alt Hacker News> And surprinsingly cheaper ( 40 euros vs 45 ) .
> [ as much as I do not like Musk & co, this is a real useful thing he build for the mankind - internet everywere from sattelite ]
Right - but then you also depend on an US service here. And the USA changed policy where Europeans became enemies ("we won't give you arms to defend against Russian invaders! Greenland will be occupied by our military soon!").
It's a bad situation, lose-lose here. I don't think the price difference is the primary problem though; the behaviour of Telekom is the problem. That must change. The state has to ensure fairness rather than allow monopolies to milk The People.
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The best solution here would probably be the EU launching its own internet constellation. China and the US both have them. How is this any different than the issues surrounding GPS?
Well, you have a point but on the other side since about 20 years the Telekom does not even think about improving the internet connection in the place I live. At some point you're just fed up. To me it seems like they just do not care about providing a good service and even if they would now provide a good service I would be more willing to give my money someone else.
are all starlink connections routed through the US?
don't they do local downlinks? at least for countries they have an agreement with or where the infrastructure is available?
> he behaviour of Telekom is the problem. That must change. The state has to ensure fairness rather than allow monopolies to milk The People.
The state is the monopoly here.
Telekom is still partially state-owned (~27%), since they were, back in the 90s, privatized from the former total monopoly "Deutsche Bundespost" and the related ministry "Bundespostministerium". Nowadays, the parts of the ministry that were back then regulating EM spectrum, allowable phones (basically phone police, you had to rent from Bundespost or go to jail) and generally being corrupt (relations of the former ministry to copper manufacturers is why they botched the first fibre rollouts in '95 and then ignored the topic for 20 years). Nowadays, the "Regulierungsbehoerde", staffed with the same people, is supposed to regulate their former colleagues at Telekom. Telekom got all the networks and was never split up, so it still has a (~85%?) monopoly on everything copper basically, as well as on customers, using this monopoly to bully other ISPs as well as it's own customers and extending this monopoly into future tech. And the state has a financial interest in this regulation being as lax as possible. So you can imagine how this goes...