No more internet flat rates in germany, ISP calls americans parasites

[Rydian]

Reminds me of that peering issue between Level 3 and Cogent a while back.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...ering-and-cogent-communications-55014572.html
Boy, they both came out of that one looking terrible.

 

[Silverthorn]

OMG They want to cap Internet .
As I understand it, the article says that the ISP will limit the amount of content you can download from independant (from the ISP) content providers (understand Youtube and such...) while the contents they provide themselves remains uncapped.
So basically they want to force customers to use their own service by using "penalties" if you don't stick with them...
On a side note in France some ISPs currently limit the maximum download speed from some websites (Youtube and others again...), but that's only speed and it can easily be avoided by using a proxy.

 

[DinohScene]

Internet in Germany always was shitty.
Especially in rural areas or very small villages.

 

[DSGamer64]

Uncapped.

Subscribers will have unlimited access to the providers' own content and services, but limited (and slower) access to other content (like Youtube, or torrents). And if users want faster/unrestricted access to those other things, they'll have to pay extra.

And yes, this means providers will be monitoring the users' internet traffic.

And internet service caps have already been proven to be terrible ideas in other countries. Germany's ISP's should learn a thing or two about bandwidth caps from Canadian ISP's, because they have been notorious about their anti-unlimited policies up until recently, now they all have unlimited but it costs extra on top of your access plan which can range from 30 GB to 250 GB depending on which service you get. Take it from me, 30 GB doesn't go very far when you are a Steam user, and even when I had 80 GB it was still not enough monthly. Get 4 people using the Internet constantly and streaming data or downloading files really eats it up fast, I am glad I have unlimited now as it's one less hassle to worry about.

Also, Canadians for quite some time, have absolutely hated having bandwidth caps, it's as bad as our absurd connection costs.

 

[Silverthorn]

Internet in Germany always was shitty.
Especially in rural areas or very small villages.

That's so true. I got to experience it first-hand as I once had to wait for about 2min just to load my email page.
When I got back (after three weeks) I had realized I was actually lucky to have a decent connection.

 

[DinohScene]

That's so true. I got to experience it first-hand as I once had to wait for about 2min just to load my email page.
When I got back (after three weeks) I had realized I was actually lucky to have a decent connection.

Mate of mine lived in Germany.
Had an avarage download speed of 3.5 KB/s.
I know that I at the time had a 3MB/s connection.
After losing me house, I currently have a 300 KB/s connection.

It does the job for me and I can't complain.
indeed, everything is better then a 3.5 KB/s
I think his ISP used wiretapped dial-up from Afghanistan.

 

[Silverthorn]

Mate of mine lived in Germany.
Had an avarage download speed of 3.5 KB/s.
I know that I at the time had a 3MB/s connection.
After losing me house, I currently have a 300 KB/s connection.

It does the job for me and I can't complain.
indeed, everything is better then a 3.5 KB/s
I think his ISP used wiretapped dial-up from Afghanistan.

I currently have a 2MB/s and it's largely sufficient for me. Only problem is there are very regular microbreaks (1sec) with the connection, which can sometimes be annoying.

 

[DinohScene]

I currently have a 2MB/s and it's largely sufficient for me. Only problem is there are very regular microbreaks (1sec) with the connection, which can sometimes be annoying.

That's indeed annoying.
However it's not that extremely bad.

 

[PsyBlade]

they will cap at 75GiB/month
imho that's not much even for today's standards
but they will START doing it in 2016 and then do it for at least some years

and after you hit the cap the speed is limited to under 50KiB/s which is horrible even today
it will essentially be disabled, but they still can claim unlimited internet on paper/in adverts

 

[chartube12]

An international law stopping ISPs from selling the internet ala carte expires again in 2016. I can see were Germany ISPs may be heading if it isn't renewed.

 

[M[u]ddy]

I'm moving to Germany in september....FML

You always have the choice of using a different ISP. Also the Telekom only handles phone internet.
If you have cable TV you can use that for internet instead. It's a lot faster, too.

 

[The Milkman]

Well that sucks, I feel sorry for you Germans, limited use on Internet sucks.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Uncapped.

Lol, that makes way more sense. Why not say "uncapped"?

Subscribers will have unlimited access to the providers' own content and services, but limited (and slower) access to other content (like Youtube, or torrents). And if users want faster/unrestricted access to those other things, they'll have to pay extra.

And yes, this means providers will be monitoring the users' internet traffic.

A lot of ISP's do that actually. According to this article (and I'm not sure how accurate or up to date it is, so keep that in mind), over 64% of US broadband subscribers have a cap.

 

[pasc]

Time to move...

 

[Pleng]

they will cap at 75GiB/month
imho that's not much even for today's standards
but they will START doing it in 2016 and then do it for at least some years

It's pretty much standard to have usage allowances, or even more floury 'fair use policy's on so called 'unlimited' packages in the UK. And they're waaaaay less generous than 75Gb! When I left I think there was only one company offering truly unlimited service. And it wasn't exactly cheap.

At the end of the day I think it's fair. Why should somebody who only reads a couple of emails and watches a couple of youtube videos a month pay the same as somebody who's downloading 20 torrents a day?

 

[Rydian]

It's pretty much standard to have usage allowances, or even more floury 'fair use policy's on so called 'unlimited' packages in the UK. And they're waaaaay less generous than 75Gb! When I left I think there was only one company offering truly unlimited service. And it wasn't exactly cheap.

At the end of the day I think it's fair. Why should somebody who only reads a couple of emails and watches a couple of youtube videos a month pay the same as somebody who's downloading 20 torrents a day?

That's why they sell multiple tiers... even DSL does that, when I was in the mountains it ranged from 768Kb to ~3Mb range, I was on 1.5Mb. People who only wanted low-key stuff could pay less for the cheaper bandwidth rate.

 

[Pleng]

Yes but how FAST you want something doesn't equate to how MUCH you're going to download, does it? I could have a 2Meg connection downloading torrents 24/7 or a 20Meg connection that's only used to stream a couple of high def movies per month.

 

[Rydian]

Yes but how FAST you want something doesn't equate to how MUCH you're going to download, does it? I could have a 2Meg connection downloading torrents 24/7 or a 20Meg connection that's only used to stream a couple of high def movies per month.

It does place an upper cap, which is why ISPs that do enforce limits will lower your bandwidth dramatically after you pass the cap, in order to make sure that you can't use up nearly as much for the remaining period of time.

 

[jowan]

You always have the choice of using a different ISP. Also the Telekom only handles phone internet.
If you have cable TV you can use that for internet instead. It's a lot faster, too.

Well, I'll be staying at a students apartment (Marburg), so I don't really know which one are they using, I guess a can hire another one but that would increase the apartment fee :/

 

[relminator]

lol. I pay 1usd per 2 hours on a 2g connection at 53kbps here. I bet your free dial up is faster.