Jun 09 07:41 2018, Robert Bashe wrote to Ward Dossche:
RB> I might add that Germany, still one of the larger regions, is very RB> backward in DSL connection speeds. Fiber lines are rare and mainly in RB> large cities, and even where they exist, the German Telekom (30% RB> owned by the government, which gives you an idea of it's flexibility) RB> still owns what the Germans term the "last mile", i.e. the line into RB> houses, which are copper. I have no idea whether fiber lines into RB> houses even exist in Germany, but doubt it. And as long as the RB> government is involved - and always wants higher dividends - I don't RB> see any improvement soon.
Mnet, netCologne and others offer FTTH for several years now. Anyway, I think the cause for the delay in a nationwide FTTH roll-out are the huge investments required and the customers who don't want to pay more for more bps. If you compare prices for telephone and internet access across Europe you'll see that Germany is quite expensive. The carriers/telcos know that and hesitate to invest into fiber for the last mile because they won't get any real ROI. So they keep clutching on the old copper and the next step is super-vectoring with up tp 250Mbit/s. And we also got cable TV which offers up to 400Mbit/s. I assume that the FTTH roll-out will progress slowly but steady, based on subsidies and the need to replace old rotten copper cables.
