> he behaviour of Telekom is the problem. That must change. The state has to ensure fairness rather than allow monopolies to milk The People.

The state is the monopoly here.

Telekom is still partially state-owned (~27%), since they were, back in the 90s, privatized from the former total monopoly "Deutsche Bundespost" and the related ministry "Bundespostministerium". Nowadays, the parts of the ministry that were back then regulating EM spectrum, allowable phones (basically phone police, you had to rent from Bundespost or go to jail) and generally being corrupt (relations of the former ministry to copper manufacturers is why they botched the first fibre rollouts in '95 and then ignored the topic for 20 years). Nowadays, the "Regulierungsbehoerde", staffed with the same people, is supposed to regulate their former colleagues at Telekom. Telekom got all the networks and was never split up, so it still has a (~85%?) monopoly on everything copper basically, as well as on customers, using this monopoly to bully other ISPs as well as it's own customers and extending this monopoly into future tech. And the state has a financial interest in this regulation being as lax as possible. So you can imagine how this goes...

The best solution here would probably be the EU launching its own internet constellation. China and the US both have them. How is this any different than the issues surrounding GPS?

Well, you have a point but on the other side since about 20 years the Telekom does not even think about improving the internet connection in the place I live. At some point you're just fed up. To me it seems like they just do not care about providing a good service and even if they would now provide a good service I would be more willing to give my money someone else.

are all starlink connections routed through the US?

don't they do local downlinks? at least for countries they have an agreement with or where the infrastructure is available?

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Not an alternative anymore. Vodafone started doing the same shit with their peering at the end of last year.

Both throttle in my area unless we vpn so I just share a vpn with a friend to fix it.

Vodafone seems also terrible, but maybe better than DT?

Not true.

https://www.lwlhome.de/

Telefonica enters the chat.w

With ADSL: broken waterproofing somewhere along the line, water gets into the cables or connections == broken while it's raining.

Then you call their customer support, tech comes out, it's not raining anymore and everything works, and the problem doesn't get fixed.

This person just wants internet that doesn't frequently cut out.

Don't blame them for their choices. Blame Telekom and its shareholders for not being able to reliably supply broadband internet in 2026. Blame the government for not having consumer protection regarding right to internet access. But don't blame this person for just doing what is necessary for having basic internet access.

Excuse me, I remember when DSL was the latest and greatest, it can't possibly be this old. :')

The bright side of this is that there is at least some sort of competition, since they operate on very different infrastucture. This is the free market premise on how quality and price should improve. Reality is often different though, because most customers are not really comparing and/or voting with their feet.

Meh, the threat vector to me as a resident of Germany is the German government - not some dude at the other end of the world. What is Musk going to do? Ban me from Twitter? Not sell me a Tesla?

That's nothing compared to what German authorities can do to me. Germany is a country where you get police searching your home for torrenting movies or making stupid jokes on Facebook. So yeah.

Also about enshittification - one could argue that our local ISPs never left that phase to begin with.