The 'excuse' is that Berlin is a relatively old city with little over-air infrastructure and that the ex-national-monopolist (DTAG) doesn't not need to give acc

The 'excuse' is that Berlin is a relatively old city with little over-air infrastructure and that the ex-national-monopolist (DTAG) doesn't not need to give access to its infrastructure (trenches, tunnels, posts, etc) to other ISPs. This is in contrast, for example, with how the ex-national-monopolist (Orange) operates in Poland - they have to give you access to their infrastructure trenches/tunnels, extremely cheap (around $25 per km per month), by law. The only thing that DTAG has to do is allow local loop access for unbundling - and this is why the biggest freedom of choice within the Internet market in Germany you see is that you can choose from 10 different ADSL ISPs. However, since they all use the same shitty old copper it's effectively zero choice.