10 ms·

Zero G: Some German mobile users still waiting for a signal

76 points by jonbaer 6y ago

metters 6y ago
If you sign a new contract with an internet provider in Germany , you will have to wait up to three weeks until somebody comes and turns one switch and you have Internet. In South Korea they will connect you on the afternoon of the same day. Sources: I am German and my neighbours are Korean (not the best Korea kind of Koreans)
- simonklitj 6y ago
  Yessir, same thing in Denmark. Ordered Wi-Fi for my new apartment two weeks before I moved there, just so I knew it would be activated when I moved in. Ridiculous. I do think some of the new fiber companies are same-day, though.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    On one occasion I was given a complimentary hotspot+SIM to use while waiting for the installer to show up. That wasn't a good sign.
    - moepstar 6y ago
      Vodafone does this. They also explained to me i get to keep the Mifi+SIM, to use it in case the landline goes out (edit: never had to use it once in 3+ years). Not sure how this is not a good sign, i suppose they do that pretty regularly? Also, in my case the announce 4-week window was 2 weeks in the end, so not sure if there's much of a complaint there. Are we really expecting to just summon things at will now?
    - masklinn 6y ago
      > On one occasion I was given a complimentary hotspot+SIM to use while waiting for the installer to show up. That wasn't a good sign. Doesn't necessarily even work. My current flat is apparently rather well shielded, before I ordered a microcell I couldn't even send an SMS from inside the flat unless I stood in front of an open window. I get full signal on the balcony, barely any inside with the door closed. It was a painful few weeks before my wired 'net issues got resolved. Also funny bit: the flat L-shaped, the AP is at the end of long arm (because that's where the study is). I don't get any wifi when standing in the small arm either. Took me some time to realise why: the elevator is in the crook of the L, so blocks the signal.
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        Why can’t you put AP in the corner of the L?
        masklinn 6y ago
        It's possible but it means moving the cable modem & AP there, then adding cabling back to the study (or buying a CPL kit and hoping it works well enough). So far it's really not been worth even considering, the small branch is just the kitchen and I'm not much of a cook so my internets requirements over there are limited. I could also put some sort of wifi repeater there, seems simpler than moving the AP, but even that's not been much worth investigating for now.
- kleiba 6y ago
  It's even worse: when you cancel a contract, they can turn it off remotely, but when you get a new contract, a technician has to come out and turn it on.
- mihaaly 6y ago
  I had the same in Cambridge, UK. Probably not 3 weeks but at least 2. Ridiculous.
- Wingman4l7 6y ago
  Same in Perth, Australia, a major city -- and IIRC, Canberra too. This was 2013-ish. I was amazed, appalled, and confused -- a service visit was unnecessary. I think if you signed up for the massively overpriced privatized carrier Telstra, it was faster -- but any competitor ISP using their copper had that two-week setup delay.
  - koyote 6y ago
    For what it's worth, NBN Fttp (and maybe other connection types?) is same-day, usually within the hour. Launtel even have daily rates so you can quickly switch to them if you need a backup provider.
    - Wingman4l7 6y ago
      Sounds like with the implementation of the NBN, it's gotten better, thank God.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- monksy 6y ago
  If you already have the connect with the company, comcast can switch it in 20 minutes. (I did a direct move from one comcast to another comcast location)
- raverbashing 6y ago
  (a wired connection, just to clarify) Yes, it is ridiculous, and very common with Telekom (though there is a difference wrt. existing vs. new connection, that takes a couple of days usually everywhere) but of course the old tenant didn't have internet on the appt. Of course.
- mercora 6y ago
  to be fair i always got the exact date and somewhat accurate time for when the switch will be made. I think when switching providers this is mandatory by law to ensure of the continuation of services...
- FractalParadigm 6y ago
  Here in Canada, depending on your ISP (Rogers, in this instance), the activation is instant. In fact, they only give you a two-hour window to get home and plug your modem in, otherwise you have to call and have them re-send the activation ping.
- pahn 6y ago
  Internet in Germany is abysmal, and not only in the countryside. I live in Berlin, our capital. I can't work from my studio since internet is too slow there. I know whole companies having moved their offices to different districts because they did not get sufficient internet. At the place I am currently at, I have LTE and officially it's listed to be in the highest category in terms of speed: I have about 1 mbit/s download. Some base station seems to be broke, but that is the case for months, and I would not even know where to complain about this. I’m actually only writing this while waiting for my software to update, so I can finally start doing something. And again, this is central Berlin, not somewhere remote. For the "why?": in 2013 our chancellor Merkel said (on the NSA scandal) "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland." which translates to "The internet is unchartered territories for all of us." – in 2013! As far as I know, they only have Wifi in the Bundestag (the parliament) for like two or three years, and I would not be surprised, if most of our politicians still read their emails printed out on paper. Seriously, it is that bad. Germany is in the stone age in this regard.
  - BucketsMcG 6y ago
    It's bad, but it's not universally bad. I'm in Berlin and have 400MB/S at home But our apartment was built in 2011, so that might have something to do with it.
avalys 6y ago
If you rely solely on things you read online, you might think that the US cellular infrastructure is a backward, antiquated, uncompetitive, monopolistic disaster, and that the progressive and forward-thinking European societies have done far better. Yet the reality is, every time I go to Europe, I am struck by how irregular and slow cellular reception is, even in major cities (I’ve been in Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan, Zurich in the past year). And yet today in the United States, it’s basically a given that you will have a fast and reliable 4G connection available throughout the entire country, as long as you’re not in literal wilderness.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Funny thing then: I did a 1 hour video conference at pretty high resolution from roughly the Belarusian border a few weeks ago. It definitely qualified as 'the edge of nowhere' rather than the middle and it worked flawlessly. This was using a cellular hotspot so yet another hop. The counter party was in Amsterdam. In the major cities I've never had a single problem bandwidth wise either so I really don't know how you are set up for roaming but I'd be looking at my provider rather than at the infrastructure, which as far as I can see is pretty good.
- thefounder 6y ago
  >> I am struck by how irregular and slow cellular reception is, even in major cities Did you use a local SIM? Maybe is your network/roaming data plan. Some(most) networks throttle/restrict your bandwidth when in you are in roaming.
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    Formerly in telecom infrastructure; this is correct. Due to the way roaming works, pre-LTE you’d be routed back to your home country while roaming (still the same way on LTE depending on network config).
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > Maybe is your network/roaming data plan. Some(most) networks throttle/restrict your bandwidth when in you are in roaming. Could also be their phone, different regions use different LTE bands which often do not overlap at all, so if their phone is a US-only model it may only support US bands leading to dreadful connectivity even when the network itself is excellent. And even when there are overlapping bands, those may only be used by some operators, so depending who you're roaming with you might still be hosed.
pensatoio 6y ago
> “But even the coverage of the current 4G network still isn’t sufficient, especially in rural areas,” Ah yes, yet another wonderful example where 5G will excel.
mschuster91 6y ago
A huge part of the reason is that the providers had to pay well over 50 billion € for the frequency licensing. Back in the early 2000s finance minister Eichel wanted to achieve the "schwarze null" (positive budget), and in attempting so, this idiot fucked up digitalisation in Germany for decades, as the providers had to take out huge loans and had to re-pay them instead of being able to invest in building out the networks or offer affordable services! The problem is compounded by idiot NIMBYs believing that radiation is harmful and causes cancer - in many of the total blackout regions it is local citizen groups that vocally protest against phone providers putting up masts for years now (and there are no laws that give providers eminent domain rights or other enforcement tools), and the recent 5g conspiracy theories have made the situation even worse. Ironically the same people then complain why young people leave and no one new moves there. For the historical part, Heise has a decent chronology (that unfortunately lacks any mention of Eichel or political dumbness): https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/15-Jahre-UMTS-Auktion-Nach-dem-grossen-Kater-2778571.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/15-Jahre-UMTS-Auktio...
- tormeh 6y ago
  >the providers had to take out huge loans and had to re-pay them instead of being able to invest in building out the networks or offer affordable services! What's your alternative? Should the licenses have been given away to some blessed companies? I hardly think you can fault the regulator for holding a proper auction. The failing here was clearly on the companies' part as they overestimated the impact UMTS would have. That the companies then have the audacity to try to get the money back from the government is slightly shocking - "plz socialize these losses lol". The problem is clearly solvable. The government could just pay for the coverage to be built out (payment pending operational towers, obviously).
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Should the licenses have been given away to some blessed companies? Yes. Give them away for free, limited for a year and under condition of network buildout, and have interested companies submit business plans. The four with the best business plan win the frequencies. If they don't manage the required buildout, the license gets revoked.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tpmx 6y ago
Those stories about how Kohl messed up the "future of Internet in Germany forever" by going for his buddy's copper instead of fiber in the late 90s never made sense to me. How about just trying again instead of just giving up? a) Germany has a very high population density (232 people per km^2) b) Germany is kind of rich These two factors makes me think there is something else at play. (Germany would be able to afford doing it all over again, but right this time.) And then there is this - wow, lack of GSM coverage in such a densely populated country? In my experience this would would only be explained by systematic incompetence, systematic corruption or a combination of the two.
- ysleepy 6y ago
  It is a problem, but not in the extent this article or people make it out to be. There are 3 nation wide 4G networks, every home has old landlines. What is a true problem however is the political unwillingness to force cell providers to cover areas with very little population. It is not economically useful to invest in very rural areas, if you would have to invest 2x to go from 95% population coverage to 99% (numbers made up). The conservative party (CDU) is "business friendly" to the persistent detriment to quality of life of a majority of citizens in a lot of areas. T-Mobile was part of the Deutsche Post when it was still a government organization and it is still a big shareholder.
  - schmidp 6y ago
    If you travel through Germany it feels like huge problem to be honest. My girlfriend lives in northern Germany and going around in Germany by train is just a big waste of time, because most of the time you have 0 signal as soon as you are outside of a city. For example traveling by train from Vienna to Bremen takes around 8 hours, but I basically need to stop working as soon as I cross into Germany. 0 Signal. If you are in the Netherlands, Czech Republic or Austria and you cross into Germany it's like traveling back in time. Very often you are lucky to have some EDGE reception, while at the other side of the border you had high speed LTE.
    - universa1 6y ago
vanous 6y ago
What I do is that I turn on WiFi calling in my Android device. Works kind of OK for the most time. Another solution would be Fento Cells, which provide small BTS, getting the upstream connection via your internet. Yes, you pay for your phone and for your internet bills, but, in such places you are happy if this provides you with phone connection. I didn't find this mentioned in the article.
dustfinger 6y ago
The title, and some of the context of the article, made me think of the 0G Manifesto [1]. I realize that the article suggests that German citizens want reliable bandwidth, and are not necessarily thinking in terms of a 0G solution, despite the opening digression about radio enthusiasts. But wouldn't it be liberating to have a fully decentralized mobi-net, hosted by everyone, for everyone. [1]: https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/0G https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/0G
flas9sd 6y ago
Couldn't regulation make it possible for suffering communities to do their own equipment installation and then rent it out to a MVNO, is somebody privy to (european) details if anybody did it? Desperate communities are able to pull it off with their own fiber and then get an ISP on board, I wonder if something similar is possible beyond fiber/wifi. Germany is cataloging its "Funklöcher" at https://breitbandmessung.de/kartenansicht-funkloch https://breitbandmessung.de/kartenansicht-funkloch - if you zoom in they get apparent along roads and populated spots if no 2G is showing - the railway operator published its 2016 measurements along regional train tracks https://www.dbregio.de/db_regio/view/zukunft/wlan.shtml https://www.dbregio.de/db_regio/view/zukunft/wlan.shtml - on highspeed train tracks, coverage seems better. An aside: the article opener is placed 25 km north of where Tesla builds its Gigafactory. Harnekop was not merely an army base, but GDRs main nuclear bunker. 15 km south of the Factory at Königs-Wusterhausen, Germanys took its first steps in public radio broadcast more than 100 years ago with tall transmission towers. It boggles my mind - radio broadcasts being "only" 100 years old and nowadays "everything is amazing and nobody is happy".
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
This is rough, and honestly the only hope is probably something like starlink. They’re not going to invest in 5g in places where 3g isn’t even profitable. It’s a shame that there’s not “right to use” in the 900mhz or other cell frequencies if no spectrum usage exists in the area. It seems a few people could put together a small, internet-only cell provider.
rini17 6y ago
Few years ago I visited a friend living in outskirts of Frankfurt (the richest german city), quite effluent suburb still belonging to city proper. The cell signal was weak and calls dropped all the time, apparently related to overhead flights. Generally I've noticed problems and missing signal in trains outside cities, too.
- nicbou 6y ago
  There are dead spots even in Berlin proper. I had more reliable signal in developing countries than in Germany.
- traceroute66 6y ago
  @rini17, you might want to edit your post. An "effluent" suburb is perhaps not quite what you meant ! ;-)
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    I was wondering if it were perhaps a Kath & Kim (AU TV Show) reference. It's one of their more notable/famous scenes: Kim: I want to be effluent, mum, effluent! Kath: You are effluent, Kim! https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kath_%26_Kim https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kath_%26_Kim
  - rini17 6y ago
    LOL seems I can't edit it now. Meant affluent, of course.

76 points by jonbaer 6y ago

If you sign a new contract with an internet provider in Germany , you will have to wait up to three weeks until somebody comes and turns one switch and you have Internet. In South Korea they will connect you on the afternoon of the same day. Sources: I am German and my neighbours are Korean (not the best Korea kind of Koreans)

simonklitj 6y ago
Yessir, same thing in Denmark. Ordered Wi-Fi for my new apartment two weeks before I moved there, just so I knew it would be activated when I moved in. Ridiculous. I do think some of the new fiber companies are same-day, though.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  On one occasion I was given a complimentary hotspot+SIM to use while waiting for the installer to show up. That wasn't a good sign.
  - moepstar 6y ago
    Vodafone does this. They also explained to me i get to keep the Mifi+SIM, to use it in case the landline goes out (edit: never had to use it once in 3+ years). Not sure how this is not a good sign, i suppose they do that pretty regularly? Also, in my case the announce 4-week window was 2 weeks in the end, so not sure if there's much of a complaint there. Are we really expecting to just summon things at will now?
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > On one occasion I was given a complimentary hotspot+SIM to use while waiting for the installer to show up. That wasn't a good sign. Doesn't necessarily even work. My current flat is apparently rather well shielded, before I ordered a microcell I couldn't even send an SMS from inside the flat unless I stood in front of an open window. I get full signal on the balcony, barely any inside with the door closed. It was a painful few weeks before my wired 'net issues got resolved. Also funny bit: the flat L-shaped, the AP is at the end of long arm (because that's where the study is). I don't get any wifi when standing in the small arm either. Took me some time to realise why: the elevator is in the crook of the L, so blocks the signal.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      Why can’t you put AP in the corner of the L?
      - masklinn 6y ago
        It's possible but it means moving the cable modem & AP there, then adding cabling back to the study (or buying a CPL kit and hoping it works well enough). So far it's really not been worth even considering, the small branch is just the kitchen and I'm not much of a cook so my internets requirements over there are limited. I could also put some sort of wifi repeater there, seems simpler than moving the AP, but even that's not been much worth investigating for now.
kleiba 6y ago
It's even worse: when you cancel a contract, they can turn it off remotely, but when you get a new contract, a technician has to come out and turn it on.
mihaaly 6y ago
I had the same in Cambridge, UK. Probably not 3 weeks but at least 2. Ridiculous.
Wingman4l7 6y ago
Same in Perth, Australia, a major city -- and IIRC, Canberra too. This was 2013-ish. I was amazed, appalled, and confused -- a service visit was unnecessary. I think if you signed up for the massively overpriced privatized carrier Telstra, it was faster -- but any competitor ISP using their copper had that two-week setup delay.
- koyote 6y ago
  For what it's worth, NBN Fttp (and maybe other connection types?) is same-day, usually within the hour. Launtel even have daily rates so you can quickly switch to them if you need a backup provider.
  - Wingman4l7 6y ago
    Sounds like with the implementation of the NBN, it's gotten better, thank God.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monksy 6y ago
If you already have the connect with the company, comcast can switch it in 20 minutes. (I did a direct move from one comcast to another comcast location)
raverbashing 6y ago
(a wired connection, just to clarify) Yes, it is ridiculous, and very common with Telekom (though there is a difference wrt. existing vs. new connection, that takes a couple of days usually everywhere) but of course the old tenant didn't have internet on the appt. Of course.
mercora 6y ago
to be fair i always got the exact date and somewhat accurate time for when the switch will be made. I think when switching providers this is mandatory by law to ensure of the continuation of services...
FractalParadigm 6y ago
Here in Canada, depending on your ISP (Rogers, in this instance), the activation is instant. In fact, they only give you a two-hour window to get home and plug your modem in, otherwise you have to call and have them re-send the activation ping.
pahn 6y ago
Internet in Germany is abysmal, and not only in the countryside. I live in Berlin, our capital. I can't work from my studio since internet is too slow there. I know whole companies having moved their offices to different districts because they did not get sufficient internet. At the place I am currently at, I have LTE and officially it's listed to be in the highest category in terms of speed: I have about 1 mbit/s download. Some base station seems to be broke, but that is the case for months, and I would not even know where to complain about this. I’m actually only writing this while waiting for my software to update, so I can finally start doing something. And again, this is central Berlin, not somewhere remote. For the "why?": in 2013 our chancellor Merkel said (on the NSA scandal) "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland." which translates to "The internet is unchartered territories for all of us." – in 2013! As far as I know, they only have Wifi in the Bundestag (the parliament) for like two or three years, and I would not be surprised, if most of our politicians still read their emails printed out on paper. Seriously, it is that bad. Germany is in the stone age in this regard.
- BucketsMcG 6y ago
  It's bad, but it's not universally bad. I'm in Berlin and have 400MB/S at home But our apartment was built in 2011, so that might have something to do with it.

avalys 6y ago

If you rely solely on things you read online, you might think that the US cellular infrastructure is a backward, antiquated, uncompetitive, monopolistic disaster, and that the progressive and forward-thinking European societies have done far better. Yet the reality is, every time I go to Europe, I am struck by how irregular and slow cellular reception is, even in major cities (I’ve been in Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan, Zurich in the past year). And yet today in the United States, it’s basically a given that you will have a fast and reliable 4G connection available throughout the entire country, as long as you’re not in literal wilderness.

jacquesm 6y ago
Funny thing then: I did a 1 hour video conference at pretty high resolution from roughly the Belarusian border a few weeks ago. It definitely qualified as 'the edge of nowhere' rather than the middle and it worked flawlessly. This was using a cellular hotspot so yet another hop. The counter party was in Amsterdam. In the major cities I've never had a single problem bandwidth wise either so I really don't know how you are set up for roaming but I'd be looking at my provider rather than at the infrastructure, which as far as I can see is pretty good.
thefounder 6y ago
>> I am struck by how irregular and slow cellular reception is, even in major cities Did you use a local SIM? Maybe is your network/roaming data plan. Some(most) networks throttle/restrict your bandwidth when in you are in roaming.
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  Formerly in telecom infrastructure; this is correct. Due to the way roaming works, pre-LTE you’d be routed back to your home country while roaming (still the same way on LTE depending on network config).
- masklinn 6y ago
  > Maybe is your network/roaming data plan. Some(most) networks throttle/restrict your bandwidth when in you are in roaming. Could also be their phone, different regions use different LTE bands which often do not overlap at all, so if their phone is a US-only model it may only support US bands leading to dreadful connectivity even when the network itself is excellent. And even when there are overlapping bands, those may only be used by some operators, so depending who you're roaming with you might still be hosed.

pensatoio 6y ago

> “But even the coverage of the current 4G network still isn’t sufficient, especially in rural areas,” Ah yes, yet another wonderful example where 5G will excel.

mschuster91 6y ago

A huge part of the reason is that the providers had to pay well over 50 billion € for the frequency licensing. Back in the early 2000s finance minister Eichel wanted to achieve the "schwarze null" (positive budget), and in attempting so, this idiot fucked up digitalisation in Germany for decades, as the providers had to take out huge loans and had to re-pay them instead of being able to invest in building out the networks or offer affordable services! The problem is compounded by idiot NIMBYs believing that radiation is harmful and causes cancer - in many of the total blackout regions it is local citizen groups that vocally protest against phone providers putting up masts for years now (and there are no laws that give providers eminent domain rights or other enforcement tools), and the recent 5g conspiracy theories have made the situation even worse. Ironically the same people then complain why young people leave and no one new moves there. For the historical part, Heise has a decent chronology (that unfortunately lacks any mention of Eichel or political dumbness): https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/15-Jahre-UMTS-Auktion-Nach-dem-grossen-Kater-2778571.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/15-Jahre-UMTS-Auktio...

tormeh 6y ago
>the providers had to take out huge loans and had to re-pay them instead of being able to invest in building out the networks or offer affordable services! What's your alternative? Should the licenses have been given away to some blessed companies? I hardly think you can fault the regulator for holding a proper auction. The failing here was clearly on the companies' part as they overestimated the impact UMTS would have. That the companies then have the audacity to try to get the money back from the government is slightly shocking - "plz socialize these losses lol". The problem is clearly solvable. The government could just pay for the coverage to be built out (payment pending operational towers, obviously).
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Should the licenses have been given away to some blessed companies? Yes. Give them away for free, limited for a year and under condition of network buildout, and have interested companies submit business plans. The four with the best business plan win the frequencies. If they don't manage the required buildout, the license gets revoked.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tpmx 6y ago

Those stories about how Kohl messed up the "future of Internet in Germany forever" by going for his buddy's copper instead of fiber in the late 90s never made sense to me. How about just trying again instead of just giving up? a) Germany has a very high population density (232 people per km^2) b) Germany is kind of rich These two factors makes me think there is something else at play. (Germany would be able to afford doing it all over again, but right this time.) And then there is this - wow, lack of GSM coverage in such a densely populated country? In my experience this would would only be explained by systematic incompetence, systematic corruption or a combination of the two.

ysleepy 6y ago
It is a problem, but not in the extent this article or people make it out to be. There are 3 nation wide 4G networks, every home has old landlines. What is a true problem however is the political unwillingness to force cell providers to cover areas with very little population. It is not economically useful to invest in very rural areas, if you would have to invest 2x to go from 95% population coverage to 99% (numbers made up). The conservative party (CDU) is "business friendly" to the persistent detriment to quality of life of a majority of citizens in a lot of areas. T-Mobile was part of the Deutsche Post when it was still a government organization and it is still a big shareholder.
- schmidp 6y ago
  If you travel through Germany it feels like huge problem to be honest. My girlfriend lives in northern Germany and going around in Germany by train is just a big waste of time, because most of the time you have 0 signal as soon as you are outside of a city. For example traveling by train from Vienna to Bremen takes around 8 hours, but I basically need to stop working as soon as I cross into Germany. 0 Signal. If you are in the Netherlands, Czech Republic or Austria and you cross into Germany it's like traveling back in time. Very often you are lucky to have some EDGE reception, while at the other side of the border you had high speed LTE.
  - universa1 6y ago

vanous 6y ago

What I do is that I turn on WiFi calling in my Android device. Works kind of OK for the most time. Another solution would be Fento Cells, which provide small BTS, getting the upstream connection via your internet. Yes, you pay for your phone and for your internet bills, but, in such places you are happy if this provides you with phone connection. I didn't find this mentioned in the article.

dustfinger 6y ago

The title, and some of the context of the article, made me think of the 0G Manifesto [1]. I realize that the article suggests that German citizens want reliable bandwidth, and are not necessarily thinking in terms of a 0G solution, despite the opening digression about radio enthusiasts. But wouldn't it be liberating to have a fully decentralized mobi-net, hosted by everyone, for everyone. [1]: https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/0G https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/0G

flas9sd 6y ago

Couldn't regulation make it possible for suffering communities to do their own equipment installation and then rent it out to a MVNO, is somebody privy to (european) details if anybody did it? Desperate communities are able to pull it off with their own fiber and then get an ISP on board, I wonder if something similar is possible beyond fiber/wifi. Germany is cataloging its "Funklöcher" at https://breitbandmessung.de/kartenansicht-funkloch https://breitbandmessung.de/kartenansicht-funkloch - if you zoom in they get apparent along roads and populated spots if no 2G is showing - the railway operator published its 2016 measurements along regional train tracks https://www.dbregio.de/db_regio/view/zukunft/wlan.shtml https://www.dbregio.de/db_regio/view/zukunft/wlan.shtml - on highspeed train tracks, coverage seems better. An aside: the article opener is placed 25 km north of where Tesla builds its Gigafactory. Harnekop was not merely an army base, but GDRs main nuclear bunker. 15 km south of the Factory at Königs-Wusterhausen, Germanys took its first steps in public radio broadcast more than 100 years ago with tall transmission towers. It boggles my mind - radio broadcasts being "only" 100 years old and nowadays "everything is amazing and nobody is happy".

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

This is rough, and honestly the only hope is probably something like starlink. They’re not going to invest in 5g in places where 3g isn’t even profitable. It’s a shame that there’s not “right to use” in the 900mhz or other cell frequencies if no spectrum usage exists in the area. It seems a few people could put together a small, internet-only cell provider.

rini17 6y ago

Few years ago I visited a friend living in outskirts of Frankfurt (the richest german city), quite effluent suburb still belonging to city proper. The cell signal was weak and calls dropped all the time, apparently related to overhead flights. Generally I've noticed problems and missing signal in trains outside cities, too.

nicbou 6y ago
There are dead spots even in Berlin proper. I had more reliable signal in developing countries than in Germany.
traceroute66 6y ago
@rini17, you might want to edit your post. An "effluent" suburb is perhaps not quite what you meant ! ;-)
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  I was wondering if it were perhaps a Kath & Kim (AU TV Show) reference. It's one of their more notable/famous scenes: Kim: I want to be effluent, mum, effluent! Kath: You are effluent, Kim! https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kath_%26_Kim https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kath_%26_Kim
- rini17 6y ago
  LOL seems I can't edit it now. Meant affluent, of course.