The largest European economy has serious coverage issues, and not just in isolated areas but also in large cities such as Berlin and Munich. A study found that mobile networks run at speeds slower than in Albania
  • brot@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    Nobody is “putting up with snail-speed internet” here. The problem is that there really is nothing for me to do to get fiber or higher mobile speeds. I can even see a mobile tower from here and it still is slow.

  • gorillaNdaMist@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    because the old Kanzler Kohl, decades ago, chose copper instead of fiber optic. I believe his family member was in the copper business…

    • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      12 days ago

      It wasn’t a family member of his, but a family member of his post minister, a Mr Schwarz-Schilling, who was in the copper cable business. Kohl and his entire government are synonymous with incredible levels of corruption and nepotism. Kohl made corruption a kind of national sport for German politicians. Our upcoming Chancellor, Friedrich Merz is of his ilk.

      This is how West Germany chose copper, when even the by then almost bankrupt (and ruled by even more senile backwards looking geezers) GDR was already starting to lay down fiber optic.

      • lord_alois@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        12 days ago

        I think the spread of cable television also played a big role in this. It seems that the public broadcasters were too left-wing for Kohl. It was hoped that the private channels would provide more sympathetic coverage or at least a better distraction.

    • AlexisFR@jlai.luEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      What are you talking about? The whole of Europe was doing ADSL by then in 2000-2010. Fiber didn’t start being a common thing until 2015 at the earliest.

  • Dr. Unabart@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    12 days ago

    Because Germans are allergic to change and are conditioned to believe that suffering is a lifestyle. Source: moved to Germany 7 years ago.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    1·
    13 days ago

    In terms of mobile internet, Germany barely reaches 68.91 Mbps

    The snails in Germany must be somewhat faster than the ones around here.

  • Melchior@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    The problem really boils down to a combination of NIMBYism and even more importantly lobbying. Telecom lobbied the German government to allow them to not upgrade to copper cables and upgrade those with better backend infrastructure as well. However that is always going to be worse then proper fiber.

    For mobile in most countries the government issues licenses with built in fines, if certain coverage quality is not reached. Germany did not do this and the conservative government even repeated that mistake with 5G. The issue is that there are only three network providers and obviously upgrades cost money, which means less profits.