Why internet connections in Germany are so bad | DW Analysis
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2021
- For years, Europe’s largest economy has failed to roll out good internet connections across the country, and that’s increasingly becoming a problem. By telling the story of one small village in central Germany and how it’s been fighting for better internet for years, we explain everything that’s wrong with Germany’s internet rollout.
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#Germany #Internet #Broadband
watching this on 240p in a village near Dresden. East Germany.
I come from 3 MBit/s just under 7 years ago (then it still was
Wow, I'm from the Philippines and I'm at least watching this in 480p on my phone... I'm also currently watching a movie on my computer in 720p and it's working fine.
Whole of India is connected with 1Gbps fiber optic and I thought it was slow... lol. Not anymore after watching this.
@@tapashaviator 1 Gigabit/s (=125 MB/s) in most of India? I think you are conflating units here, my dude if anything 1 MB/s or even just Mbit/s (too weak for streaming YT in 480p) is more on the money. Germany's average broadband speed is easily 3x that of India and their mobile networks are on high load due to being so cheap as a fixed-line alternative and on to go.
If you wrote 'Romania' instead you'd be correct though which just shows how far behind Germany is when a country with less proper highway than Germany's longest, but comparable size has so much faster internet.
@@tapashaviator not the whole india. Still many villages lack broadband internet
The telecom business in Germany was never a free market, if anything, it is an oligopoly.
Like far too many things in Germany: they are not competitive and bound up in meaningless 'costs'. It is essentially a joke.
Deuche Bang and Deuche Telecon . 😂 Lol
Free market is a joke, just socialize fibre.
Same in US.
@@MoPoppins No. USA has WAY more options than Germany, and even in some rural areas you have 4g, so no.
Yes!! I've been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and even parts of Africa and the internet is far better at those places than Germany!!!! It's a disgrace especially for the price you pay here.
What is the price? (asking as an American where rural areas and small towns have the same problem with the lack of high speed affordable internet.)
@@sjbock I'm an American as well living near Kaiserslautern. I pay roughly $65/month. When we get bad weather the internet goes off and on all day.
In Berlin it's around 30€ (35$ ?) a month for 50 Mbit... But i also remember back in 2010, that i only had 2 Mbit in Stade (50.000 inhabitants, close to Hamburg)
@@The1KovacsAttila1 In India for 11USD in cities you can get 100 Mbit connection, I don't know the situation for rural areas as I have never been there.
I wanted to know where you stay if someone wanted to get like only 10 or 25 Mbit connection could they get it? Would it be any cheaper?
Here in southern Bavaria, my family pays ~€50 for a 400 mbit connection, and we actually reach those speeds most of the time.
Germany lacks a lot in IT in general. When I moved there from São Paulo I found the banking systems, webpages, customer service and governmental forms a bit old fashioned and inefficient. Also, to think that even in Brazil I had better 3G connection on my phone blew my mind. Germany is way better in everything else though.
But to be fair 3G is very old and will soon be deactivated. If you dont have 4G or 5G in Germany you have a big problem
And while it's supposedly so bad, still Dubai uses the server in Frankfurt, Germany.
The signal reception has just been programmed/set differently on each side of the road. Divide, conquer and rule.
@@maxz9787 Brazilians conflate 3g with mobile data. He just meant that the mobile internet in Brazil are better than in Germany.
@@iurysza man I doubt it, you cant really compare west with east Germany. Here in bavaria it is fine, just expensive. Also how good is the internet in rural brazil. DW has the ability to take small problems in like very small parts of Germany( especially in the east) and make it look like there is a problem everywhere. It is like saying the favelas in brazil arent connected with optic glass fibre cable thats why there is everywhere bad internet. I lived in 4 different locations the past years and I always had a minimum internetspeed of 200mbits thats more then enough and for more I dont want to pay
problem is that there are not only slow. the connection gets often lost. a couple times a day you have no internet for minutes. sometimes the failure goes on for half an hour. you cant even quit your contract with then. they make sure of that in the AGB aggrement. thats internet terrorism what O2, Vodafone, telekom are doing.
Every Dutch person knows that when you take the train from Amsterdam to Berlin, you better make sure you download everything you need before you cross the border. You've got 4G (and, increasingly, 5G) reception in the Netherlands but it quickly becomes unstable once you're in Germany. For whole swaths of the journey, you have no cell reception whatsoever.
Luckily hardly anyone takes the train from Amsterdam to Berlin. It’s a terrible slow journey. Amsterdam-Berlin is a Low Speed Train. You can fly to Berlin and back to Amsterdam, before you reach Berlin by train. Not one time, but two times a return journey by plane is faster. And then you still have an hour to spare for your transfer from the airport to the city center, to equal the train journey, one way.
Yup ….100% right
@@RealConstructor 8 hours... Not that terrible for a intercity.
@@RealConstructor Well you don't need to take trains from Amsterdam to Berlin, you basically just need to take trains here ... better don't count on talking with you cellphone uninterrupted.
Its mind boggling how ppl still vote for CDU/CSU and im pretty sure SPD would just also continue this route.
@@RealConstructor It still doesn't change the primitive internet service in most of Germany.
It is all the same here in Germany: worshipping the Diesel engine, preserving coal plants, preventing home office, and pressing the last MBit out of copper cables. An enormously conservative attitude is gambling away our future.
I’m still surprised electric cars aren’t big in German off all countries.
@@Ajibolaa Nope, wrong way of thinking… Germany is the home of the Otto motor and Diesel engine. We didn't really invent anything major when it comes the EV, the Chinese are way ahead of us there even though their gas powered cars suck for the most part.
Germany has many jobs in engineering conventional engines, but electric engines are much simpler to design and thus other jobs are needed where Germany has little to no educated employees. The scene of conventional car enthusiasts is also quite strong, though EV's are slowly gaining market share and conventional cars are to be discontinued… but in 12 years at the earliest.
This is why German software tends to suck really bad, even worse than Japanese ones. This shows how they will be falling behind in the next 50 years in the tech world when gasoline engine decline in popularity and luxury car with gasoline and diesel engines being replaced by EV.
@@Ajibolaa Actually it increased a lot the last two years.
Germans can't handle the fact they're invested into the wrong engineering sectors. Only Volkswagen somewhat has made the switch, but the rest definitely hasn't.
There was once a case in a village, that asked the Telekom to lay out glass fiber in it. Telekom refused. So the village put tax money in it's hand to lay it out themselves. After it was done, the Telekom came and torn open the ground to lay out their own cable.
Shameful
Correct, it's in the village where I live - Karlsdorf-Neuthard
Really? That's horrible!
bruh, what? bizzare
The problem isn't market failure. It's market success. The markets are doing what they do best; get as much profit as possible, while giving out as little as possible.
average communist
@@revenant8612 I like to consider myself as above average
True. Many rural areas in america didn't have access to the electrical grid until president FDR's rural electrification programme in the 30s. The market didn't go there because it wasn't worth it (low population density wouldn't provide profit in the long term).
@@revenant8612 have you every worked, like ever? That's what every company does, try to maximise profits by keeping costs to a minimum. It's got nothing to do with communism, on the contrary, it's the foundation of capitalism and business.
@@porzhdon5870 bruv he think this is wrong, i dont find anything wrong it
Germany: pay media tax, get no internet infrastructure! Yay
It's not even a tax but a fee...
The worst thing is you have to pay regardless if you own a radio/TV or not. I have neither because nowadays its 90% ads and the rest is trash content. So ideally, they want you to pay 210€/year to watch ads. 💩
@@ProjectPhysX yeah I own neither too, but as a friend of mine told me, I am paying because someday I might have one :D :D :D
@@ProjectPhysX You are paying because access to non-financially influenced news and media is an important part of this society.
It can't be financed by only a few people, so it's something everyone needs to do their little part to sustain.
In return, we get news that we know weren't bought to say whatever the highest payer wants them to say and almost entirely ad-free TV.
Idk where you get the 90% ads myth from but I assume you are thinking of private channels, which are not associated with the fee you criticize. "Öffentlich-rechtliche Sender" are the only ones that are financed with said fee.
@@cvetytmn You are literally on youtube. You can access all the public tv channels, all their content, etc. online.
@@Esablaka yeah if I pay them a subscription lol
Marco: A mayor who fights for fast internet! That is the mayor i want! Epic!
There's also the opposite: mayors who fight against fast internet, because they don't care at all. It's actually true, though in recent times where anyone should have internet less common for obvious reasons…
I want him too!
Till you understand that he get paid 1mio for the companie, and the internet is still bad in the end . Thats Politik in German right now!
If only you voted for smart mayor's.. ones who could've prevented the floodings...
Nah Germans need access to porn fast
@@darkbozo11 laughed too hard at that
It’s the worst I ever experienced… Asia & South America have a better internet infrastructure
in rural india we get nice 4g, 50mbps is normal, 4g sucks in cities due to crowd, by 2024 plan is to conncet every village by fiber,
Comparing one village in Germany with complete continents just proves that your grasp of the situation is not quite complete.
What is also a problem not adressed in the video but what bothers me: Yes, theoretically we have a free market with many internet providers to choose from, but all the cables and infrastructure belongs to Telekom, which is a half state owned company. So every provider has to rent parts of the cables and nodes and in many cities the network is portioned district wise among few providers who rent sections of the network. So depending in which city district you live, you have only one or two providers to choose from. Therefore you have very little competition and the prices are ridiculously high even compared to other european countries.
I agree with you. No competition.
What you described is exactly what happens in Denmark and things work quite fine. The government lays out the infrastructure and rent it to companies. This is the optimal solution as you don’t have one company owning the cables, literally owning region critical infrastructure - which is the case in the US.
I am what happens in Germany is due to lack of political interest and not infrastructure challenges. And since most people live in big cities, rural areas are ignored.
@@ev.c6 Ah yes, so basicly the internet in DK is like energy and water suply? Sounds cool.
What I forgot to say: Although the german state is a big shareholder of Telekom, it used to stay completly out of decision making. So Telekom acts like a huge private, multinational corporation which has basicly the monopol for the network and can dictate the prices for the others. Same goes with our railway system. It's a huge burden of the neoliberal marketideology that was huge in the 90's where privatisation should've been the answer to every problem and it failed miserably. 😆
@Oh Hello That's awesome, I am also getting fiber soon. It took a Dutch company to make it happen in my region (near Braunschweig).
@Oh Hello What other countries in Europe and the world were doing ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, great! Maybe they'll get fibre in M-V by 2050.
Internet should not have been privatized. The cables should have been run by the government and then charge ISP’s to use them, like Network Rail.
As with rail the difficult work is building and maintaining the network. This is also the real value. Unfortunately, these businesses have high entry costs, so are prone to monopolization. I don't know how much value does an ISP provide without the network.
15 years ago when I moved to a small city on the south Texas coast with a large population of low income residents, the city announced it was going to create a free city owned internet service. The cable companies protested, lobbied against it and stopped the project. Corporations rule America and its politicians and too many people seem fine with that.
Most countries do just that. At least in India
Starlink from SpaceX will save you all very soon.
Hmm , it is on Deutsche Telekom already more then 70%of internet infrastructure, that's why Germany's so bad at it .
Deutsche Telekom makes
a lot of money renting big parts of this infrastructure . All internet providers beside deutsche Telekom must rent access to infrastructure .
I'm in this situation . Land internet by Vodafone but guess what , Vodafone is paying Deutsche Telekom my acces to internet , because the land line (old phone cable) belongs to deutsche Telekom.
And one more detail , Vodafone have said ...ok now u can have 100mb internet download speed from 50 MB . Okay i said . And after 2 weeks Vodafone call me back and said .. sorry , Deutsche Telekom dose not want to upgrade speed . No reason to explain . Just decline the request and that's it .
My indian friends laugh at me, because I literally drop out more often out of a zoom call then everyone else.
If I say I live in a village, they respondse "Fraank, me eeeither! xD"
Now its a running joke, but at least they are better programmers than I am ...
xD
Internet in India is really much better :)
This is crazy. India needed faster internet exactly because we have a big tech and service industry. Here I pay 7 USD for a 30 Mbps fiber optic connection with no cap for a month.
I pay 10dollar a month for 60mbps
@@christojoseph2476 Around 10 USD for 70 Megabits per second.
@@shashwatasamanta7358 7.5 for 60
Eye opening!!! Of all the countries, I would have never imagined that Germany has internet bandwidth problems🙄.
That's marketing.
and that's the problem, stigmatising a problem and pretending it doesn't exist will create such a huge blowback
Our government is voted by and consists of 60+ people. There are barely any young politicans in germany who can drive those topics, and many olds still think that the Internet won't prevail... ("We don't need 5G in every village", "The Internet is a new frontier for us all", etc...)
@@Manu-qf8bs I just hope for the FDP to get into the government after the elections this year, they basically are the only young and innovative party
@@magnuspetzenhauser2770 the FDP still has the same neoliberal programm like always, of course they have some modern aspects but their economic policy is not worth it at all for me, but you do you😅
Every German knows that internet connection is poor here. I myself thought it was really bad where I lived too, until I went on holiday to visit some friends in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern who lived in a rural village approximately 1.5 drive of Rostock the next big city (it was in the light blue area indicated on the map you showed). Boy oh boy have I lived in privilege my whole life, I had zero reception to E reception at best with my O2 contract but even when I tried to get reception using other providers’ signals you just couldn’t get any. We had WIFI at the small B&B that we stayed at but that wasn’t even good enough to load a Google Maps location. It was then that I realised that internet is REALLY bad here.
I have lived in the Netherlands for the past 2 years and it still shocks me that every time I cross the border I have E reception for at least the first 30min driving into Germany, even small everyday things as googling a product in the super market or sending a picture from a product in a store to my roommates at home is not possible here bc you won’t have reception at those places. I stoped downloading Spotify songs a while ago bc my contract had more data than my phone had storage so why bother, not possible in German villages. Never in my 2 years of living in the Netherlands have I been anywhere without 4G - it’s become so normal that living without it really makes you realise the difference. And it wastes time!!
Even rural villages in Thailand had better WiFi than they have in Meck-Pomm :(( really hope things are changing soon.
So much for muh "efficiency".
Germany is the only ones allowed to say "I died by lag," and can 100% get away from it
Seriously, when koreans come to Germany, they feel like they traveled back in time to feudal period
Cable TV companies are to blame in Australia as well. They wanted to push their own ideologies to the cornered customers. The US would also be the same. Free markets ain't so free after all.
Sad for you germans, I live in Russia, we have fast internet.
Completely unregulated free markets are free to penny pinch. There's your 'free'.
The government paid the ISP's millions and millions of dollars to roll out Internet in the US to rural areas. They just pocketed the money and lied about what was deployed. So the government gave them more. It's finally been put to an end.
Its like calling cat in a 'lion suit' a lion. It's ludacris.
Free markets don’t want to provide service where there are no economies of scale. Simple as that.
I had better connection in India vs when I lived in Germany. Horrible. Wow
German internet is a joke
@@NeoTesla and expensive. 3 world internet with western prices. IT's a SCAM. WE had to MOVE out of GER. If you work online from home it's a dump.
it's all bevause of Kohl and Schwaz-Schilling back in the 80s. Schmidt wanted optic fibre everywhere ASAP, but after he lost the chancellorship to Kohl, the plans were srapped in favour of TV cable, since Kohl was afraid our public TV stations were too left-wing, he wanted more conservative private TV instead, but since there weren't any terrestrial VF/UHF frequencies left, and not very many people had satellite dishes, cable was the only way to bring in more TV stations. The conservatives uner Kohl didn't care for fast data connections, unlike the Social Democrats under Schmidt.
*because
*scrapped
This cheap Bluetooth keyboard sucks
@@elfboi523 edit the comment ;/ ?
Not to forget "the last mile", a privilege the Telekom is using to milk everybody.
forget about that long lost past, how about the past freaking 16 years with a chancelor without a clue where it comes to IT. "zwischen Freunden geht das ja gar nicht" Just to hint towards a highlight.
The theme of conservatives is breed into their DNA, change is nothing they cope with well.
When you look at Romania and realize they did a much better job than you, you know you royally F'ed up.
Timisoara, my city was had t fastest internet in the world in 2013. It's good and very cheap, even cheaper than countries much poorer
This is always my biggest question while staying in Germany. A developed country where the internet is worse than 3rd world. Thank you for the answer. Germany really needs to catch up.
No, this is wrong. Germany is totally in the middle field concerning internet speed in the EU
@@peterlustig6888 Then it's not just Germany but the majority of the EU.
@@peterlustig6888 The internet in Germany is primitive, not fit for a 3rd world economy.
That it is mid table in Europe is a damning indictment on Europe.
@@peterlustig6888 It's not, though. Germany's bottom of the list regarding internet speeds, only very few countries rank lower
@@leDespicable Look it up, literally exactly average
I live in a city of 500,000 in the Ruhr Metropolis. I can only get 50Mb!
This problem is not only affecting rural communities but large, relatively poorer, industrial cities too
@@Just_another_Euro_dude sure, for one person. How about 2 gamers streaming and 2 people wanting to watch individual 4k Netflix. Add into that someone downloading a 60gig game and we have an unattainable situation
@@Just_another_Euro_dude this is my household
Edit: to get to the truth, this is not every day, but it has been this at times when I have a full house
I live in the archetype of the capitalist society, Germany, so one would expect the best the world had to offer. The screaming edge
For personal use, I would say that 100/100 should be the norm
Bro I'm in Berlin and I only get 60Mb
@@odin6108
Wowzers. That's fast. I got 56 kb/s
In Canada, 50Mb is considered the minimum acceptable, and would be found in remote communities...and we have some very remote communities. It was difficult in the arctic, so Canada invested in StarLink to ensure nationwide coverage. Starlink arranged its launches to ensure Canada was covered early, and subscribers are now receiving beta-test rates of 50-150 Mbps. That rate is expected to rise dramatically as the system matures. With half of Germany's population in an area 28 times larger, it is considered of national importance that every business, customer and student have high speed access.
When I cross the border from Denmark, my connection drops from 5G to Edge , crazy in some locations in the city such as parking garages there is even no service.
To those who will vote the CDU on the election this year: Don't forget it is this party we thank the bad German Internet!
And our non commitment on the Paris climate goals, as well as various corruption scandals.
Problem is old people, we have TOO MANY of them.
They are still in the mindset of WW 2, anything new is considered BAD.
"GOD PLEASE NO CHANGE"
Sadly covid was unable to eradicate a large populus of the old people.
For germany, it would have worked wonders and given us a second golden age.
I was in Munich for 5 months in 2018 and it's really a surprise that the internet is very slow compared to my hometown in Indonesia. The data cost is also very expensive.
That is true and was unbelievable for me when I had visited Germany for the first time.
We, like other countries in Europe, are still dreaming of the old times, when they called us the land of the poets and philosophers. It really doesn’t help when it comes to the internet, lol.
Other Europen countries have much better connections than Germany though. In Romania and Albania which are way poorer than Germany internet is very good!
5:17 Kanzler Kohl's reasons were: Talking with private TV cable moguls and creating new channels to combat the existing "leftist" public broadcasting.
Good.
So true about Germany. Not only that, but there are so many scams among Internet companies, like O2, although this is unrelated issue. The biggest issue, though, I have with not being able to work online, after discovering that there is no working possibilities for me in this country, again, not due to lack of my qualifications. The consequences are unimaginable. I'm only one small example, problems are a lot, uncomparably worse for others, Im sure.
Same here in Italy.
We have the same problem in the US as well. Even here in San Francisco we have pockets where Internet access is lousy. You can forget DSL or fiber optic in some areas, so you're stuck with cable only.
I can still remember the Telekom-DSL that I used from 2006 to 2009 in Germany. It's not very slow, but very very unstable. Every night from 9:00 to 12:00 the connection was like crazy, I always got disconnected from world of warcraft. Very bad experience.
xd its nerve wrecking :( i know how it is
9 to 12 that is in the morning. Please use 24 hour time when you write.
@@Foersom_
Not everyone conforms to your rendition of time. Since this is DW English, please keep that in mind. He said "at night" to clarify, so why bother with your comment except to chastise? At least he clarified.
Also, some use pure metric or pure American measurements, but I find that stating both is great for all to understand.
Here in Ukraine the state telco was left in the dust by hundreds of small companies who outcompeted it and pushed down the price as low as equivalent of 5-6$/month for 100Mbit fiber-optic in the small villages. Just fix the bureaucracy and the market will fix everything else.
Was the cables already in place? Easy to compete when infrastructure is already there.
Rural america didn't get electricity in the free market because it had low population density and just wasn't profitable enough. The govt had to step in with the Rural Electrification Programme in the 30s.
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m No, cables and all the rest of infrastructure was installed by the very same companies using it.
But will it survive the war???
My friend, "fix the bureacracy" in Germany is something will never happen. They just love their bureaucracy and useless paper-works. They just don't get how life can be way more uncomplicated.
Thanks from Asia for your neighborhood insights DW.
Fun fact: the technician who installed fiber optic cables in my house told me that my area’s copper phone cables people had been relying on before they replaced them were still those installed by the Germans during WWII. (Probably he was talking about some very specific suburbs and building but still!]
Whaat! Here in Norway, there are remote islands with poor internet, but everybody else has superfast fiber cable internet.
Even in Hamburg they still have DSL lines in many homes!
? what is wrong with DSL? I have DSL and I'm pretty happy :-)
@@vasopel DSL is not future-proof. My parents and many old people don't see it, but with 250 MBit/s down you're barely living in the present nowadays. Unless you're living alone or are barely using the internet, 500 to 600 MBit/s is like a minimum… and I mean real rates not what Vodafone might advertise… also uploads of 50 MBit/s max… 🤣🙄
@@whohan779 250MBit/s??? :-O
I have 1MBit/s internet and it's enough for 3 persons, what are you doing with your internet???
@@vasopel I hope you mean 1 MByte/s (=8 MBit/s). 1 MBit/s isn't even enough for UA-cam in 480p on a single device. Otherwise I must ask you how you manage to download multiple Gigabytes when even just one will take 8192 seconds (which is more than 2 hours).
I once had 3 MBit/s down and 384 KBit/s up and that was barely enough for online gaming when my brother watched one UA-cam stream - if anything else happened I'd have 800 ms ping due to bandwidth constraints, but even normally 52 ms at best… dark times.
You cannot be serious to think that even 1 MByte/s (let alone 1 MBit/s) is enough for uninterrupted usage by multiple people in the modern age.
Heck even my uncapped (€35 monthly,
@@vasopel Also it should be noted that 250 MBit/s is the best you can order on DSL in Germany right now… oftentimes it's much less, like below 170 MBit/s, below 100 MBit/s or even below 50 or 16 MBit/s… and that's really bad for serious usage like UHD video streaming while continuously downloading.
Looks like Australia isn't the only country with this issue
Same problem in the US.
imo access to the internet (broadband, sat, wireless) belongs to basic-infrastructure like water, energy, freeways (literally "data-freeway"), etc. so it should be 100% government-controlled
@Oh Hello Deutsche Bahn is a public company, not private held by the Republic of Germany to 100%. You would see great infrastructure if we would either allow competition or undo the initial public offering.
I find it hard to watch with that flickering affect,it even gives me a headache.
Talk is cheap, companies control politicians.
You've said it.
That's the best thing to describe Germany. As already mentioned in the clip, even after the reunification, the decision was made to roll out old copper cables in the eastern part of Germany instead of using fibre optics in the first place. The costs of replacing this lines now are exponentially more expensive, so the internet providers like Telekom or Vodafone are very hesitant to invest in this area unless the government pays for it.
Its much more crazy. The German postal service: Deutsche Bundespost that was responsible at that time, has rolled out fibre. In my Town in Saxony-Anhalt too. But they didnt used it in the end because they took the wrong kind of cable and it wasnt compatible with the rest of their network. Its crazy. So we already had fibre in the 90's but couldnt use it and had to go into the net with a 56k modem.
The copper alone can be re sold for a profit. Copper is expensive.
Complacency, laziness, stinginess, short-sightedness, all in one.
We were in Hamburg & Luneburg 2 weeks ago. Yes, I can attest that the internet needs improvement. There was a lot of lag. I haven't experienced that kind of lag since the dial-up days.
This reinforces my life experience with German automobiles, I considered them the world's best. So over time I bought three new models from dealerships. All three were lemons from day one. One had a water leak on first day of ownership filling the footwells when it rained .. it was never fixed despite replacing windshield and more. It always leaked. Second had entire wiring harness replaced when new due to flickering electronics .. the headlights were not steady .. nothing helped. This also had frozen driver window mechanism, nothing fixed it .. could not open window in the cold. Third vehicle stalled in traffic repeatedly during warm weather .. it was pathetic, they dug deep into engine and to no avail. All three vehicles were brand new .. I will never buy another.
of course you will
I wouldn't even consider buying a German car and haven't for years. They're garbage and totally unreliable so I hear you. Plus German companies really believe they're entitled to your money without offering you any service or a good product. I tend to not buy German anymore unless it's the rare company that can compete on an international level. Most just can't and frankly don't want to.
Now I have a Toyota and it’s totally efficient, reliable and the service is phenomenal. And if Toyota does something wrong, at least they apologize and compensate for it, instead of outright lying about their corruption and trying to cover it up because of how entitled they feel.
which German automobile brand and was it made in Germany? Many are made in Mexico and the US now. I'm in the US and still driving the Volvo 850 I bought new in 1993. The engine was made in Belgium. I'm 71 and have never owned an American made car.
@@sjbock I don't really think that geographic location really makes a big difference (unless you are alluding to cultural reasons which is just straight up racist). In the end, it's a German company, if they decide to build their cars "cheaper" elsewhere, the company itself still bears full responsibility.
Volkswagen had a huge scandal in the past decade, which is one of the few examples of the widespread corruption that is now coming to the forefront with every passing year in Germany. And guess what? VW produces mostly in Germany.
@@LethargicShaman near all North American VW's are made and produced in North America (4x Mexico, the largest outside Germany with 12k employees and one of the largest with 5k employees is there, 1x USA at 3k which is just part assembly), cheaper than shipping etc.
The "free market" ignores small towns and rural areas. This is not limited to Germany; the problem is privatization.
Here in Schleswig-Holstein a lot of villages have fast glass fiber connections now. I am sitting in the middle of nowhere and I could upgrade my Inet to 500mbit. A private company called Nordishnet is expanding their net here pretty quick now.
The problem is the backwards bureaucratic mentality
I had gotten a SIM card in Germany and an SMS had appeared on my screen: "Special offer: 300mb for 3.5 Euro!"
Total rip off, i suggest congstar, wich is a daughter firm to Telekom, you get 8gb for 20€ a month, including unlimited calls and sms.
Still our pricing for data is astronomically and absurd. These companies know very well that in 2021 1GB of Data will get you nowhere.
In Romania with 10 Euro you can get 40G with a 4g cover in like 80% in the country.
Interesting. In India, you would around ~100 GB for that amount.
Here in Taiwan, I'm paying 2.65 Euro for unlimited mobile data (average about 300GB a month). I live in city, but the rural area of Taiwan has even better connection than in city.
I came from a rural area of an Asian developing country and around 4 years ago the private telcos had changed all copper wire phone and internet connections into fiber optic ones. Here in Berlin the majority of these connections are still made out of copper which I didn’t expect from an economic power in Europe.
In India, government is pushing very hard and connecting every village with fiber optic cables, in next 3-4 years I think every village will have fiber optics.
Could anyone also talk about the prices of internet packages in germany? They are insanely expensive.
I live in a city and the maximum internet speed I get in a good day is 6 Mb. 😡
During lockdown with homeschooling and home office was practically impossible to work or have classes.
Now the city has installed fibre optic cables but it gave the company which installed the cable the monopoly. So if you want to profit from that you have to change provider and pay for the installation of the cable from the distribution box to your house.
I live in a small town in thailand and get 450mb download🤣
So, pay the money if you want better service. Is someone else supposed to pay your bill?
Live in Latvia, where in deepest woods are optic cable but no sewerage or hot water
You know it's interesting to watch this documentary from the US. My personal experience is that even in rural California I can get decent 4G connection. When I went to Germany, it was unique to see that it was slower than in the US.
Additionally, the banking system is quite modern and digitized from where I live in the US. That's my experience and the US has grown quite fast in digitization of government forms, banking systems, and other stuff. It can improve and be better but I'm just stating my experiences.
Every time I visited Germany, I got the feeling that an internet connection is something of a luxury and people are still a little suspicious of it. Many small hotels I stayed in still did not offer it.
Absolutely pathetic. Imagine a hotel not providing internet in a supposed first-world country.
I live near Silicon Valley and we can't get fiber-based internet.
its sad, i agree. In the US are 33,5 residents per km² meanwhile in germany we have 232,8 residents per km². Its a bit different but the solution is the same: The government has to act. More so in the USA, because of the population density.
@@FAL87 I think it a partnership. Companies go were the density is higher and they can make more money. But, there need to be some incentives to provide service where the density of customers is lower. We are seeing some of that with contracts for companies to bring fast internet to rural areas. SpaceX's Starlink is one product in that market.
@@JBoy340a I agree. My opinion is that some things shouldnt be privatized at all. I know that is seen as radical especially in the usa. Not so much in germany. Citizen should be guaranteed fresh water, electricity, information and now internet.
@@FAL87 And then there is the UK at 281 people per km^2. Although we are kinda similar to Germany, Openreach, the largest infastructure owner, is heavily regulated as it is also owned by BT, the largest ISP
But broadband is "relatively" cheap, with over 95% of homes being able to receive at least 30Mbit/s down.
There is also a Universal Service Obligation of 10Mbits down, 1Mbits up
@@jamesbedford7327 i Like that there is a Obligation. But the Speed should be Reformed. The Problem in Germany is, that until the 90s it all was Part of the Postal Service. Then the state privatised it under German Telekom. And now there are parts of the country without anything. It should be Like Water and electicity. The UK is doing great in that Case then.
A great insight but it is interesting that many countries Germany included don't understand critical infrastructure disaster risk.
Thank you for this report.
watching this from my 20Mbps ADSL connection in Berlin.... le sigh
oh my.... I thought that privatization and liberalization were perfect answers???? Did they lie to us???
Yes, they did. Unbelievable, isn't it?
I lived in Germany for awhile and am surprised this is still an issue. Mobile internet was ridiculously spotty and slow. My first solo driving there after 6months in country my phone lost connection and I almost panicked coz I didn't have GPS directions and didn't speak German to ask for directions, luckily it came back after about 15 mins.
Whenever I booked an AirBnB it was a Hail Mary if I would get any internet connection whichever town I was staying. I loved my stay but this was alittle annoying over the time there.
I was actually surprised hearing low littel people in other countries pay and how fast a connection they can get for it.
When I moved to Germany I was shocked seeing UA-cam videos are being buffered on 720p or ever less resolution. Then I moved closer to the city and now it's better. It's still not ideal. But, it's surprising how much a few kilometers can make 😶
Well at least watching at lower resolutions saves energy.
This really surprises me. I never would have guessed this to be the case. I lived in Germany for a while in the 1970’s, though long before the digital age. I also visited Germany for a week a few years ago, and just assumed good internet was everywhere. I hope the entire country gets covered in the next few years. So much of our lives are digital by now that it would be difficult to do without. Great report.
It’s a joke. I’ve been living in Berlin since 2016 and the digitalization here is so, so embarrassingly behind. Not to mention the connections, so bad.
I was thinking that my country is having all these problems. Now, I understand Germany is as bad as India when it comes to Politics, Market and officials.
I do not know India is better than Germany or not but only thing which I have experienced about is that JIO really has solved major issues of related with internet in India. I get 32 GB data just at $3.5, which is pretty affordable.
India has over 25,000 villages without even mobile internet let alone fiber optic internet! Germany's Internet deserts are in rural areas and not large cities where fiber optic internet is available. So yes, India is in the same situation
@@hydrolifetech7911 who told you that 25000 villages in India do not have electricity? I guess you are looking at the data of 2006. At present time more than 95% of the rural areas in India has access to electricity. However, 554 villages do not have proper electricity connection ( mostly situated in north eastern and Easter India).
Villagers do not need high interent connections beacuse most of them use mobile data( which is quite popular and affordable).
@@subhashishbagchi3191 ok so considering the population of india rest 5%(without electricity)would still be huge in numbers
@Manas Chakraborty internet is cheap in india(cheapest among the world) but the connection is slow and india ranks between 90-120 globally
Here, me living in a sub-urban area of a developing country streaming this video on a 200 Mbps Fiber Optic internet connection.
in my country Uganda..our fiber infrastructure is very poor but one of the biggest ISP company is using radio frequencies as such as cambium and Ubiquity technology to distribute their services around the country with good quality ...hope this helps anyone
Living in Germany from Canada. It's like going back in time in regards to the Internet and telecommunications circa late 90s in Canada. It's ridiculous given the size of Germany.
imagine focusing on immigration than internet
The fact that the only sceptical voice is one that’s 70+ years old says a lot.
I don't know where you did your research, but: 1. Optical fibers were rolled out in East Germany, but they were unsuited for high-bandwidth internet. See "OPAL" for details. That was replaced by copper afterwards. 2. What Helmut Schmidt proposed in the 80s would probably not been suitable to carry contemporary data rates.
shout outs to the brave dude who tried to put the two Umlaut-dots onto the Ortseingangsschild 7:02
We just love our traditions. I receive my banking information via pigeon post.
And there is almost no Google Street View in Germany.
That is less an infrastructure and more a privacy thing.
When I work from the train to Kuffstein from Vienna, I have to tell my colleagues I will be offline for one hour while the train is passing through Germany. The connection is really so bad
Aw, this is still the case?
I lived in Frankfurt until 2011 and at the time my internet connection sucked (was willing to pay for a fast package, they just could not offer it where I lived which was pretty downtown, near the main railway station).
No, in Frankfurt the situation is much better nowadays. Vodafone offers 1gbit cable internet speeds pretty much everywhere in the city
Funny thing is: my parents in their small village in the north saxon Pampa (no offense) have gotten glass fibre cables as recently as this year and they already had a 7mb/s connection before that, whilst I'm living in Frankfurt/Main, the economic and banking epicenter of Germany, and only get abt 1.5 mb/s. I'm living in this place for 13 years now and all that time exactly nothing was done.
And then I'm told stories by friends of mine in other cities, who easily get 100mb/s or more, one even gets 400mb/s oO and yes then there are places like Mose (lots of those) which get nothing at all. Maybe I shouldn't complain too much about the slow inet I get :|
@Manas Chakraborty Teams works tho, Skype and Discord as well, so I'm not *completely* blind, but it's still beyond embarrassing
I had a 1mbit unstable internet connection back in 2002 or 03 in Hungary, where/when the internet was not as common here. Now in 2021, I have in practice( on paper 1000 Mbit) about 6-700 avg. Mbit downloading speed. Almost sometimes even 100 Mbyte per second downloaded on Steam for like 25 euro/month.13 km nearby a small 2000 pop village dl speeds are about 12-200mbit for less money. Usually, 10-100mbit(depending on cables, etc.) have the same prices it is usually s package I assume s for either small or slow. I have problems with the internet like once per two months os very stable solved 95% of the time by restarting devices.
I thought Germany which is one of THE strongest EU countries economy-wise has at least 100mbit in a remote no one lives there village, and like at least 1000mbit in a city. I Hope Germany will upgrade to an acceptable level as the need for technology eg online learning will very very likely increase all over the world in mineopinion. Attending a zoom is such a BASIC feature my retired noncomputer savy relative pays like 5 euro for her cheapest option net and she can attend zoom etc. In fact, she is learning/attending courses online with no issues.
"I'm living in Frankfurt"
Why do so many Germans overuse the present continuous tense in English?
So basically, germans have the internet connection speed they VOTED for 😏
Yes because your vote matter. 😏
wow, I was surprised, but when I was in UK, I saw internet issues as well, maybe not as bad, but still such issues are strange to see in a country like Germany 👀
Yep, it sucks to be stuck on a 6mb connection as the only option.
At least is better than my neighbors a few blocks away without a single option
To keep it simple: There’s not enough people living in these areas to make faster Internet infrastructure profitable for telecom companies.
Exactly.
bruh I live in a village in India that has 600 people, I have been using 100mbps fiber for 8 months now.
@djindivik Thats actually the sick thing. Nearly everyone in the world can have this for very reasonable prices. Only in Germany that would get so expensive you will decline it.
Is this reason why the guy I've been talking to on the dating app is rarely online, or is he just busy/not that into me?? 😭😿😿 I'm in 🇮🇩Indonesia and I use TV cables & 4G+. Is the phone cable the same thing as 1990s dual-up??! Please fix it so I can talk to my crush lol. 💔🙏🏼
💀🤣
@@dlilwon I has major sad 🤣🤣😹😹
What privatization has done to internet accessibility in Germany is not an isolated case, it is happening in many countries in almost every privatized sector .
Postal services and public transport are two other examples of sectors where privatization has failed miserably.
This plainly demonstrates the failure of politics who chose this way and it is a strong argument against privatisation in general and for the rollback of wrongly made decision (which, in some isolated cases, is already happening).
I moved from Ireland to Berlin in 2010 in ireland i had 250mbits for 30€ per month, in Berlin the standard internet speed available in my area of the city at the time was 10mbits download for 34€ per month, i was shocked still 11 years later it's not much better in some areas so i can't imagine how bad it is in the rural areas.
I like how bad subsidy policy, which is market regulation, was named "market failure".
I remember how baad internet was in Germany, expensive, hard to get and ridiculous. Me coming from eastern Europe to Germany was like stepping 10 years in the past lol.
hahaha
At least 15 years back in time from Canada.
laughing stock, even some rural area in china and vietnam maybe have better signal
Internet ist NEULAND. 😅
Germany: has bad internet connection
Philippines: first time?
As a Swede this is just mind blowing.
The news we all want to know here.
Lmao, this reporting right as my street in Germany that has been starved of anything but slow DSL and spotty cell coverage 'till 2016 gets a Gigabit/s fibre deployment. 🤣
To be clear: I mean the whole township (there is one bigger and smaller township in the 'Doppelgemeinde' w/ appendix) of more than 2k households still has nothing actually running but DSL (and fibre nearing completion) for fixed usage (so "up to 250 MBit/s" max in less than 50% of the area [that's the pinnacle of coverage - if you live in the Netherlands at least] and nothing close to Gigabit/s) and had 4G rather late compared to German cities and especially compared to many European neighbors regardless of rurality. Now we will soon hopefully be among the very fastest of Germany's households apart from those few that offer more than Gigabit/s for residential customers.
@@aoelp I can only dream of that speed... I live next to Stuttgart and we get max 15 MBit/s. They did promise fibre optics in the "near future". In other words, maybe this year, maybe in the next few years.
@@LethargicShaman But "next to Stuttgart" could mean you soon get Deutsche Glasfaser or something comparable too… our neighboring (almost) fully Vodafone cable-provided townships have also been getting offers from DG… dunno why, because none of them is completely w/o anything else fixed than (V)DSL like we're.
@@LethargicShaman My larger comment just now was a bit cluttered and also censored due to linkage of articles. I may repost it if I feel like it.
Edit: I can't spell right now apparently. 😅
While in India, 15-20MBPS for 400Rs (5 EUR) a month on wifi.
Why not go for open-access networks? Cities, regions or independent actors build and own the infrastructure. Every household and company in the area gets a socket at no cost.
Access is then leased out to private service providers, without any exclusive rights, and the customers can pick and choose whatever services they want to subscribe to. Customers pay directly to their providers, not the network owner. It tend to be profitable for all involved.
Complete separation between infrastructure and content has proven to be wise as neither service providers nor network owners can control what people have access to. It encourages healthy competition. It has been very successful in Sweden, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.
The sockets and plugs are there. But basically all of the copper network is owned by the former state-owned company which rents it to other providers.
Only way to change that would either to be build an entirely new network, or to pay the company way too much money to buy it back. And that option would still mean running the same 30 year old copper lines.
We are in the stone age. Thank you CDU/CSU! 👏
These political parties are just a symptom. It's the broad conservative frugal mentality sceptical of change that's the root cause.
I moved to Germany after working in Doha Qatar for a while and I was surprised to see the poor internet speed.I travel from Frankfurt Oder to Berlin for work and 60% of the journey is through areas where there is no coverage of data or voice connection.I hope Germany will catuch up fast
Another problem which the video didn't look at is the absence of effective consumer protection in Germany.
When I lived in the middle of Berlin, 5 km from the Reichstag, it took me three years of bitter struggle to get a functioning internet connection. Deutsche Telekom promised to install it, failed, refused to find out why they failed, and then kept charging me for it. They even sent a collection agency after me when I refused to pay. So I tried Kabel Deutschland, a company that used to TV cable, but they also failed, sent technicians around who couldn't find the problem and said someone from sales would contact me, which they didn't. When I kept complaining they kept sending technicians around to not find the problem and promise that someone from sales would contact me which they didn't... And so on.
Meanwhile me in Romania with a Download speed of 700+ mb/s and Upload speed of 900+ mb/s for less than 10$ .
In Romania the minimum speed is 200 mb/s for about 7$ and the max can go up to 1000 mb/s for 12$.
I would have never imagined this was a problem in Germany. 😶
Germany is always portrayed as a grand country with it's business put together here in the U.S.
It depends which areas you go to. Many rural areas have gigabit connections and many don't. Generally, depends on the state you're in. I had good experiences in Baden-Württemberg where a lot of people already have 500-1000mbits
Quite like Ben said. I strongly depends on the state you live in, which i imagine similarly is the case in the USA too, right? Every state has its own infrastructure plans and while in most states quite reasonably so the high population density areas are put on the top of the list, where infrastructure is renewed, if you keep on doing that way, for those on the bottom of the list a sort of backlog develops where you may be even sitting on the sidebar a round or more.
In citys most of the times internet is not bad. I can get up to 1Gbit/s but I only use 500MBit/s.
Problem are rural areas. In my region lot of small or medium size businesses are located at/in small towns or villages for decates.
Some of them produce specialised and high quality products and sell them to the world.
But nowadays having bad internet is a huge drawback for this companys.
That's not Germany. You probably mistake us with Switzerland. 🤣😑
Wow, Germany, the leading economic power in Europe, does have a problem right? It's strange how internet connection in Germany appears only in pair with... Russia...
Russia and Germany are bros.
Copper cable mountain town in Switzerland here: 600 Mbps download & 150 upload (over wifi)
Another thing is that wiring is supposed to be not visible in Germany. That makes the installation of new wires much more expensive. Looking at other countries, they are not disturbed by wires hanging from house to house and are not hidden at all. They are not disturbed by lokal ugglyness, but in Germany everything must be beautiful to the sightest detail.
In order to install a Glass fibre wire in Germany you must renovate all rooms. Its a big deal. You better leave the copper wires and live with it.
"Everything must be beautiful to the slightest detail"
Lmao imagine actually thinking that's the case in Germany. If technology and speed are low on the priority list in Germany, aesthetics are even lower.
Also, this is such a silly point considering there are a lot of (actual) first-world countries that ARE "disturbed by ugliness" with top notch Internet speeds that manage to work around whatever problem with hanging wires you're suggesting is real.
"It's a big deal. You better leave the copper wires and live with it."
What a perfect encapsulation of the complacent mentality that's part of the problem. "Deal with it. Don't try to improve. It kinda works."
You know where you will find super speed internet and that too damn cheap, it is in INDIA.
India have way better and cheaper internet as compared to Germany
Could you expand? What’s the typical internet experience like in India? How was the country able to install all the equipment necessary nationwide? Is there widespread use and knowledge of the internet/tech among old and young Indians alike? It’s very interesting lol
@@puggygupsii6341internet experience is quite good. My parents live in a remote place of east India and have a fiber optic connection with average speed of 500Mbit/s. India is a free market, there's no regulation and rigid rule around cable deployments. You will find fiber optic cables flying all around in cities and villages. Every service provider deploys their own cable infrastructure instead of sharing it, like how it's the case in Germany. Companies, especially in Telekom sectors are very competitive which again is an advantage to the end consumers. Internet is dirt cheap in India and eveyone has it. People have stopped calling each other on phones, they directly video call the other person on whatsapp even folks from older generations. Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Vivo have flodded Indian markets with cheap phones so everyone atleast has a 4G capable phone now. Major players like Jio are completely going deep in with 5G and have started deploying 5G network infra in major cities with Jio planning to setup a plant wherein they intent to manufacture their own 5G infra devices without having to rely on European and Chinese players.
@@balkishore25 Wow, this is interesting. I never knew there's fast fiber optic internet in rural India. That's great progress for a country with so much poverty and corruption.
@@monicamccarthy3932 do I sense sarcasm in your appreciation?
It’s the worst of all EU and the most expensive too 😓
I'm confused. I was using 50Mbps internet for a long time and watching 1080p movie is no problem. If 3 people are watching, they could each stream a 720p video without interfering with each other. Online games demands even less bandwidth once downloaded. It's not ideal but definitely useable internet in 2022
Being a guy from India, I have to say I am myself disappointed by the Internet Speed provided in Germany...