[ChuckNorris89]

Jan Böhmermann (Germany's John Oliver) did an investigation on his show[1] into Germany's terrible internet infrastructure and proved it's basically down to corruption from Kohl's regime that scrapped the fiber plans for copper in order to enrich a certain friendly company with political ties that was big in the copper business back then.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc

[ng55QPSK]

And for 40 years they could not change? Fiber is comming close and close to homes every year as it's needed for FTTC (and doing vectoring on DSL for the last 400m) and for DOCSIS on coaxial cables.

[ChuckNorris89]

>And for 40 years they could not change?

Of course they 'could', but that would mean for corruption to have gone down and political competence to have gone up in those 40 years but unfortunately it hasn't, quite the opposite.

In Germany, high level corruption and political incompetence has only increased in that time (see BER airport, VW emissions scandal, and the handling of COVID).

Basically if you're well connected and rich, you're untouchable in Germany and your corruption mishaps will be swept under the rug as casual political 'whoopsies' right after you retire to a gold plated pension.

[CaptainZapp]

Well, quite a number of politicians got shitcanned after it turned that their dissertations were plagiarized.

So it's not that you're completely untouchable. Even with friends in high places.

[tchocky]

Germany privatised telecommunication in the 90s (was done by German Post before) including all the infrastructure (which was a really bad idea in hindsight). Most of the infrastructure is in the hand of the former state business and they want to squeeze the last Euro out of the copper wiring instead of investing in proper fiber infrastructure. Vectoring is just one more tool to squeeze the last bit out of old copper wires that have been in the ground for over 70 years. Also vectoring only works with one provider per node, and the German state gives most of the privilege to the Telekom.

It was written in some comments before, but Germany could have had the most modern fiber infrastructure in the world when the plans of former chancellor Helmut Schmitt wouldn't have been stopped by the Helmut Kohl government who was good friends with Leo Kirch, who was a big player in the German TV market and would rather benefit from copper wiring than fiber.