3 ms·
It's not only the average/median that's bad, it's the lower percentiles that are the most embarrassing. My parents live in a central, fairly dense neighborhood
by jupp0r 7y ago
It's not only the average/median that's bad, it's the lower percentiles that are the most embarrassing. My parents live in a central, fairly dense neighborhood of a town of 40k people. Their only option until 2017 (!!!) was 64k dialup or very flaky 3G. It wasn't only their street that was affected, but the whole part of town, including a newly developed (but mostly empty, what a surprise) business park built from EU development grants. In my mind the reason for disasters like this is a mixture of
1. De facto monopoly of the state-owned telecom provider suffering from mind boggling not-invented here syndrome. They've been pushing their proprietary custom-built hardware and protocols for decades while the world largely moved to china-built commodity which is orders of magnitude cheaper.
2. Political resistance against declaring broadband as an essential utility. There was a parliamentary vote in 2011 to declare a right for households/businesses to get broadband connections (as is the case for electricity/sewers/telephone). It was declined with votes of the conservative/liberal coalition at the time. Nobody even talks about this anymore, other culture war topics seem more important nowadays. Whether to allow wolves to be hunted seems like a more important topic in the national debates.
3. In general there seems to be an unfortunate climate of hostility against technology that reminds me of the Luddites. Smart phones and laptops are banned in high schools, etc. People mostly focus on the dangers and downsides of technology vs the benefits.
Source: Born in Germany, I moved to California a few years ago and can see the difference.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoTBH i'm missing ISDN a little, though i still don't need it ;-> The dialing was instant, which isn't the case with VOIP or mobile, at least i haven't seen better ones so far. The quality of voice was also good, which isn't always the case with VOIP or mobile either. Then there is the aspect of resilience, you could have a simple ISDN phone powered over the line from the exchange, which was protected against loss of power. Good for emergencies. All this is being built back, which seems like loss of quality to me, because mobile base stations aren't that well protected either. And even if, in case of larger emergencies often overloaded? I guess you understand "Dienstgüte und Verfügbarkeit"? As to the thing with the schools, that depends? There are (even public) schools where laptops or tablets are mandatory, which lead to discussions how kids with not so rich parents could afford them. In the 90ies i tought some interestd teachers how to network, installing and administering gateways, proxies, and so on. So don't overgeneralize this, please. I bet it's not evenly distributed in the whole of CA either. Furthermore, what educational use do cell phones have for teens, when they are distracted by viral videos of degrading nature, or texting while not following the teacher? You could call me a luddite in parts, while i would answer with anti-consumerism. It all depends... HTH
- patrickk 7y ago> They've been pushing their proprietary custom-built hardware and protocols Fritz!Box routers? I was shocked how expensive they are, and how widespread.
- jupp0r 7y agoI'm more referring to the backend technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#VDSL2_vectoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#VDSL2_vectoring