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Helmut Kohl has killed the fiber to the home project[1] of his predecessor Helmut Schmidt in 1985! There could have been a significant startup or two in German
by southerndrift 8y ago
Helmut Kohl has killed the fiber to the home project[1] of his predecessor Helmut Schmidt in 1985!
There could have been a significant startup or two in Germany. Kohl has destroyed that opportunity, much like he has destroyed opportunities in East Germany.
>He was determined to transform the territories of former East Germany into “a garden of beautiful flowers,”
>[but]
>his commitment of literally trillions in Deutsche marks to build highways and shopping centers—rather than firming up the industrial base—led to stagnation and a 10-year recession in all of
[1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missing-Link-Der-Kampf-um-die-Glasfaser-oder-Der-verpasste-Breitbandausbau-in-Deutschland-3952581.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missing-Link-Der-Kam... (in German)
- merb 8y agohe did even more worse things, like the donation affair, which he did got away with just 300.000 DM!
- southerndrift 8y agoBy now, Germany could have 100M or 1G internet in every home. Major cities could have been connected in 1990! With that infrastructure, you can offer wlan everywhere and role out GSM much much faster. With such an internet, smartphones would have been adopted much earlier. The digitalization would have started much earlier. Consumers would have poured money into phones much earlier. We are living at least 5-10 years in the past because of that decision. Whatever was paid with that donation, I don't think it's worse than killing an early adoption of the internet.