6 ms·

Has Mr Doctorow ever visited the DACH region?

intellirogue 6y ago
I'm living in Germany, and coming from NZ (where we have fairly universal 1Gbps FTTH) it has certainly been a big step down, but it can't compare to some of the insanity that my US friends deal with.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  I live in central Berlin, and it is is downright embarrassing, internet access in Germany is terrible. 10 years ago I had 1Gbps fiber in Sweden. For reference I have 400/20 Cable, for 44Eur/m. No caps. Provider Pyur. Overall medium terrible experience.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    200/5 runs $80/month here (upstate NY, USA), and I’m in a “good” broadband spot for my area.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Jan Böhmermann (Germany's John Oliver) did an investigation on his show[1] into Germany's terrible internet infrastructure and proved it's basically down to corruption from Kohl's regime that scrapped the fiber plans for copper in order to enrich a certain friendly company with political ties that was big in the copper business back then. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc
    - ng55QPSK 6y ago
      And for 40 years they could not change? Fiber is comming close and close to homes every year as it's needed for FTTC (and doing vectoring on DSL for the last 400m) and for DOCSIS on coaxial cables.
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        >And for 40 years they could not change? Of course they 'could', but that would mean for corruption to have gone down and political competence to have gone up in those 40 years but unfortunately it hasn't, quite the opposite. In Germany, high level corruption and political incompetence has only increased in that time (see BER airport, VW emissions scandal, and the handling of COVID). Basically if you're well connected and rich, you're untouchable in Germany and your corruption mishaps will be swept under the rug as casual political 'whoopsies' right after you retire to a gold plated pension.
        CaptainZapp 6y ago
        Well, quite a number of politicians got shitcanned after it turned that their dissertations were plagiarized. So it's not that you're completely untouchable. Even with friends in high places.
      - tchocky 6y ago
        Germany privatised telecommunication in the 90s (was done by German Post before) including all the infrastructure (which was a really bad idea in hindsight). Most of the infrastructure is in the hand of the former state business and they want to squeeze the last Euro out of the copper wiring instead of investing in proper fiber infrastructure. Vectoring is just one more tool to squeeze the last bit out of old copper wires that have been in the ground for over 70 years. Also vectoring only works with one provider per node, and the German state gives most of the privilege to the Telekom. It was written in some comments before, but Germany could have had the most modern fiber infrastructure in the world when the plans of former chancellor Helmut Schmitt wouldn't have been stopped by the Helmut Kohl government who was good friends with Leo Kirch, who was a big player in the German TV market and would rather benefit from copper wiring than fiber.
  - intellirogue 6y ago
    Also in central Berlin with the same speed connection. But my friends in the US, both in major metropolitan areas, can only dream of such a connection. One has no option but ADSL which reaches 8Mbps on a good day, the other is luckier and has Cable but only 100Mbps.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      > only 100Mbps What use would you have for throughput in excess of 100Mbps?
      - CaptainZapp 6y ago
        It's nice when you want to download RDR2 on Steam.
        MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        Sure, but how many times a year does something like that crop up? Personally I don't mind leaving a vast download like that to run overnight. On a related note, software updates run in the background, so whether it takes a minute or an hour makes little difference. Same for automated backup. I very rarely have use for capacity beyond 40Mbps, or perhaps even 25. 4K streaming is as demanding as it gets. If 40Mbps is appreciably cheaper than 100, I'll take 40. If your Internet connection can't handle video chat and streaming, then you're right to say you don't have a decent modern Internet connection, and it's holding back what you can do. Capacity beyond 40Mbps, though, is rarely of any real consequence. (I mean this in the particular context of home broadband, of course.)
        CaptainZapp 6y ago
        Sure, it's rare enough that you download to such excess. But the thing is that thanks to fiber there's hardly any difference price wise. So why not use it, when it's on offer? Before that I had 100Mb up and down and was pretty happy with it. Large games could be a bit of a drag. Especially when GTA5 became available and I wanted to play it right now!
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    > For reference I have 400/20 Cable, for 44Eur/m That's not too bad, is it? Sweden has had world-leading broadband for a decade, and your upload could be higher, but "downright embarrassing" is people stuck on a 24Mbit ADSL connection. (I have 300/30 Mbit/s cable for 340DKK = 45€. I could upgrade to 1000/500 Mbit/s fibre for ... actually only 320DKK, but I haven't bothered.)
bauerd 6y ago
I live in a German state capital, one stop away from central station. Best I can get is 50 Mbit/s.
- piva00 6y ago
  German internet infrastructure drives me crazy when I visit. I live in Sweden and broadband here is really good, both mobile and land-based ones, whenever I go to a major German city (München, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg) I suffer with 4G, I suffer with my friends' or offices' internet connection. It's not even the slowness that bothers me more, it's the spottiness: 4G signals dropping to 3G and depending on the area even to 2G (haven't seen this happen the last time I visited in 2019 but definitely saw it before). Home broadband have issues that the operator can't solve quickly (once working from home at a friend's place we got the house apartment internet cut off for a couple of days), Telekom sucks, their customer support sucks, sending a technician can take a month or more sometimes. It feels so damn backwards, even more for the largest economy in the EU, not investing in digitalisation (both infrastructure and public services) is gonna bite Germany's ass for the next decade. Can't believe most bureaucracy is still done through paper-based mail, or faxes.
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    The Big T in Germany has strong ties in the government, both regional and central. They don't have to innovate when they can just block others via lobbying. Ex Telekom worker here.
    - jmkerr 6y ago
      This is not surprising for a ex-government agency that is still substantially government owned. Somewhat anti-competitive, expensive, and they clearly have no sense of urgency with regard to fibre. But more than half their revenue is now from the US Market, which they didn't enter in such a privileged position. Anyway, 100% of Germany to be covered with FTTH by 2030 :) https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d270efe15221665a71/dl-21022-q4-presentation-data.pdf https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d...
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Only internet in the DA area sucks, CH has pretty good, if expensive, internet in the cities.
masklinn 6y ago
A friend just moved to Switzerland, laid down a full fiber lan because that’s what they’re getting as broadband. Salt offers 10Gb symmetrical for 50 CHF.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  cries softly
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    tears buffering...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CaptainZapp 6y ago
I have 10GB up and down. The whole city of Zurich is fibered (mostly built by the public power utility) and you're free to chose between a variety of suppliers.
- justinclift 6y ago
  Interesting. Sounds like people there could setup a bunch of racks in a spare room and provide co-location services to their friends?
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    Maybe to clarify: Not every home is necessarily attached to fiber. That's still up to the landlord / renter. Swisscom had a really sweet deal a few years ago (when only parts of the city had fiber), where they paid for the home installation as long as you signed up for 12 month or longer. Bin there ever since (not always with that speed, initially it was something like 100 up and down. GB fiber was still pretty expensive) and never regretted it.

I'm living in Germany, and coming from NZ (where we have fairly universal 1Gbps FTTH) it has certainly been a big step down, but it can't compare to some of the insanity that my US friends deal with.

robert_foss 6y ago
I live in central Berlin, and it is is downright embarrassing, internet access in Germany is terrible. 10 years ago I had 1Gbps fiber in Sweden. For reference I have 400/20 Cable, for 44Eur/m. No caps. Provider Pyur. Overall medium terrible experience.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  200/5 runs $80/month here (upstate NY, USA), and I’m in a “good” broadband spot for my area.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Jan Böhmermann (Germany's John Oliver) did an investigation on his show[1] into Germany's terrible internet infrastructure and proved it's basically down to corruption from Kohl's regime that scrapped the fiber plans for copper in order to enrich a certain friendly company with political ties that was big in the copper business back then. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc
  - ng55QPSK 6y ago
    And for 40 years they could not change? Fiber is comming close and close to homes every year as it's needed for FTTC (and doing vectoring on DSL for the last 400m) and for DOCSIS on coaxial cables.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      >And for 40 years they could not change? Of course they 'could', but that would mean for corruption to have gone down and political competence to have gone up in those 40 years but unfortunately it hasn't, quite the opposite. In Germany, high level corruption and political incompetence has only increased in that time (see BER airport, VW emissions scandal, and the handling of COVID). Basically if you're well connected and rich, you're untouchable in Germany and your corruption mishaps will be swept under the rug as casual political 'whoopsies' right after you retire to a gold plated pension.
      - CaptainZapp 6y ago
        Well, quite a number of politicians got shitcanned after it turned that their dissertations were plagiarized. So it's not that you're completely untouchable. Even with friends in high places.
    - tchocky 6y ago
      Germany privatised telecommunication in the 90s (was done by German Post before) including all the infrastructure (which was a really bad idea in hindsight). Most of the infrastructure is in the hand of the former state business and they want to squeeze the last Euro out of the copper wiring instead of investing in proper fiber infrastructure. Vectoring is just one more tool to squeeze the last bit out of old copper wires that have been in the ground for over 70 years. Also vectoring only works with one provider per node, and the German state gives most of the privilege to the Telekom. It was written in some comments before, but Germany could have had the most modern fiber infrastructure in the world when the plans of former chancellor Helmut Schmitt wouldn't have been stopped by the Helmut Kohl government who was good friends with Leo Kirch, who was a big player in the German TV market and would rather benefit from copper wiring than fiber.
- intellirogue 6y ago
  Also in central Berlin with the same speed connection. But my friends in the US, both in major metropolitan areas, can only dream of such a connection. One has no option but ADSL which reaches 8Mbps on a good day, the other is luckier and has Cable but only 100Mbps.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > only 100Mbps What use would you have for throughput in excess of 100Mbps?
    - CaptainZapp 6y ago
      It's nice when you want to download RDR2 on Steam.
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        Sure, but how many times a year does something like that crop up? Personally I don't mind leaving a vast download like that to run overnight. On a related note, software updates run in the background, so whether it takes a minute or an hour makes little difference. Same for automated backup. I very rarely have use for capacity beyond 40Mbps, or perhaps even 25. 4K streaming is as demanding as it gets. If 40Mbps is appreciably cheaper than 100, I'll take 40. If your Internet connection can't handle video chat and streaming, then you're right to say you don't have a decent modern Internet connection, and it's holding back what you can do. Capacity beyond 40Mbps, though, is rarely of any real consequence. (I mean this in the particular context of home broadband, of course.)
        CaptainZapp 6y ago
        Sure, it's rare enough that you download to such excess. But the thing is that thanks to fiber there's hardly any difference price wise. So why not use it, when it's on offer? Before that I had 100Mb up and down and was pretty happy with it. Large games could be a bit of a drag. Especially when GTA5 became available and I wanted to play it right now!
- Symbiote 6y ago
  > For reference I have 400/20 Cable, for 44Eur/m That's not too bad, is it? Sweden has had world-leading broadband for a decade, and your upload could be higher, but "downright embarrassing" is people stuck on a 24Mbit ADSL connection. (I have 300/30 Mbit/s cable for 340DKK = 45€. I could upgrade to 1000/500 Mbit/s fibre for ... actually only 320DKK, but I haven't bothered.)

bauerd 6y ago

I live in a German state capital, one stop away from central station. Best I can get is 50 Mbit/s.

piva00 6y ago
German internet infrastructure drives me crazy when I visit. I live in Sweden and broadband here is really good, both mobile and land-based ones, whenever I go to a major German city (München, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg) I suffer with 4G, I suffer with my friends' or offices' internet connection. It's not even the slowness that bothers me more, it's the spottiness: 4G signals dropping to 3G and depending on the area even to 2G (haven't seen this happen the last time I visited in 2019 but definitely saw it before). Home broadband have issues that the operator can't solve quickly (once working from home at a friend's place we got the house apartment internet cut off for a couple of days), Telekom sucks, their customer support sucks, sending a technician can take a month or more sometimes. It feels so damn backwards, even more for the largest economy in the EU, not investing in digitalisation (both infrastructure and public services) is gonna bite Germany's ass for the next decade. Can't believe most bureaucracy is still done through paper-based mail, or faxes.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  The Big T in Germany has strong ties in the government, both regional and central. They don't have to innovate when they can just block others via lobbying. Ex Telekom worker here.
  - jmkerr 6y ago
    This is not surprising for a ex-government agency that is still substantially government owned. Somewhat anti-competitive, expensive, and they clearly have no sense of urgency with regard to fibre. But more than half their revenue is now from the US Market, which they didn't enter in such a privileged position. Anyway, 100% of Germany to be covered with FTTH by 2030 :) https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d270efe15221665a71/dl-21022-q4-presentation-data.pdf https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/619512/394bebe64a0f87d...

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

Only internet in the DA area sucks, CH has pretty good, if expensive, internet in the cities.

masklinn 6y ago

A friend just moved to Switzerland, laid down a full fiber lan because that’s what they’re getting as broadband. Salt offers 10Gb symmetrical for 50 CHF.

robert_foss 6y ago
cries softly
- StavrosK 6y ago
  tears buffering...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

CaptainZapp 6y ago

I have 10GB up and down. The whole city of Zurich is fibered (mostly built by the public power utility) and you're free to chose between a variety of suppliers.

justinclift 6y ago
Interesting. Sounds like people there could setup a bunch of racks in a spare room and provide co-location services to their friends?
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  Maybe to clarify: Not every home is necessarily attached to fiber. That's still up to the landlord / renter. Swisscom had a really sweet deal a few years ago (when only parts of the city had fiber), where they paid for the home installation as long as you signed up for 12 month or longer. Bin there ever since (not always with that speed, initially it was something like 100 up and down. GB fiber was still pretty expensive) and never regretted it.