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Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is that if you live in Germany, you grow up thinking that it's completely normal that Deutsche Telekom takes 4 weeks to get your internet connection hooked up when you move houses.

I was actually completely shocked when I moved to California, signed up with an internet provider, and had a technician come to my house the next day. Crazy!

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Here in Neukölln Berlin, 4 weeks is normal for whatever DSL provider you choose, O2 tech support treats you with utter contempt when THEY fuck up, and connection quality is all over the place. Cable is barely available.

Fucked up customer service is not isolated to O2, it is totally the same with Vodafone too. Quality of service is pretty shit as well. In the German market, you just have to choose best of the worst, which is pretty bad if you are in the country side.

How do you work if you have no Internet? Coffee shops? (Or, heaven forfend, you go to an office for 16 hours/day?)

In Germany you are not allowed to work more than 10 hours/day, only on special cases.

Internet availability is not a problem. Just check cable availability and your up and running with 100Mbits+ in a few days.

Moving Kabel Deutschland (now Vodafone unfortunately) takes 3-4 days if your new building has the cabling done.

Good to hear! The experience I described above was indeed a number of years ago, but also compare your comment to the one by m_fayer.

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