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0 pointspatrickk5y ago0 comments

> The cause of the internet seems to be a mix of the mobile frequency auctions that didn’t leave any money for a good network combined with low competition.

The version I read for Germany was that when the mobile broadband spectrum was originally auctioned off, the purchase price for the spectrum was too high. So the pensioners and other investors who bought in demanded a juicy return on investment despite overpaying, resulting in high prices and presumably less money for investments in the network.

For the fixed line broadband network in Germany, its quite substandard despite the country being generally good at infrastructure. The reason can be traced back to corruption, where a decision was made to rollout copper backbone instead of fiber optic, which was the original decision. Article in German but copy and paste with Google translate:

https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/langsames-internet-i...

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harha5y ago

I have the impression that corruption and being overly friendly towards big corporations seems to be quite the issue, compared to other places I know well the infrastructure is pretty bad (though other large European countries aren't much better - UK, France).

The auction could have easily been fixed, by imposing and enforcing strict rules on maximum prices, minimum coverage and mandating in-country roaming. After all the frequencies should benefit the whole public. With such rules the outcome would have been a much better network, allowing for growth in other regions.

The article you've shared is very interesting, would be helpful if more Germans were informed about this.

patrickkOP5y ago

Yes the copper story instead of fiber optic is really important to understand. I did some digging after suffering through poor internet in a major German city for some years now.

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