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Comment by ysleepy | Hacker News Reader

It is a problem, but not in the extent this article or people make it out to be.

There are 3 nation wide 4G networks, every home has old landlines.

What is a true problem however is the political unwillingness to force cell providers to cover areas with very little population.

It is not economically useful to invest in very rural areas, if you would have to invest 2x to go from 95% population coverage to 99% (numbers made up).

The conservative party (CDU) is "business friendly" to the persistent detriment to quality of life of a majority of citizens in a lot of areas.

T-Mobile was part of the Deutsche Post when it was still a government organization and it is still a big shareholder.

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If you travel through Germany it feels like huge problem to be honest.

My girlfriend lives in northern Germany and going around in Germany by train is just a big waste of time, because most of the time you have 0 signal as soon as you are outside of a city. For example traveling by train from Vienna to Bremen takes around 8 hours, but I basically need to stop working as soon as I cross into Germany. 0 Signal.

If you are in the Netherlands, Czech Republic or Austria and you cross into Germany it's like traveling back in time. Very often you are lucky to have some EDGE reception, while at the other side of the border you had high speed LTE.

Traveling by ICE (German high-speed train) it feels like this has improved a lot over the last years. I am traveling through Hamburg, Berlin to the south in the direction of Munich and most of the time I have 4G coverage, even with O2/Telefonica, the worst of the three providers coverage wise.

ICE is the worst transport, compared to the local lines that are now provided by commercial companies - I'm not talking about being on time (it's a fantasy), but Internet in the train itself in 2019th doesn't work at all. I used it regularly in 2018th, and it was ok - I could use that time to write a report in google docs, push some code, find information, etc. In 2019th, it simply doesn't work - I gave up, and either tether from my phone (if there is a signal), or just sit and read.

The coverage in Germany is really bad outside of the cities, area between Kassel and Fulda, and then further to the south is just a black hole. But when you enter into Austria on a train, you can say this just by seeing how fast internet is in the train, and there is a strong mobile signal...

Another issue on the third generation of ICE is that the windows have a coating meant for blocking out heat which is also very good at blocking cell signal. The provided wifi is done via external antennas and multiple carriers and usually quit a bit better, however there are still long parts where it's unavailable as well. Also quite limited at 200MB of volume.

Anecdata of course, however i once had to be online while on the ICE from Augsburg to Dortmund (that's a 6hr ride).

In preparation of a demo, i spotted one last bug in our system, which i tried to squash together with a few programmers from the manufacturer, being online in Skype and Teamviewer basically the moment i sat down in Augsburg and managed to work around it when i had to exit the train 6 hours later.

This was around 2016, and at least on this ride there weren't much areas without reception.

Not denying the base problem though, once you get used to LTE you'll begin to notice if you ever drop back to 3G, or god forbid, Edge...

The CDU is business friendly in the same way the Republicans are business friendly - it sure appears that way at first, with tax breaks or lowering regulations, but in the end it bites everyone in the ass, even businesses, when that means this allowed everyone to not progress and be left behind while around you other countries improved and got their shit together. Internet is one of these things, photovoltaics another (we used to be good in Germany, then the CDU (and to an extent the SPD) needed to protect the 20k workers in coal and created laws and regulations for that, in the same way killing off the PV industry with around 70k workers).

I agree hence the quotes. It's nepotism, backroom deals, lobbying and vying for cushy jobs in the industry.

> What is a true problem however is the political unwillingness to force cell providers to cover areas with very little population.

Never been to very rural Germany. But OTOH in every flat I lived in Berlin, I had problems getting signal. So it's not about density.

Or it is but in the opposite direction. There's just not enough capacity to provide to all the city residents.

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