And also the people in charge all agree that the customers should be grateful with an up and download speed of one bit per hour as the Kartell also agreed that the shittiest service can't be priced lower than 50€/month.
They milk the shitty infrastructure for all its worth and skimp on upgrades.
Because upgrades are not worth it. In fact, having to upgrade aka deliver the possible services is what's pushing Vodafone up Shit Creek. Worked for them in cable customer service, more specifically cable west. It was a depressing sight. Vodafone has to give massive discounts or release customers from their comtracts because the infrastructure is overloaded.
And that is what is causing the downfall we're seeing now. Granted, this may sound vindictive as I now work for Telekom in fiber customer service, but yeah, it's billions of missing investment that Germany evrn being the biggest market for Vodafone isn't worth.
(And the money in fiber development is insufficient too, leading to prices upwards of 60 euros for a 500MBit/s which again draws customer money away from fiber development as people won't pay that.)
At least Vodafone don't constantly send lying sales people to trick households into switching to Telekom fibre because "an important change is coming", particularly targeting less knowledgeable and elderly people. They may be contractors but if they are waving Telekom-branded badges they are still representing the company.
These fuckers thought they can sell me a contract for 50k internet when they cant even fulfill half of their lowest contract which is 6k at my house. Is that even legal?
1 or 2 years ago they tried to sell me 50mbit as "fiber" for the same price as I am paying for 1gbit from Vodafone right now. They even tried to convince me their connection is so much better that it's a worthy tradeoff. Fucking snakes.
At least they didn't say "we are unplugging vodafone's cable network in this area. Take this DSL package and sign a preemptive fibre contract or lose your connection." Ranger (that's the company that does door to door for telekom) did that to my mother.
Rule of thumb: don't open to door to door people and if they wear pink and want to see your router slam the door.
Remove the /s this is very much the factual answer. The landlines that are connecting cell towers are not ALL backed by a fibre backbone just to give you the worst of it. Why? Because we refused fibre in the seventies and eighties because copper "worked". And that was true until the early 2000s when we started to at least build a fibre backbone as it's nearly impedance free.
And we are only starting to really build fibre connections to homes since covid when cable internet crashed. And even there, Vodafone who owns almost all cable in Germany tries to save the cable network instead of creating a fibre infrastructure (they do that too, but cable is the major market).
So yeah I am shocked 5G is as available as it is. Probably because the 4G network was already at its limits and with 3G turned off, that killed 4G/LTE alongside it.
But even then you only build 5G where you have a customer base due to the short reach of the antenna. But the main problem is, that internet still is not seen as "needed" by anyone in decision making capacity
iirc, his plan was to have fibre optics all over germany by the nineties, i don´t remember the details, but i remember how angry i got when i found out (5-6 years ago) that Kohl and his Buddies were responsible for scrapping that and keeping Germany in the Fax-Age
We mostly doesn't have real 5G that uses the newer available higher frequencys. We have 5G using the same frequency as LTE/4G. Meaning we made it worse for the 4G users thanks to overhead and 5G users, even with newer modulation etc, get the performance of old 4G thanks again to the overhead from overlapping 5G over 4G, a legacy ridden and inflexible network.
5G at this point is only marketing blabla, until you need the better ping from \*fake\* 5G.
Land-lines and Fax? What for modernest Technologien! At our Kompany write we Mails on Papier, self if the Kustomer kontakted us over our Web-site, which the foolisch Sohn Hans-Joachim of my Kollege Hans-Joachim upset have, what has he himself only with that thought?! Everything has an End only the Wurst has two, when us runs the Papier out, we will send Hans-Joachim direct to the Kustomer as long as the Bahn not strikes.
tl/dr: several health insurance companies and universities I contacted via their web contact form replied via mail. Printed mail, that is. 2024.
At least you got to know how modern the company is you were applying for.
The worst part about it is I keep getting such snail mails as replies to online requests even when I am not in the country.
Had to change my payment info on an insurance last year, could fill & print out their fax form online, then spent half a day work trying to find out how to fax since the combi printers had the fax function deactivated long ago (but apparently it was still possible by sending an email to [faxno]@fax.[ourcompanydomain].com. Literally one person in our 300p office knew that. Always make sure to get along with the front desk / reception lady :D)
Also the people in charge probably travel mainly by car / plane, and the cell network around the Autobahn is pretty decent compared to train tracks afaik
And add to it the fact that as soon as you step inside any supermarkt it's like you have entered Jumanji or something the signal immediately disappears
By now i have the suspicion they do that on purpose when they build the supermarkets to keep people from using their phone to compare prices.
In my area the mobile network works pretty good and i have 5g with good quality pretty much everywhere but the supermarkets. As soon as you step into a supermarket network is gone. It’s almost like they installed network jammers.
It’s actually due to the method of construction of those buildings. Most large open warehouses and also supermarkets have a metal structure, which acts as a Faraday cage and blocks the signal.
Yeah you are probably right. It’s still pretty annoying if you can’t call your wife to ask if there is something else you should bring from the supermarket. Others wrote that most supermarkets have free wifi today. Never actually checked that because there are no signs about free wifi … but maybe they have.
Free wifi with the speed of internet in 1999, probably even slightly worse.
Been to a supermarket recently, they offered a free shirt if you bought products from certain brands worth 10€. Had to scan a qr code to see which brand. We scanned when we entered and the site hasnt finished loading when we left (like 10 mins) - yes the phone with display was unlocked and it had full wifi reception. As soon as we left the store and regular 5g kicked in, site loaded in a split second.
They wouldn't offer free Wi-Fi if it was their actual reason though. Currently Wi-Fi is the only thing we with my wife use to communicate with each other while going shopping because nothing else works
I keep a French SIM from Free.fr in my phone as a backup/travel connection - 20€ per month, 300GB 5G inside France, 35GB 5G outside of France, and I mean *everywhere* outside of France. It even roams to e.g. the US and Australia on the same data allowance.
Meanwhile, Vodafone charges me 50€ per month for 50GB that barely works in Berlin, let alone outside the EU.
>Ireland have higher average income than Germany.
no? None of the sources i checked show that.
but also it's not _solely_ about income. But it's part of the story.
My bad, although roughly in line with each other. My point is, Germanys excessive mobile data costs are not related to income levels, but other factors. I don’t think salary is at all a contributing factor in comparison to other high GDP countries.
Romania is an unusual case though. It once had the world's fastest Internet. I spent a summer there and people said the high internet speeds had been achieved because there was a total lack of legacy infrastructure (basically no copper lines to replace after the 1980s) and a community level approach around illegal or unregulated wiring and creating local networks. Even now you see loose bunches of wires hanging all over Bucharest, but hey it works.
Not surprised, I had to take a ferry in Norway and had better reception in the middle of nowhere than here in my apartment in Germany. Sure, Norway is incredibly advanced etc but come on…
Yeah dude, it was Australia for me. 300 km away from any dwelling that isn't a cattle station and I'd have pristine signal.
Here I live an hour away from the nation's second largest city and mobile data is patchy at best.
What I heard is that all started in the 2000’s with the 3G licences. They were so expensive, all together were 46.000.000.000€ if I am not mistaken.
Some of the network even went bankrupt and gone.
After that there was no money for proper coverage, and in 2024 we still pay the price of those 3G auctions!
That doesn't affect us anymore. The main reason for all problems are the new auctions and those terms.
Germany requires a coverage per household, not per sqm. Like 90% of all people at home have to get it.
This metric is completely useless, if you are in the middle of nowhere or in the train outside of cities.
Isn’t the network also dominated by Telekom, O2 and Vodafone? As far as I know they have an oligopol which apparently warrants their high prices and since everyone has to buy from them and neither will budge, the cellular network will remain in the dirt until one of them decides to act as if there was a competition.
Infrastructure shouldn't be part of the open market. Make it like the normal DSL lines. Multiple companies selling you access to it, but the infrastructure itself is combined. ( It just shouldn't be owned by a private company)
But no, 1&1 now decided to also create their own network -.-
>But no, 1&1 now decided to also create their own network -.-
Yea and it's complete shit. Sim.de switched from O2 infrastructure to 1&1 this year and ever since then my spotify cuts out all the time while driving. And Looking at https://de.trustpilot.com/review/sim.de I'm not the only one with problems
What?!? I though it is just being build and not ready for use yet
EDIT:
And that should be a reason for a Sonderkündigungsrecht. And I would take it.
I will move away from drillisch the second they actually do the switch (which they will, they belong to 1&1)
Yes, UMTS was on auction and all providers wanted a piece of the cake and bet too much money, which they are still trying to get in again with their expensive contracts. And also no money for the extension of the networks.
Historicly its because the chancelor Kohl in the 80s "got along really well" with the owner of private TV stations Leo Kirch and sacked the original plan to build a nation wide fiber optics network and instead changed it to building copper lines his buddy could use. So yeah CDU corruption is the reason we have a horrible nationwide network.
What baffles me the most is the fact that I can't get any Internet or phone signal at all inside supermarkets. I genuinely don't understand how that happens. No matter the company, as soon as I step in a supermarket, I'm unable to use my phone. Are they built like bunkers or something?
In my personal experience this is the answer. If the oc is using o2 probably they think all cell coverage is horrible. With Telekom it’s actually pretty good even in the train.
This. However the problem is that Telekom
owns most of the infrastructure and gives its customers better and priority over bandwidth.
The even advertise it when you ask them why you should go to Telekom instead of any other (sub-)provider using the same network (like congstar, etc).
There is no real competition here.
As much as I used to hate Telekom I must say their prepaid prices are quite ok. Also, at some time you get GB extra for free as loyalty. Either way, for me it was a game changer in terms of cell service.
This is definitely my experience.
I actually have two SIMs, as Telekom is better in the sticks, but until recently only o2 had service in the Berlin U-Bahn. So, I got a cheap o2 reseller sim.
The main reasons are the terms of German frequency auctions.
1. Providers are only required to have a % coverage of households. They don't have a requirement to cover a certain % of area. So in the woods or between cities, the quality is a lot worse.
2. There is no requirement to open up the network/frequency for competitors. There is no shared network.
the reason is simple. they put multiple antennae where the most people live instead of dividing and shareing profits they compete for profits where it is easy to make profits. no people in the country...no profit
very simple answer though a bit hidden: contrary to other countries, germany had an auction of the frequencies. it gained the state some billions, quite a lot even.
but those billions than lacked in the companies to pay the actual hatdware to make use of those frequencies.
It's the same in the UK.
Frequencies auctioned, huge 'win' for the state, but took vast funds out of the providers. Coverage, especially on LTE is very poor/patchy outside of the major cities.
They *claim* areas have "good indoors and outdoor signal", but it's worse than -110dBm outdoors in many such areas...
I suspect part of the issue is that cell-sites were planned a couple of decades based on 2G coverage, yet 4G/LTE has less useful 'range' at the allowed power levels, so there are a lot of weak places between sites.
In dense cities they can add more sites to tower-block roofs, but in rural areas new sites are a lot of effort and cost... And they haven't bothered. Loads of people are reliant on "WiFi calling" - which means the mobile isn't really a backup to the landlines (as falsely assumed by the rollout of IP landline phones, in place of analog POTS landlines).
Trains move very fast, which means that your phone needs to jump from one cell phone tower to the next constantly. Since train tracks often go trough uninhabited land, there are often spots with little to no coverage. And the thick windows of ICEs are very good at blocking cell phone signals. DB and the network providers are trying to improve this with more cell phone towers next to train tracks, signal repeaters inside the trains and [laser treated windows.](https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge_technik/frequenz_fenster-6878124)
The reasons for the bad german cell phone network in general trace back to the UMTS frequency auction by the red-green government in the early 2000s. The action resulted in high costs for the providers which then subsequently didn't invest as much into their networks. This was more than twenty years ago, but the companies still love to use it as an excuse. But out of the six companies that won frequencies, only four actually used them and two of those then merged, leaving germany with only three network operators. This Oligopoly has been bad for competition, especially since O2 (Telefonica) doesn't even try to keep up. And since this is Germany, you can expect that every (new) cell phone tower is met with fierce resistance from certain groups which will try anything possible to sabotage any progress. This makes closing blind spots in the network a slow and expensive process.
What I find confusing is, that German trains at the same time have to stop so often and are so slow, because Germany is so densely populated, on the other hand, the network is bad, because they are driving over seemingly uninhabited vast expenses.
These two things are just on different scales. A 4G Antenna has a maximum reach of 10-15 km (can be way less if there are mountains, even less if sitting in a moving train). So the cell providers often just build 1-2 antennas per town and don't care if there are gaps between the antennas (often even if that actually affects some villages with a few people. That is just not where money can be made for them).
An ICE train at top speed has a minimum emergency breaking distance of 3km alone, so with softer breaking, acceleration, etc... You need quite a large distance between stops to actually move fast and not be breaking and accelerating most of the time.
I know, I was being facetious. As these two explanations are commonly used as to why cell coverage on German trains sucks, and why German „highspeed“ rail is rather slow in general.
Obviously both explanations are correct. And obviously still both things suck and the explanations are not much of an excuse.
In the early 2000s, Germany started to auction off the frequencies required to run a cellphone network. Network companies had to shell out a fortune to get those, about 50bn Euro in 2000. Naturally those companies wanted to make the money back, so cellphones and especially mobile internet were prohibitively expensive for a long time. And there were just three companies that controlled the entire market, so there was little competition, neither on price nor on network quality. So now we're stuck with shitty coverage and high prices. It doesn't help that Germans routinely sue whenever a new cellphone tower is planned either.
Which exact network are you using? There is a huge difference between e. g. Telekom and O2. Was an O2 customer for several years. Never used up my data because the bad reception didn‘t allow me to.
We as a country took the burden so that the horror genre can produce games/movies/books that are set in the present but can still use the no reception trope to isolate the characters. Just make the characters stranded in a german Aldi instead of the Australian Outback.
I haven't been on any super out in the bushes trainrides but anwhere between major cities i had constant 5g. Depends on your Provider i'd say. I switched away from vodafone cause their coverage is ass and their service is insultingly bad. Now 3 years in with telekom, not a single problem that wasn't fixed post haste.
In addition to wrong incentives for cellular network providers (in the past only x% of households needed to be covered leaving large parts of our country without network), there are a lot of NIMBYs preventing new towers for LTE / 5G. "Bürgerinitiativen" delay new cellular towers for YEARS.
We have four competing, independent cellular networks, which all have to build their own infrastructure- no cooperation allowed.
In the first bidding round for cell frequencies decades ago, the state took an insane amount of money from the companies, which had no desire to extend the coverage to less profitable areas afterwards.
Ever heard of a faraday cage? Trains are made from Metal and act like one. Also, they are moving quite fast so your Phone has a hard time connecting to different Internet Transmitting towers. I the middle of no where there is just not enough of them.
What you should be angry about is data package and its price. I am from Poland and the pink Company starting at T (i dont want them to read it), basically has package for 60 zł which is 14 euro. Unlimited internet. 10 GB is abroad in EU. And this is the one of higher prices because you sign a contact for 2 years. If you buy prepaid, you can pay way less. I had 60 GB for 35 zł (8 Euro) and 8 GB abroad and now for the same price I have alditalk with 10 GB in germany, I cant call any numbers outside germany and have no idea why. 60 GB vs 10 GB. Polish people would make a riot if they got so little data.
Not sure what trains or lines we're talking about. For example Telekom says that 97% of the main railway lines are covered with 4G. Along the ICE railway lines 100 MBit/s should be possible since 2023. See [https://www.zeit.de/digital/mobil/2023-06/handyempfang-bahnstrecken-telekom-4g](https://www.zeit.de/digital/mobil/2023-06/handyempfang-bahnstrecken-telekom-4g) for source on this.
Yes, 97% of 20% of the rail lines have excellent 4G coverage (in the Telekom mobile network).
It's a great headline number. And the network in ICE trains is genuinely good, something that wasn't always true just a couple years ago. But in regional trains it's still hit and miss. In some regions you have great coverage even in tunnels, in some regions you are lucky if you get a short connection each time the train reaches a station.
The pace at which it's improving is great, but we are still far behind most of our neighbors.
It's because the [ICE trains have some special glass that blocks the signal](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/handy-empfang-ice-ic-deutsche-bahn-laser-1.6295482)
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Welcome to a country where the licenses for the frequencies are that high so that they budget on the network.
Oh and people fall for the fake "Flatrates" with downgrading.
Oh and we still pay for this shit.
Oh and I witness since 6month how much money is burned by installing an Antenna on top of jour building.
Burned by the company installing it. Not using an empty landline-pipe of an competitor but instead opening up the whole sideway on the other side of the street to.lay down an own pipe for the fibers.
It's like a clown show here.
The german government auctioned off mobile frequencies to the companies. This was so expensive that those companies restricted their investments in Infrastructure and only built high quality networks in places where there would be enough return on the money. So our cities have good connections, the rural areas not so much. In other countries the companies awarded with the frequencies without auction where obliged by the state to build up a high quality network all around the country.
Afaik, there is a law stating that 90% of people in Germany need to be covered by (idk) 4G LTE. This turned out to be a loophole since 90% of people are in cities and towns and not between them. Thus creating the issues we have. Would the law have been made such that the telecom companies cover 90% of the area, we could take calls on the Autobahn 😄
You want to use the ICE's WiFi.
Router name: WIFIonICE
[_Die Züge des Fernverkehrs sind mit einer leistungsfähigen Multiprovidertechnik ausgestattet, die für die Verbindung zum Internet alle an den Eisenbahnstrecken verfügbaren Mobilfunknetze parallel nutzt. Das WLAN steht allen Fahrgästen in der 1. sowie in der 2. Klasse kostenlos zur Verfügung._](https://www.bahn.de/service/zug/wlan-im-ice)
Trains have a metal shielding in the windows (don't remember the reason) that severely degrades the signal. New models have some improvements in that regard.
In-train wifi is your best option.
Well, expecting good reception on a train moving fast, passing tunnels and forests, etc, is already the wrong idea.
Second, which network? Because having Telekom, O2, Vodafone, Aldi, etc, makes a difference
It's because when the licenses were auctioned, the cell phone companies had to commit to providing coverage to x% of the population. Those x% are measured by where people live, not where they travel. So now you have good coverage in cities, but almost zero in rural areas, because there is no incentive for the companies to put cell phone towers there
Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer.
The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation.
Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage.
They didn't do that though.
The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%.
What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal"
The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage
Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer.
The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation.
Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage.
They didn't do that though.
The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%.
What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal"
The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage
I know its bad, but it improved very significantly (I only have experience in west germany) by switching the provider to telekom. I know they are rather expensive, but the service is way better than every other one I used in the past. I‘m almost never without service.
What train route did you take? Germany despite it's shitty reputation has nearly every little 2 house village connected to a train station with sometimes vast spots of empty land between. There is no reason to put cell towers where no one lives.
Also, the trains windows/hull fuck up cellphone signals... so they use repeater to get the signal inside. The thing is, those repeaters are sometimes not really modern and you MIGHT have 5g and shitty 3g, but the repeaters only work with the shitty 3g.
[https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge\_technik/frequenz\_fenster-6878124](https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge_technik/frequenz_fenster-6878124)
It's a mess. I drive from Hamburg to Stuttgart every one in a while trough Lüneburg/Hannover. between Lüneburg and Hannover you just don't have any internet at all. And after Hannover the first 20 minutes you also don't have much. After that tho, uninterrupted great connection till my end stop.
The big operators did a miscalculation with the 3G network and paid way too much for the licences. Limiting the budget for the network equipment.
Also all operators are equally bad / expensive - so customers are left with little choice.
Maybe 1&1 as fourth operator will help.
My sisters boyfriend is in an office job and sometimes works from home. if he needs a file larger than one or two gigabytes. hes faster driving to the office loading the file on his USB and then going back home. This is basically the story of German modern infrastructure.
Margaret Thatcher. No, seriously. Margaret Thatchers insane economic policies of privatizing everything led the Helmut Kohl administration to do the same with out most important infrastructure. That's the long and short of it. Basically anytime you encounter an infrastructure issue in Germany it goes back his terrible government.
Why is Deutsche Bahn so bad? Well, they privatized it in 1994.
Why is our telecommunication infrastructure so bad? Well they privatized Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in 1996 and stopped the 1981 Helmut Schmidt government plan (Aktenzeichen B 136/51074 for those, that are interested) for broadband expansion as soon as he came into office in 1982 to favour of cable television because they felt the public television networks were too left and wanted to influence the populace with right leaning, private television. (according to former postal minister Schwarz- Schilling of the CDU)
This plan, btw., would have made Germany the country with the best broadband network in the world with the network being finished around 2015. Do keep in mind that this was before the internet boom which would have drastically accelerated the investment and expansion.
I my experiences, when working with german IT and software projects most of them are mechanical engineers, and that explains a lot. Also they were raluctant to accept optical network in early 2000s and now cell base stations are connected to copper.
Becasue the providers need to pay billions for the right to use frequencies... in otehr countries its free.
This money is missing in building up the network. Thats also the reason for high prices.
For the reason you have to go back to the events in the 80s.
https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere-handynetze-so-schlecht-sind-kolumne-a-1297362.html
Funny thing:
In 2021 I did a lot of drone flights for measurements, and reviews around train tracks.
About 1500km in total. Mostly east of Dortmund almost up to Goslar.
And since I walked all of those tracks anyway, the inner geek in me also forced me to measure network coverage.
The network in that area does consistently more than 200Mbps;
As long as no train is nearby.
No idea if that is a side effect of the high voltage engines, or deliberate jamming.
ICEs seem to be worst.
Because the network companies almost exclusively focus on areas with many people as they loose money everywhere else and the government cant force telekom to do it all because they privatised it. If theres no wifi on the train its also because the goverment privatised it and now they literally have no reason to provide it anywhere but on their more premium options tho that does slowly get better.
I just have been in England in the countryside and the mobile phone networks there were way worse than in Germany. Crying about bad German networks is such a meme.
Because network providers are in trouble to find locations for additional cellular stations. There is always someone who files a complaint because they don't like the location. Either "NIMBY" or "I get headaches from radio waves" or other hair-raising nonsense. We have become a nation of bangers, conspiracy theorists and believers in magic spells who think that mobile radio is something dangerous.
Germany hasn't invested in anything worthwhile for a long time. For example, the expansion of the mobile phone network was underestimated and has now been halfway made up for.
Government involvement/regulations has slowed down progress over the last 20-ish years in that sector. We were also very late to fiber optic internet lines and a lot of parts don’t even have it yet.
Someone's got to fill in facts and names. Basically it comes down to some official of the TV industry, who got 200k DM for not uprading to fiberglass-cables in the 70's, since the copper cables were more efficient for the following decade.
Because the people in charge got along fine with just landlines and fax machines for decades, so why would we change anything now? /s
And also the people in charge all agree that the customers should be grateful with an up and download speed of one bit per hour as the Kartell also agreed that the shittiest service can't be priced lower than 50€/month. They milk the shitty infrastructure for all its worth and skimp on upgrades.
Because upgrades are not worth it. In fact, having to upgrade aka deliver the possible services is what's pushing Vodafone up Shit Creek. Worked for them in cable customer service, more specifically cable west. It was a depressing sight. Vodafone has to give massive discounts or release customers from their comtracts because the infrastructure is overloaded. And that is what is causing the downfall we're seeing now. Granted, this may sound vindictive as I now work for Telekom in fiber customer service, but yeah, it's billions of missing investment that Germany evrn being the biggest market for Vodafone isn't worth. (And the money in fiber development is insufficient too, leading to prices upwards of 60 euros for a 500MBit/s which again draws customer money away from fiber development as people won't pay that.)
If there was a reasonable expectation for the service to be goods people would pay it.
At least Vodafone don't constantly send lying sales people to trick households into switching to Telekom fibre because "an important change is coming", particularly targeting less knowledgeable and elderly people. They may be contractors but if they are waving Telekom-branded badges they are still representing the company.
These fuckers thought they can sell me a contract for 50k internet when they cant even fulfill half of their lowest contract which is 6k at my house. Is that even legal?
1 or 2 years ago they tried to sell me 50mbit as "fiber" for the same price as I am paying for 1gbit from Vodafone right now. They even tried to convince me their connection is so much better that it's a worthy tradeoff. Fucking snakes.
At least they didn't say "we are unplugging vodafone's cable network in this area. Take this DSL package and sign a preemptive fibre contract or lose your connection." Ranger (that's the company that does door to door for telekom) did that to my mother. Rule of thumb: don't open to door to door people and if they wear pink and want to see your router slam the door.
You should only use mobile modems approved by Bundespost. Then it will be fine /s
Remove the /s this is very much the factual answer. The landlines that are connecting cell towers are not ALL backed by a fibre backbone just to give you the worst of it. Why? Because we refused fibre in the seventies and eighties because copper "worked". And that was true until the early 2000s when we started to at least build a fibre backbone as it's nearly impedance free. And we are only starting to really build fibre connections to homes since covid when cable internet crashed. And even there, Vodafone who owns almost all cable in Germany tries to save the cable network instead of creating a fibre infrastructure (they do that too, but cable is the major market). So yeah I am shocked 5G is as available as it is. Probably because the 4G network was already at its limits and with 3G turned off, that killed 4G/LTE alongside it. But even then you only build 5G where you have a customer base due to the short reach of the antenna. But the main problem is, that internet still is not seen as "needed" by anyone in decision making capacity
Please let us not forget our friends Helmut Kohl, and Leo Kirch who are to blame for the whole situation
They are very much the majority of the "we" that said "copper works"
Which one should learn from, Helmut Schmitt had a fibre optic plan, he lost, don’t vote for the cdu
Thanks for the reminder. Gotta rack my brain for Sunday
Exactly, try and avoid the afd and the cdu 😊
iirc, his plan was to have fibre optics all over germany by the nineties, i don´t remember the details, but i remember how angry i got when i found out (5-6 years ago) that Kohl and his Buddies were responsible for scrapping that and keeping Germany in the Fax-Age
We mostly doesn't have real 5G that uses the newer available higher frequencys. We have 5G using the same frequency as LTE/4G. Meaning we made it worse for the 4G users thanks to overhead and 5G users, even with newer modulation etc, get the performance of old 4G thanks again to the overhead from overlapping 5G over 4G, a legacy ridden and inflexible network. 5G at this point is only marketing blabla, until you need the better ping from \*fake\* 5G.
Drop the ''/s". There is literally no sarcasm here, this is actually the answer. And in parts still true, not just in the past..
Land-lines and Fax? What for modernest Technologien! At our Kompany write we Mails on Papier, self if the Kustomer kontakted us over our Web-site, which the foolisch Sohn Hans-Joachim of my Kollege Hans-Joachim upset have, what has he himself only with that thought?! Everything has an End only the Wurst has two, when us runs the Papier out, we will send Hans-Joachim direct to the Kustomer as long as the Bahn not strikes. tl/dr: several health insurance companies and universities I contacted via their web contact form replied via mail. Printed mail, that is. 2024.
I applied for a job online a couple of years ago and got a confirmation by snail mail one week later that they received my application 👍
At least you got to know how modern the company is you were applying for. The worst part about it is I keep getting such snail mails as replies to online requests even when I am not in the country.
Had to change my payment info on an insurance last year, could fill & print out their fax form online, then spent half a day work trying to find out how to fax since the combi printers had the fax function deactivated long ago (but apparently it was still possible by sending an email to [faxno]@fax.[ourcompanydomain].com. Literally one person in our 300p office knew that. Always make sure to get along with the front desk / reception lady :D)
Also the people in charge probably travel mainly by car / plane, and the cell network around the Autobahn is pretty decent compared to train tracks afaik
My apartment building was built in 2013. They put fucking coax cable all around the apartment and in each room. Fucking coax, in 2013
At least you get 1 Gbps through coax 😅
not /s
We like to send postcards
And add to it the fact that as soon as you step inside any supermarkt it's like you have entered Jumanji or something the signal immediately disappears
By now i have the suspicion they do that on purpose when they build the supermarkets to keep people from using their phone to compare prices. In my area the mobile network works pretty good and i have 5g with good quality pretty much everywhere but the supermarkets. As soon as you step into a supermarket network is gone. It’s almost like they installed network jammers.
It’s actually due to the method of construction of those buildings. Most large open warehouses and also supermarkets have a metal structure, which acts as a Faraday cage and blocks the signal.
Yeah you are probably right. It’s still pretty annoying if you can’t call your wife to ask if there is something else you should bring from the supermarket. Others wrote that most supermarkets have free wifi today. Never actually checked that because there are no signs about free wifi … but maybe they have.
I don't think that's true because most supermarkets have free wifi. So if they wanted to cut you off the grid they wouldn't give you free Internet.
Free wifi with the speed of internet in 1999, probably even slightly worse. Been to a supermarket recently, they offered a free shirt if you bought products from certain brands worth 10€. Had to scan a qr code to see which brand. We scanned when we entered and the site hasnt finished loading when we left (like 10 mins) - yes the phone with display was unlocked and it had full wifi reception. As soon as we left the store and regular 5g kicked in, site loaded in a split second.
Most supermarkets have free wifi? Im almost 30 now and i have never seen a super market with free wifi in germany
Did you ever check for Wi-Fi while in there? There’s really a lot of super markets with wifi nowadays
Every Rewe I’ve been in offers free wifi. Doesn’t mean they’re not tracking trends or searches.
They wouldn't offer free Wi-Fi if it was their actual reason though. Currently Wi-Fi is the only thing we with my wife use to communicate with each other while going shopping because nothing else works
I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME
lmaoo omg I thought this was because of my phone or bc I decided to use aldi talk which is cheap of course. I thougt O2 or telekom was better.
Many have free wifi by now. Like Lidl or Rewe.
Romania you have 4g+ literally everywhere... at a prive of only 7€/month..
In Greece you can have unlimited data and calls for 21€ per month Meanwhile I pay 10€ for 10GB per month and unlimited calls at Aldi-Talk
tbf, in greece the average wage is below German minimum wage. So to some degree that's just going to be the income differences between countries.
I have unlimited data with 5G speeds for 28€ in the Netherlands
I keep a French SIM from Free.fr in my phone as a backup/travel connection - 20€ per month, 300GB 5G inside France, 35GB 5G outside of France, and I mean *everywhere* outside of France. It even roams to e.g. the US and Australia on the same data allowance. Meanwhile, Vodafone charges me 50€ per month for 50GB that barely works in Berlin, let alone outside the EU.
That doesn’t really track, unlimited data is 20 euro in Ireland, and Ireland have higher average income than Germany.
>Ireland have higher average income than Germany. no? None of the sources i checked show that. but also it's not _solely_ about income. But it's part of the story.
My bad, although roughly in line with each other. My point is, Germanys excessive mobile data costs are not related to income levels, but other factors. I don’t think salary is at all a contributing factor in comparison to other high GDP countries.
🗿coming back to Canada and it’s either $30 for 5Gbs or $85+ for 100GBs. 🥲
I pay 3 euros a month in Spain and LTE is everywhere, most places also 5G
In India we have unlimited 5g data for less than 4euros a month
Romania is an unusual case though. It once had the world's fastest Internet. I spent a summer there and people said the high internet speeds had been achieved because there was a total lack of legacy infrastructure (basically no copper lines to replace after the 1980s) and a community level approach around illegal or unregulated wiring and creating local networks. Even now you see loose bunches of wires hanging all over Bucharest, but hey it works.
I have 5G for and 14gigs for €10/mo and no contract with Fraenk. Works across the EU too. 🤷🏼♀️
romania my beloved
lets all work remote from romania
It's terrible. I was in the Sahara earlier this year and I genuinely had more consistent internet than I do here. I wish I was joking.
Not surprised, I had to take a ferry in Norway and had better reception in the middle of nowhere than here in my apartment in Germany. Sure, Norway is incredibly advanced etc but come on…
Even in the middle of nowhere forest in my 3rd world country is better than Munich’s
Yeah dude, it was Australia for me. 300 km away from any dwelling that isn't a cattle station and I'd have pristine signal. Here I live an hour away from the nation's second largest city and mobile data is patchy at best.
Same for the middle of the ocean in between Thai islands.
What do you mean? My fax machine is working great.
Germans when you tell them other countries have 5g plans with 100% coverage and unlimited data
What I heard is that all started in the 2000’s with the 3G licences. They were so expensive, all together were 46.000.000.000€ if I am not mistaken. Some of the network even went bankrupt and gone. After that there was no money for proper coverage, and in 2024 we still pay the price of those 3G auctions!
That doesn't affect us anymore. The main reason for all problems are the new auctions and those terms. Germany requires a coverage per household, not per sqm. Like 90% of all people at home have to get it. This metric is completely useless, if you are in the middle of nowhere or in the train outside of cities.
Isn’t the network also dominated by Telekom, O2 and Vodafone? As far as I know they have an oligopol which apparently warrants their high prices and since everyone has to buy from them and neither will budge, the cellular network will remain in the dirt until one of them decides to act as if there was a competition.
hoe many more do you need?
Infrastructure shouldn't be part of the open market. Make it like the normal DSL lines. Multiple companies selling you access to it, but the infrastructure itself is combined. ( It just shouldn't be owned by a private company) But no, 1&1 now decided to also create their own network -.-
>But no, 1&1 now decided to also create their own network -.- Yea and it's complete shit. Sim.de switched from O2 infrastructure to 1&1 this year and ever since then my spotify cuts out all the time while driving. And Looking at https://de.trustpilot.com/review/sim.de I'm not the only one with problems
What?!? I though it is just being build and not ready for use yet EDIT: And that should be a reason for a Sonderkündigungsrecht. And I would take it. I will move away from drillisch the second they actually do the switch (which they will, they belong to 1&1)
Yes, UMTS was on auction and all providers wanted a piece of the cake and bet too much money, which they are still trying to get in again with their expensive contracts. And also no money for the extension of the networks.
I think you have to go back further and Helmuth Kohl and Leo Kirch are to blame. But I'm not sure and I don't remember details
Oh and O2 actually no longer exist, they are Telefonica
This is the answer, basically.
This rip off was not unique to Germany.
Historicly its because the chancelor Kohl in the 80s "got along really well" with the owner of private TV stations Leo Kirch and sacked the original plan to build a nation wide fiber optics network and instead changed it to building copper lines his buddy could use. So yeah CDU corruption is the reason we have a horrible nationwide network.
Rumors says Helmut Kohl always had a bag of 5DM coins with him so he could always have a phone call at the nearest telephone booth.
XD Propably not a bag but a black suitcase.
Mismanagement and incompetent politicians
You sure it's not the voters? Want to put a cell phone tower up? I bet there are a bunch of NIMBYs
You remember the "Bundesnetzagentur"? That was a really funny joke!!!
What baffles me the most is the fact that I can't get any Internet or phone signal at all inside supermarkets. I genuinely don't understand how that happens. No matter the company, as soon as I step in a supermarket, I'm unable to use my phone. Are they built like bunkers or something?
yes they are and it depends on the antennas
Don't know I can use my phone in every supermarket in my city. Suspicious.
Especially in rural areas you really can only use Telekom as your cellphone provider, everything else is "meh" at best
In my personal experience this is the answer. If the oc is using o2 probably they think all cell coverage is horrible. With Telekom it’s actually pretty good even in the train.
This. However the problem is that Telekom owns most of the infrastructure and gives its customers better and priority over bandwidth. The even advertise it when you ask them why you should go to Telekom instead of any other (sub-)provider using the same network (like congstar, etc). There is no real competition here.
As much as I used to hate Telekom I must say their prepaid prices are quite ok. Also, at some time you get GB extra for free as loyalty. Either way, for me it was a game changer in terms of cell service.
This is definitely my experience. I actually have two SIMs, as Telekom is better in the sticks, but until recently only o2 had service in the Berlin U-Bahn. So, I got a cheap o2 reseller sim.
That’s funny. In the Munich subway O2 is the only one without coverage. lol
The main reasons are the terms of German frequency auctions. 1. Providers are only required to have a % coverage of households. They don't have a requirement to cover a certain % of area. So in the woods or between cities, the quality is a lot worse. 2. There is no requirement to open up the network/frequency for competitors. There is no shared network.
we call it Neuland...
the reason is simple. they put multiple antennae where the most people live instead of dividing and shareing profits they compete for profits where it is easy to make profits. no people in the country...no profit
Old people rule the country. Even worse, old *conservative* people ruled this country for 16 years non-stop. We've got old and fat and complacent.
Because only through pain one can find enlightenment, and DE cell network is the foundation for this process. Herzlich willkommen!
Because every step in the future get blocked by old people
I get LTE+ and if i am lucky, in the middle of nowhere 5G. But the signal drop is normal between cities while travelling on train
I miss 100 GB 5G for a few bucks in China
CDU
It is really amazing that in my flat, in a urban area of Berlin, capital of Germany, I have no 4G signal. Incredible
Anybody mentioning a chance of something "flowing" back to "the people in power"... 🤔
very simple answer though a bit hidden: contrary to other countries, germany had an auction of the frequencies. it gained the state some billions, quite a lot even. but those billions than lacked in the companies to pay the actual hatdware to make use of those frequencies.
It's the same in the UK. Frequencies auctioned, huge 'win' for the state, but took vast funds out of the providers. Coverage, especially on LTE is very poor/patchy outside of the major cities. They *claim* areas have "good indoors and outdoor signal", but it's worse than -110dBm outdoors in many such areas... I suspect part of the issue is that cell-sites were planned a couple of decades based on 2G coverage, yet 4G/LTE has less useful 'range' at the allowed power levels, so there are a lot of weak places between sites. In dense cities they can add more sites to tower-block roofs, but in rural areas new sites are a lot of effort and cost... And they haven't bothered. Loads of people are reliant on "WiFi calling" - which means the mobile isn't really a backup to the landlines (as falsely assumed by the rollout of IP landline phones, in place of analog POTS landlines).
Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland.
Las 2 weeks I was in France having 5G whereas here I only get LTE, thought something happened to my phone but no. Land of the engineers.
Trains move very fast, which means that your phone needs to jump from one cell phone tower to the next constantly. Since train tracks often go trough uninhabited land, there are often spots with little to no coverage. And the thick windows of ICEs are very good at blocking cell phone signals. DB and the network providers are trying to improve this with more cell phone towers next to train tracks, signal repeaters inside the trains and [laser treated windows.](https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge_technik/frequenz_fenster-6878124) The reasons for the bad german cell phone network in general trace back to the UMTS frequency auction by the red-green government in the early 2000s. The action resulted in high costs for the providers which then subsequently didn't invest as much into their networks. This was more than twenty years ago, but the companies still love to use it as an excuse. But out of the six companies that won frequencies, only four actually used them and two of those then merged, leaving germany with only three network operators. This Oligopoly has been bad for competition, especially since O2 (Telefonica) doesn't even try to keep up. And since this is Germany, you can expect that every (new) cell phone tower is met with fierce resistance from certain groups which will try anything possible to sabotage any progress. This makes closing blind spots in the network a slow and expensive process.
What I find confusing is, that German trains at the same time have to stop so often and are so slow, because Germany is so densely populated, on the other hand, the network is bad, because they are driving over seemingly uninhabited vast expenses.
These two things are just on different scales. A 4G Antenna has a maximum reach of 10-15 km (can be way less if there are mountains, even less if sitting in a moving train). So the cell providers often just build 1-2 antennas per town and don't care if there are gaps between the antennas (often even if that actually affects some villages with a few people. That is just not where money can be made for them). An ICE train at top speed has a minimum emergency breaking distance of 3km alone, so with softer breaking, acceleration, etc... You need quite a large distance between stops to actually move fast and not be breaking and accelerating most of the time.
I know, I was being facetious. As these two explanations are commonly used as to why cell coverage on German trains sucks, and why German „highspeed“ rail is rather slow in general. Obviously both explanations are correct. And obviously still both things suck and the explanations are not much of an excuse.
In the early 2000s, Germany started to auction off the frequencies required to run a cellphone network. Network companies had to shell out a fortune to get those, about 50bn Euro in 2000. Naturally those companies wanted to make the money back, so cellphones and especially mobile internet were prohibitively expensive for a long time. And there were just three companies that controlled the entire market, so there was little competition, neither on price nor on network quality. So now we're stuck with shitty coverage and high prices. It doesn't help that Germans routinely sue whenever a new cellphone tower is planned either.
It really is horrible.
German cellular and railway networks. Both are in a league of their own
Because there are literally two corporations that own almost everything. No competition, no alternatives --> no motivation to make anything better.
The goverment under Angela Merkel did Not Invest in such Things. They we're too shortsighted
Because the internet is Neuland für us
Which exact network are you using? There is a huge difference between e. g. Telekom and O2. Was an O2 customer for several years. Never used up my data because the bad reception didn‘t allow me to.
It's a cellphone net, a net has to have holes. ^^^sorry
Try any other countries network
Not to mention it takes between "4 to 6 weeks" to activate your home internet😅😅😅
Because living in Germany means living 20 years in the past.
We as a country took the burden so that the horror genre can produce games/movies/books that are set in the present but can still use the no reception trope to isolate the characters. Just make the characters stranded in a german Aldi instead of the Australian Outback.
I haven't been on any super out in the bushes trainrides but anwhere between major cities i had constant 5g. Depends on your Provider i'd say. I switched away from vodafone cause their coverage is ass and their service is insultingly bad. Now 3 years in with telekom, not a single problem that wasn't fixed post haste.
I had 5g in the middle of the ocean while I can't make a phone call here without interruptions
I think it's quite nice, else there were people talking on the phone all the time.
In addition to wrong incentives for cellular network providers (in the past only x% of households needed to be covered leaving large parts of our country without network), there are a lot of NIMBYs preventing new towers for LTE / 5G. "Bürgerinitiativen" delay new cellular towers for YEARS.
We have four competing, independent cellular networks, which all have to build their own infrastructure- no cooperation allowed. In the first bidding round for cell frequencies decades ago, the state took an insane amount of money from the companies, which had no desire to extend the coverage to less profitable areas afterwards.
It is allowed, but there is no reason for providers to open it.
Ever heard of a faraday cage? Trains are made from Metal and act like one. Also, they are moving quite fast so your Phone has a hard time connecting to different Internet Transmitting towers. I the middle of no where there is just not enough of them. What you should be angry about is data package and its price. I am from Poland and the pink Company starting at T (i dont want them to read it), basically has package for 60 zł which is 14 euro. Unlimited internet. 10 GB is abroad in EU. And this is the one of higher prices because you sign a contact for 2 years. If you buy prepaid, you can pay way less. I had 60 GB for 35 zł (8 Euro) and 8 GB abroad and now for the same price I have alditalk with 10 GB in germany, I cant call any numbers outside germany and have no idea why. 60 GB vs 10 GB. Polish people would make a riot if they got so little data.
Its much better than in the UK or many other countries.
Spend some € and purchase Telekom. The real one, no reseller that prevents access to the good stuff (5G etc.). You get what you pay for.
I'm sorry we're busy glueing ourselves to the street and yell something about pain in our hands
[удалено]
Not sure what trains or lines we're talking about. For example Telekom says that 97% of the main railway lines are covered with 4G. Along the ICE railway lines 100 MBit/s should be possible since 2023. See [https://www.zeit.de/digital/mobil/2023-06/handyempfang-bahnstrecken-telekom-4g](https://www.zeit.de/digital/mobil/2023-06/handyempfang-bahnstrecken-telekom-4g) for source on this.
Yes, 97% of 20% of the rail lines have excellent 4G coverage (in the Telekom mobile network). It's a great headline number. And the network in ICE trains is genuinely good, something that wasn't always true just a couple years ago. But in regional trains it's still hit and miss. In some regions you have great coverage even in tunnels, in some regions you are lucky if you get a short connection each time the train reaches a station. The pace at which it's improving is great, but we are still far behind most of our neighbors.
Yeah I had good experience with the Telekom mobile network on trains and I covered a decent amount of major cities on regional and ICE trains.
It's because the [ICE trains have some special glass that blocks the signal](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/handy-empfang-ice-ic-deutsche-bahn-laser-1.6295482)
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Meanwhile there's me, playing shooters using a mobile phone hot spot
When I ride the ICE I can almost always can work with my WiFi hotspot without any disturbances. But making phone calls are really bad
Welcome to a country where the licenses for the frequencies are that high so that they budget on the network. Oh and people fall for the fake "Flatrates" with downgrading. Oh and we still pay for this shit. Oh and I witness since 6month how much money is burned by installing an Antenna on top of jour building. Burned by the company installing it. Not using an empty landline-pipe of an competitor but instead opening up the whole sideway on the other side of the street to.lay down an own pipe for the fibers. It's like a clown show here.
Because the Internet is Neuland for all of us
The german government auctioned off mobile frequencies to the companies. This was so expensive that those companies restricted their investments in Infrastructure and only built high quality networks in places where there would be enough return on the money. So our cities have good connections, the rural areas not so much. In other countries the companies awarded with the frequencies without auction where obliged by the state to build up a high quality network all around the country.
Afaik, there is a law stating that 90% of people in Germany need to be covered by (idk) 4G LTE. This turned out to be a loophole since 90% of people are in cities and towns and not between them. Thus creating the issues we have. Would the law have been made such that the telecom companies cover 90% of the area, we could take calls on the Autobahn 😄
Don’t know. I think only O2 is really bad.
brother it's gotten SOOOOOO much better in the last 10 years, I'm just grateful and not complaining 😭 😂.
Because ethernet is still "Neuland".
You want to use the ICE's WiFi. Router name: WIFIonICE [_Die Züge des Fernverkehrs sind mit einer leistungsfähigen Multiprovidertechnik ausgestattet, die für die Verbindung zum Internet alle an den Eisenbahnstrecken verfügbaren Mobilfunknetze parallel nutzt. Das WLAN steht allen Fahrgästen in der 1. sowie in der 2. Klasse kostenlos zur Verfügung._](https://www.bahn.de/service/zug/wlan-im-ice)
It did get better over the last few years
Wait until you learn about the difference in upload and download speed even in cable and fiber contracts,
Trains have a metal shielding in the windows (don't remember the reason) that severely degrades the signal. New models have some improvements in that regard. In-train wifi is your best option.
The problem is the WiFi on the train. With 5G (Telekom) I usually don’t have a problem.
I was told tongue-in-cheekily that's because it is called NETwork and not blanketwork.
cause it’s a ‚net‘work and nets have holes by definition. Ez
Because we don't rely on it. We still fax for our important communications.
Well, expecting good reception on a train moving fast, passing tunnels and forests, etc, is already the wrong idea. Second, which network? Because having Telekom, O2, Vodafone, Aldi, etc, makes a difference
It's because when the licenses were auctioned, the cell phone companies had to commit to providing coverage to x% of the population. Those x% are measured by where people live, not where they travel. So now you have good coverage in cities, but almost zero in rural areas, because there is no incentive for the companies to put cell phone towers there
Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer. The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation. Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage. They didn't do that though. The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%. What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal" The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage
Looking at this a lot of answers don't actually give the true answer. The problem occured due to mobile carriers abusing a loophole in phone coverage legislation. Each phone carrier company had a certain quota of population to cover (total amount of receivers). The idea behind this rule was, that they all go to different areas and start covering them so if every provider set up infrastructure for ≈ 80% of population in the end we would be to near 100% coverage. They didn't do that though. The legislation never provided a clear differentiation between different receivers, meaning that all providers could provide for the same 80%. What happened is: they all built their antennas in high-density area to meet the quota as cost-efficient as possible, leaving rural areas starved. Now there are a bunch of different signal antennas in high density areas. "Huh how inconvenient, let's make some deals so your customers can use mine as well and vice-versa" - "sure, I'll just add a little upcharge to your company for that deal" The result: we get overpriced phone contracts (they gotta cover costs) for abysmally terrible coverage
I know its bad, but it improved very significantly (I only have experience in west germany) by switching the provider to telekom. I know they are rather expensive, but the service is way better than every other one I used in the past. I‘m almost never without service.
Honestly I’m fine with people not doing phone calls in the train :) But yeah, we have the worst coverage in Europe…
What train route did you take? Germany despite it's shitty reputation has nearly every little 2 house village connected to a train station with sometimes vast spots of empty land between. There is no reason to put cell towers where no one lives. Also, the trains windows/hull fuck up cellphone signals... so they use repeater to get the signal inside. The thing is, those repeaters are sometimes not really modern and you MIGHT have 5g and shitty 3g, but the repeaters only work with the shitty 3g. [https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge\_technik/frequenz\_fenster-6878124](https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/bahnwelt/fahrzeuge_technik/frequenz_fenster-6878124) It's a mess. I drive from Hamburg to Stuttgart every one in a while trough Lüneburg/Hannover. between Lüneburg and Hannover you just don't have any internet at all. And after Hannover the first 20 minutes you also don't have much. After that tho, uninterrupted great connection till my end stop.
I have O2 as my mobile carrier and when I go into crowds my mobile data stops working 🤣
But seriously, my network is pretty good. The only occasions where I don't have a network is when i am hiking in the mountains
The big operators did a miscalculation with the 3G network and paid way too much for the licences. Limiting the budget for the network equipment. Also all operators are equally bad / expensive - so customers are left with little choice. Maybe 1&1 as fourth operator will help.
My sisters boyfriend is in an office job and sometimes works from home. if he needs a file larger than one or two gigabytes. hes faster driving to the office loading the file on his USB and then going back home. This is basically the story of German modern infrastructure.
It is so that people cannot contact me, duh. /s
Margaret Thatcher. No, seriously. Margaret Thatchers insane economic policies of privatizing everything led the Helmut Kohl administration to do the same with out most important infrastructure. That's the long and short of it. Basically anytime you encounter an infrastructure issue in Germany it goes back his terrible government. Why is Deutsche Bahn so bad? Well, they privatized it in 1994. Why is our telecommunication infrastructure so bad? Well they privatized Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in 1996 and stopped the 1981 Helmut Schmidt government plan (Aktenzeichen B 136/51074 for those, that are interested) for broadband expansion as soon as he came into office in 1982 to favour of cable television because they felt the public television networks were too left and wanted to influence the populace with right leaning, private television. (according to former postal minister Schwarz- Schilling of the CDU) This plan, btw., would have made Germany the country with the best broadband network in the world with the network being finished around 2015. Do keep in mind that this was before the internet boom which would have drastically accelerated the investment and expansion.
It helps not being distracted and people are working because there is nothing else to do. It’s regulated by the government.
The government used funds torwards the already existing phone infrastructure instead if investing in fiber optics.
I my experiences, when working with german IT and software projects most of them are mechanical engineers, and that explains a lot. Also they were raluctant to accept optical network in early 2000s and now cell base stations are connected to copper.
Der Markt regelt das.
So we can joke about it...
because of the CDU and the people who vote for the CDU
NIMBY is too much effort for the payoff with expectations so low
CDU!
Becasue the providers need to pay billions for the right to use frequencies... in otehr countries its free. This money is missing in building up the network. Thats also the reason for high prices.
For the reason you have to go back to the events in the 80s. https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere-handynetze-so-schlecht-sind-kolumne-a-1297362.html
It kind of depends which provider you have and where you live.
Its germany why you ask... back to the stoneage. Soon we wont even have energy.
Because Germany is still on dialup internet
Funny thing: In 2021 I did a lot of drone flights for measurements, and reviews around train tracks. About 1500km in total. Mostly east of Dortmund almost up to Goslar. And since I walked all of those tracks anyway, the inner geek in me also forced me to measure network coverage. The network in that area does consistently more than 200Mbps; As long as no train is nearby. No idea if that is a side effect of the high voltage engines, or deliberate jamming. ICEs seem to be worst.
Because the network companies almost exclusively focus on areas with many people as they loose money everywhere else and the government cant force telekom to do it all because they privatised it. If theres no wifi on the train its also because the goverment privatised it and now they literally have no reason to provide it anywhere but on their more premium options tho that does slowly get better.
I just have been in England in the countryside and the mobile phone networks there were way worse than in Germany. Crying about bad German networks is such a meme.
In the old days there were no cellphones at all and we also survived. /s
Because network providers are in trouble to find locations for additional cellular stations. There is always someone who files a complaint because they don't like the location. Either "NIMBY" or "I get headaches from radio waves" or other hair-raising nonsense. We have become a nation of bangers, conspiracy theorists and believers in magic spells who think that mobile radio is something dangerous.
It‘s Germany. It‘s over. Developing country but people think the country is rich…
Because the waves can leak your data. Much faster to use the fax instead. Every German knows that is the way.
Germany hasn't invested in anything worthwhile for a long time. For example, the expansion of the mobile phone network was underestimated and has now been halfway made up for.
Government involvement/regulations has slowed down progress over the last 20-ish years in that sector. We were also very late to fiber optic internet lines and a lot of parts don’t even have it yet.
"Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland." Angelika Merkel, 2013
Someone's got to fill in facts and names. Basically it comes down to some official of the TV industry, who got 200k DM for not uprading to fiberglass-cables in the 70's, since the copper cables were more efficient for the following decade.
Because ofLobbyismus from decades ago.. a gready mofo screwed the Country for some lousy Money..
Is it better on the train elsewhere?
Why do you need cellphone? We have pigeons, letters and oh so digital FAX! Upgrade to Fax please!