Holy shit. Germany really is a third-world country in regards to connection speeds and reliability. I am visiting my dad this summer, that's why I'm here in the first place. Germany has the most unstable GSM/EDGE connections I have ever seen and everytime I go to Germany, I get reminded of that. Sure, they are slow by design, but in Austria, you can at least use them! In Germany, you
simply.
fucking.
can't.
I couldn't even transmit 10 bytes to my Raspberry Pi 3B without interruption, at any given point in time.
I really have to force my phone to stay in WCDMA/LTE mode now... Great stuff.

It really depends on the carrier. If you're on anything else than Vodafone or Telekom, forget it.

@kolaente I use the Telefonica network and don't have that experiences.

@FilipeRamalho Telefonica's connection feels like they're using broken bamboo pipes that my fucking dogs have shit on.

@kolaente I can use all carriers here, and the problem is that Telefonica sometimes has reception where even the former Mannesmann (Vodafone) and Telekom aren't available, so I can't just disable Telefonica's networks either :(

This is Vodafone

This is Telefonica

And people say the middle of the US is a backwater of the internet.

I thought you Germans had just about everything better than us.

@starrynights89 there were plans to put fiber everywhere, back in the 90s(!) But they weren't executed...

@Alice Well, at least your internet is not as expensive as in Switzerland...

@PonySlaystation I thought first when reading your comment "That can't be true". One search later ... WTF 50 Euros for only internet (atleast it's fast)

Now imagine: speedtest always tells me that my connection is SLOWER than 96% of Germany.

FUCK YEA! 1&1!

@kolaente We're still waiting on fiber internet in my city. Should get it sometime before 2020 I hope.

@Jilano Sadly we don't. But I have a @Floydian

@FilipeRamalho Yup, but our salaries ar also higher, so it somewhat evens out...
But the mobile phone contracts are horribly expensive! It's laughable what EU citizens pay for the same service 🙈

@PonySlaystation correction: European citizens outside of Germany.

I pay 10€/month for about 1.75 GB with Vodafone here + 50min/SMS. I lived one year in France where I payed 20€/month for 100gb good LTE + flat...

@kolaente 100 fucking gigabytes?! how is that even possible?
I pay 45 CHF (~40 euronen) for 5GB...

@PonySlaystation they even have 25gb roaming in Switzerland 😏

This is slightly off topic but still amusing enough to post here. It was, I believe, a stand up comic from the early 2000s. His funny story went something like this, "I met this young lady who was so excited about her new cell phone plan. She tells me she gets this for free, and that for free, and this new innovative software accelerator for free.. and her monthly bill is only= £300.00!"

@bols59 ONLY !

@kolaente woah! For 29.99 eurodollhairs just using the roaming would be many times cheaper 😅

@Floydian someone mentioned @Alice as the national landmark of Germany, so starrynight mentioned you as his national landmark 😁😀

You haven't visit Egypt yet 😀

Then there are poor souls like me who only get 16k connection (which is better than 5 years ago 2k but I'd had to pay for 16k since that's the smallest Paket they had) from all DSL providers because Telekom doesn't fucking care 🤔. Thank got for unitymedia (who's internet always fucking sucks thanks to DS-Lite and the fact that they promise 150k but only 50k of these actually succeed to not get lost the way over here 😑 Also the Router is in the worst possible spot thanks to this I have to use a power line to make a 2nd WiFi network which further reduces my connection to 16k again. And then I see a fiber box just ~100m away from my home but oh wait.. It's another area. This means no fiber for me..

@Subtixx If that's really the case and the bottleneck is not in your network, you can file a complain via the Bundesnetzagentur. Normally Unitymedia will do sth about it if the Bundesnetzagentur is involved.
ISPs are lazy af.
We also have Unitymedia with 400k which they deliver.

@kolaente Yes but the big issue here is that they don't need to deliver. It says UP To not GUARANTEED.. 😤

@Subtixx yeah but they have to deliver more than a third of what you pay for

Third-world countries have better connection than Germany, also free wifi every-fucking-where, all restaurants, most parks, city centers, etc.

ALSO, card payment accepted mostly anywhere, and touch payment too ( or whatever it is called).

I am talking about my third world country, where I can get tacos everywhere too.

@mundo03 In Germany there is a lot of Wifi !? Atleast in my region \_O_o_/

Well internet is "Neuland" for us in Germany

@Alice In RLP around Mainz / Rheinhessen

@FilipeRamalho yeah sure, paid wifi, 4 to 9 euros per day pass.

@mundo03 I mean free wifi, but there is also that. The Freifunk Mainz Verein has for example a lot of hotspots and nodes around Mainz and most stores have Wifi (exception villages, but in villages there is Freifunk instead)

@FilipeRamalho well god dammit I can't connect anywhere. And I forgot my international sim card 🙄🙄

@mundo03 Well then you're really out of luck. The Telekom pass would be cheaper then buying a german prepaid sim, if you only need it for a few days.

@starrynights89 that's what everyone at work was implying, too (that I'd be going to the land of better internet)...