4 ms·
I have had the same experience both in Germany and in some areas of the UK, like downtown Cambridge which was shocking. In contrast, both Scandinavia and many
by nextos 7y ago
I have had the same experience both in Germany and in some areas of the UK, like downtown Cambridge which was shocking.
In contrast, both Scandinavia and many parts of Southern Europe have great mobile and landline Internet. I guess it has something to do with the structure of the market before EU enforced massive privatizations.
- msiebuhr 7y agoAFAIK, most of the Danish cellphone infrastructure was built after TeleDanmark (now TDC) was privatized.
- close04 7y agoSome Southern European countries still have pretty crappy internet overall - average to low for mobile, and really bad for landline (Italy, Greece, Croatia). Eastern European countries mostly have great internet (especially landline, probably above average for mobile). I always assumed it must be because they came later to the party and went directly for modern technologies. As opposed to Germany who had telephone lines all over and then decided to get the most out of them because rebuilding with fiber would cost the companies too much.
- vetinari 7y agoEastern European countries are ...complicated. The state-owned telcos were privatized in 90-ties, because the state is a bad owner, by ...state owned telcos from the west (Deutsche Telecom, Telefonica, etc). Of course, the first thing they tried was to move the obsolete equipment from their home countries to Eastern Europe for the price of a new one and for the money to get the new equipment in their home countries. That didn't work out, because new competitors appeared, that built FTTH/Tripple Play networks from the scratch, with very low red tape at the time. That made the old DSL equipment not competetive in the cities (some even wanted to charge based on data transferred via DSLAM, making the flat-rate FTTH even better deal), so the ILECs had to do something with it - which meant to build their own FTTH network. DSLAMs were relegated to country side. That's how Eastern Europe got fast and cheap fixed-line Internet in their cities. In the country, it is still mixed bag, better bet is LTE & 3G.
- yxhuvud 7y agoThat story isn't really the full story for some of the countries. For example, Romania had a really huge build it yourself boom (which have since consolidated into proper companies since, if I have understood it correctly) and at least for a while ended up with more people having fiber than running water.
- flurdy 7y agoIt is partly down to inept politicians and the concessions they dictated to the mobile networks. In Norway, they demanded the networks cover 97% of the geographic areas. It's why you might get 3G or even 4G in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain, wherever you might drive. However, in the UK the inept politicians demanded 97% of the population, not geographically. So all the UK networks just built perfect coverage for all the cities and towns, and could mostly ignore everywhere else. Which means even in the populous South East England whenever I drive slightly outside my town towards one of the bigger cities 20-30 minutes away I can not have a conversation in my car as the connection is always lost. Nor on the train into London. And also must be a nightmare for the small villages that fall outside the 97%. (On the plus side whenever we go to the country pubs around here, I can not be reached, and noone can look at the phone during dinner...)
- anoncake 7y ago> However, in the UK the inept politicians demanded 97% of the population, not geographically. Which is completely backwards. You don't need mobile where you live (as long as you can get a landline), you need it everywhere else.