| Broadband Internet Access In Germany |
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As of December 2006, Deutsche Telekom has more than 10 million DSL customers in Germany (called T-DSL), making Germany one of the top DSL countries. T-DSL has a number of resellers, and many ISPs providing service for it. Alternatively, there are DSL providers in Germany which have their own DSL network and only rent the copper lines, e.g. Arcor , QSC, AliceDSL and Telefonica. Deutsche Telekom offers T-DSL (price base: month):
A telephone contract with Deutsche Telekom (16€ analogue, 25€ ISDN ) is required. Major resellers of T-DSL are T-Online and 1&1, and all have identical prices for T-DSL so far. ! (except: Freenet.de they take for 2048/192 just 17€ - like others will take for 1024/128) ! (6016/576 even cost just 19.99€ and the tarif for the flat is 0€) These prices do not include ISP fees, which are typically an additional €5-10 (flatrate, all speeds) and vary, also depending on location. Such ISPs include T-Online, Congster (both Deutsche Telekom), 1&1 and GMX (both United Internet), all of which use/resell the T-Com IP backbone (though 1&1 has been using Telefónica's network for their 16 Mbit/s service). Actual Internet transfer rates via the T-Com IP backbone are typically close to the maximum of the DSL connection speed, including connections to the USA (as long as the actual server permits it, of course). Arcor offers 2048/192 (€15), 6144/640 (€20), 16128/800 (€23). These prices already include the ISP flatrate, but require a telephone contract with Arcor. Telefonica has its own DSL infrastructure with 40% coverage based on line sharing and its own backbone, formerly MediaWays. It is used in part by AOL (4th with 1 million customers) and Freenet, but Telefonica itself does not sell to endusers in Germany. AOL uses T-DSL where Telefonica has no coverage. QSC offers Q-DSL home with 1,5 or 2,5 Mbit/s combined download and upload speed, and the customer chooses how much of it is upload. Prices are 30 and 40 €/month, respectively, plus activation fee. Deutsche Telekom/T-Com is building a VDSL network in summer 2006, but there is political quarrel, because they demand exemption from regulation, which the current German government wants to allow, but the EU does not accept. It is supposed to offer up to 50 Mbit/s download, 10 Mbit/s speeds and intended to be used with proprietary digital TV offers, including live football games (Bundesliga). The market is very much in movement, prices dropping and new technologies emerging rapidly, but some offers have very long contract terms of 1 or 2 years. Coverage is not very good, many towns with a few thousand people have no DSL offers. Alternative technologies Connection technologies other than DSL are not widely used in Germany so far, due to a lack of viable offers, but are starting to get interesting. Until recently, Cable Internet was not available, because the cable TV infrastructure was owned by Deutsche Telekom, which pushed DSL and neglected the cable network. It was sold after political pressure a few years ago, now owned by Kabel Deutschland, Kabel BW, ish etc. (separated geographically), which slowly invest into upgrading the cable network's bandwidth/capacity and making it 2-way-capable. Kabel Deutschland offers 6 Mbit/s for 20€/month (30 €/month for 16 Mbit/s) on top of the cable TV fee. Satellite links can be used by those who are not covered by DSL or other technologies. It is called e.g. T-DSL Satellite or skyDSL, which are one-way links based on DVB-S and require an uplink via dialup, which often has to be paid by minute. Some offers with two-way satellite connections exist for consumers. Satellite inherently has high latency, and is thus second choice for most people. UMTS is becoming an interesting alternative where available, at speeds of up to 384 kbit/s download and 64 kbit/s upload, particularly since E-Plus/Base offers a true mobile flatrate for roughly 50€/month. O2 has an offer based on UMTS/GSM, but limited to the home, called Genion Homezone. The big mobile providers T-Mobile and Vodafone now offer tariffs with 5 Gbyte/month of data transfer included, with the advantage of HSDPA (up to 1,8 Mbit/s download) availability on all UMTS nodes. |
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