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They've been lying and ripping off customers while obstructing the German internet infrastructure for profit since they've been privatized. It's a very popular

by meibo 4y ago

They've been lying and ripping off customers while obstructing the German internet infrastructure for profit since they've been privatized. It's a very popular business model here, see DB.

Semaphor 4y ago
> It's a very popular business model here, see DB. DB is a bad example, fake-privatized and controlled by the government. It gets you the worst of both worlds.
eliaspro 4y ago
Their lobbying and squeezing every single cent they could get out of legacy copper infrastructure which was too be replaced in the early eighties until today held back Germany's internet infrastructure and competition for decades.
- kuschku 4y ago
  DTAG and the Kohl government set our country's infrastructure back decades.
blueflow 4y ago
Don't forget the DTAG peering controversy. I once worked for them, imagine my face when i had to call the internal IT to reset a password and ended up in a Callcenter in Bulgaria.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
croes 4y ago
DB isn't a private company
- blueflow 4y ago
  GP did say that it got privatized, not that its a private company. Privatization has a range of meanings, which also include things that do not end up in a privately-owned company.
- josefx 4y ago
  It is run as a private company despite being state owned. Some EU regulations require that all European train networks compete like commercial entities which ads limitations to financing the DB and creates a lot of bad incentives. Like letting infrastructure rot, because complete renewals and replacements are paid by the government while upkeep isn't.
microtonal 4y ago
Internet infrastructure is pretty dysfunctional in Germany. I lived in Germany for five years and the only alternative for Telekom’s mediocre VDSL infrastructure was UnityMedia’s almost equally bad connectivity. UnityMedia rarely delivered the promised bandwidth and would regularly have connectivity issues for hours. (And don’t get me started in DS-Lite.) I was recently discussing the mediocre German internet infrastructure with a colleague and suggested that they’d probably be better off with 5G, only to find out that ‘unlimited’ 5G in Germany has insane prices (3-4 times that of neighboring countries)
- Mo3 4y ago
  This is true. I am from Germany, you are spot on in your observations. I live in the Netherlands now and the difference is mind-boggling. I have 1Gbit/s fiber (that actually delivers 1Gbit/s) and truly unlimited 5G (that is actually available in every corner of the country) for a combined 50 bucks or so.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    Similar here in France, for around 50€/month i get 2Gbps down/~1Gbps up fiber, and 200GB of 5G (after that it downgrades to 4G which is unlimited). Plus TV and cheaper Netflix, one year of Disney+ free.
- atwood22 4y ago
  Don't forget the multi-month lead times to even get connected to the internet. I lived without the internet for 3 months when I first moved to Germany. I read over 30 books that year.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    3 months certainly happens, and there are horror stories of it taking much longer, but the last two times I moved it was closer to one month. And by now some providers give you a free 4G connection to your WIFI router until you get connected, so at least they realized it's an issue worth competing over.
- 4y ago

by meibo 4y ago

They've been lying and ripping off customers while obstructing the German internet infrastructure for profit since they've been privatized. It's a very popular business model here, see DB.

Semaphor 4y ago

> It's a very popular business model here, see DB. DB is a bad example, fake-privatized and controlled by the government. It gets you the worst of both worlds.

eliaspro 4y ago

Their lobbying and squeezing every single cent they could get out of legacy copper infrastructure which was too be replaced in the early eighties until today held back Germany's internet infrastructure and competition for decades.

kuschku 4y ago
DTAG and the Kohl government set our country's infrastructure back decades.

blueflow 4y ago

Don't forget the DTAG peering controversy. I once worked for them, imagine my face when i had to call the internal IT to reset a password and ended up in a Callcenter in Bulgaria.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

croes 4y ago

DB isn't a private company

blueflow 4y ago
GP did say that it got privatized, not that its a private company. Privatization has a range of meanings, which also include things that do not end up in a privately-owned company.
josefx 4y ago
It is run as a private company despite being state owned. Some EU regulations require that all European train networks compete like commercial entities which ads limitations to financing the DB and creates a lot of bad incentives. Like letting infrastructure rot, because complete renewals and replacements are paid by the government while upkeep isn't.

microtonal 4y ago

Internet infrastructure is pretty dysfunctional in Germany. I lived in Germany for five years and the only alternative for Telekom’s mediocre VDSL infrastructure was UnityMedia’s almost equally bad connectivity. UnityMedia rarely delivered the promised bandwidth and would regularly have connectivity issues for hours. (And don’t get me started in DS-Lite.) I was recently discussing the mediocre German internet infrastructure with a colleague and suggested that they’d probably be better off with 5G, only to find out that ‘unlimited’ 5G in Germany has insane prices (3-4 times that of neighboring countries)

Mo3 4y ago
This is true. I am from Germany, you are spot on in your observations. I live in the Netherlands now and the difference is mind-boggling. I have 1Gbit/s fiber (that actually delivers 1Gbit/s) and truly unlimited 5G (that is actually available in every corner of the country) for a combined 50 bucks or so.
- sofixa 4y ago
  Similar here in France, for around 50€/month i get 2Gbps down/~1Gbps up fiber, and 200GB of 5G (after that it downgrades to 4G which is unlimited). Plus TV and cheaper Netflix, one year of Disney+ free.
atwood22 4y ago
Don't forget the multi-month lead times to even get connected to the internet. I lived without the internet for 3 months when I first moved to Germany. I read over 30 books that year.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  3 months certainly happens, and there are horror stories of it taking much longer, but the last two times I moved it was closer to one month. And by now some providers give you a free 4G connection to your WIFI router until you get connected, so at least they realized it's an issue worth competing over.
4y ago