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Comment by ahofmann | Hacker News Reader

It is always funny to read something like this: "[..] the telco, one of Germany's largest [..]"

There are effectively only three mobile providers in Germany. 1&1 is the fourth, but its network doesn't even cover the whole country. From those three networks, Telefonica is the smallest by quite a margin. So the sentence in the article is technically correct, but draws a nonsensical picture.

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> Telefonica is the smallest by quite a margin

That is only true if you count M2M sim cards. Looking at regular postpaid contracts, the picture is actually quite different:

Deutsche Telekom: 26.8m customers

Telefonica: 26.2m customers

Vodafone: 19.3m customers

Ignoring MVNOs, are there are any other countries that have more than 4 nationwide mobile networks? I think the US has (had?) a handful of regional carriers that survived on domestic roaming but everywhere else I've visited typically has 3 networks competing, maybe a 4th smaller network, often a newer startup (e.g. Free in France, Rakuten in Japan, in the 2000's it was Three/Hutchinson taking this role using newly-opened UMTS licenses).

US used to have Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cingular and ATT. There was an active roaming agreement in at least California for T-Mobile and ATT so they shared coverage there, but otherwise pretty much 5 national networks before the ATT T-1000 reformed, and Sprint died.

I've seen some countries where they had three established GSM networks and then someone starts repurposinf their CDMA network for mobile handsets, but it had been built and operating for years for fixed wireless, phone lines for houses without wires.

The Netherlands actually explicitly set aside spectrum in the 4G auctions to be auctioned off to new market entrants (besides the established T-Mobile, Vodafone, and KPN), leading to the entry of Tele2 (until then an MVNO) and Ziggo/UPC (until then cable ISPs and MVNOs) into the market.

However, a few years down the line, Tele2 ended up in a merger with T-Mobile (now Odido), and Ziggo/UPC/Vodafone went through mergers to end up as VodafoneZiggo.

Telefonica is the one with the worst coverage of the big threes. But they allow every Discount provider to use their network, so cost-sensitive people will mostly be on their network. Telekom and Vodafone have some discounters on their network, but it's not much more than a handful.

In general, phone coverage in Germany is subpar, no matter what provider you choose. The country has too many anti-5G people with too much power to stop or delay projects.

What does 5G have to do with coverage? LTE 800mhz can give you the same coverage as 5G 700mhz

It's not about coverage, it's about conspiracy theories.

> What does 5G have to do with coverage? LTE 800mhz can give you the same coverage as 5G 700mhz

Could. But not in Germany.

Germany's comparatively bad 5G coverage is an infrastructure problem and has ~nothing to do with anti-5G sentiments.

Just look at the parallels in wired broadband, which are equally lacking behind some European peers.

They would be if they did not spend all that money on Broadcom licenses....

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