Deutsche Telekom is the former monopoly that was half-privatized around 1995 or something. The state still owns quite a large stake of it.
They milk their ancient copper crap for everything they can while keeping prices high.
They are refusing useful backbone interconnects to monopolize access to their customers (Actually they are not allowed to refuse. They just offer interconnections only in their data centers in the middle of nowhere, where you need to rent their (outrageously priced) rackspace and fibres because there is nothing else. They are refusing for decades to do anything useful at the big exchanges like DECIX).
And if there should ever be a small competitor that on their own tries to lay fibre somewhere, they quickly lay their own fibre into the open ditches (they are allowed to do that) and offer just enough rebates for their former copper customers to switch to their fibre that the competitor cannot recoup the invest and goes bankrupt. Since that dance is now known to everyone, even the announcement of Telekom laying their own fibres kills the competitors' projects there. So after a competitor's announcement of fibre rollout, Telekom does the same, project dead, no fibre rollout at all.
Oh, and since it is a partially-state-owned former monopoly/ministry, the state and competition authorities turn a blind eye to all that, when not actively promoting them...
Then there is the problem of "5G reception" vs. "5G reception with usable bandwidth". A lot of overbooking goes on, many cells don't have sufficient capacity allocated, so there are reports of 4G actually being faster in many places.
And also, yes, you can get 5G in a lot of actually populated areas. But you certainly will pay through the nose for that, usually you get a low-GB amount of traffic included, so maybe a tenth of the Microsoft monorepo in question. The rest is pay-10Eur-per-GB or something.
It is almost as bad as you say, except that I recently noticed several instances of competitors offering cheaper fiber than Telekom and surviving. Still, overall fiber buildout is low, like... I looked it up, reportedly 36% now.
Afaik the special right is granted to everyone providing fibre services to the public to be informed about any ditches on public ground being dug and getting the opportunity to throw their fibre in before the ditch is closed again.
Deutsche Telekom is the former monopoly that was half-privatized around 1995 or something. The state still owns quite a large stake of it.
They milk their ancient copper crap for everything they can while keeping prices high.
They are refusing useful backbone interconnects to monopolize access to their customers (Actually they are not allowed to refuse. They just offer interconnections only in their data centers in the middle of nowhere, where you need to rent their (outrageously priced) rackspace and fibres because there is nothing else. They are refusing for decades to do anything useful at the big exchanges like DECIX).
And if there should ever be a small competitor that on their own tries to lay fibre somewhere, they quickly lay their own fibre into the open ditches (they are allowed to do that) and offer just enough rebates for their former copper customers to switch to their fibre that the competitor cannot recoup the invest and goes bankrupt. Since that dance is now known to everyone, even the announcement of Telekom laying their own fibres kills the competitors' projects there. So after a competitor's announcement of fibre rollout, Telekom does the same, project dead, no fibre rollout at all.
Oh, and since it is a partially-state-owned former monopoly/ministry, the state and competition authorities turn a blind eye to all that, when not actively promoting them...
Then there is the problem of "5G reception" vs. "5G reception with usable bandwidth". A lot of overbooking goes on, many cells don't have sufficient capacity allocated, so there are reports of 4G actually being faster in many places.
And also, yes, you can get 5G in a lot of actually populated areas. But you certainly will pay through the nose for that, usually you get a low-GB amount of traffic included, so maybe a tenth of the Microsoft monorepo in question. The rest is pay-10Eur-per-GB or something.