Forget it.