Slashdot Mirror
International Connectivity
Steve Suppe writes "As an American who is going to be living overseas for a few years (Germany, to be more exact), I'm curious as to what advice/information Slashdot could provide people like me. How much can I expect to pay for dial-up/broadband, and from who? I'd be interested to hear how it differs around the world. Any good reference sites? Thanks!"
Same question - different country:
- Does anyone know about the connectivity in Jamaica?
I understand you can get ADSL - but is it available everywhere or just in a few areas. Any alternatives to ADSL (I hate using modems)..?
The Deutsche Telekom sells flat-rate "T-DSL" for about 55 euros a month. The service is extremely reliable as compared to what I was used to in the states. However, it is a bit of pain to get the parts (three separate boxes) and get it turned on. Get some help from a German-speaking friend or soldier. (as a side bonus, with the flat DSL, you can call the US for 4 cents a minute)
They also sell time-based access cards on post, and on the economy, if you don't want always-on access.
Good luck!
Hey I'm Canadian, and we're starting to get it here too. This is going to be labelled a troll, but one of our comedians wrote an apology letter for our recent behavior. Here's a copy:
A truly Canadian Apology to the USA...
Courtesy of Rick Mercer from This Hour Has 22 Minutes CBC Television
On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to
the United States of America.
We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry.
I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron.
He is a moron but, it wasn't nice of us to point it out.
If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America.
After all it's not like you actually elected him.
I'm sorry about our softwood lumber.
Just because we have more trees than you doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper
and better than your own.
I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey.
In our defense I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.
I'm sorry we burnt down your white house during the war of 1812.
I notice you've rebuilt it! It's Very Nice.
I'm sorry about your beer.
I know we had nothing to do with your beer but, we Feel your Pain.
I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq.
I mean, when you're going
up against a crazed dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side.
I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different.
Everyone knew he had weapons.
And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism.
I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this.
We've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.
Thank you.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
From traveling in Germany, my impression is that you are likely to be able to get DSL perhaps more easily than in the US. The computer stores also seemed to have comparable kinds of gadgets, at comparable prices, although technology still tends to be released in the US before Europe (but sometimes it's the other way around). In some technology areas, such as cell phones, Bluetooth, and wireless Internet access, it actually seems a bit better. Dial-up is also very easy, with a choice of no-subscription pay-as-you-go dial-ins and subscriber based services. Again, it seems like more choice than we get in the US.
ADSL Guide UK
The best deal for DSL seems to be from Deutsche Telekom. They have several different rate plans, so make sure you pick the flate rate one. It's like 25E/month. You'll probably get screwed anyway, b/c Telekom is basically the worst company on Earth. Instead of help and courtesy, you get insults and insolence. So be prepared. Also, if you want to get a mobile phone, make sure you get service from Vodafone, (aka D2/Arcor/Mannesman) not Telekom. Vodafone's cheaper, has better coverage, and is a multinational carrier, although you usually don't have any problems with that in Europe. Cheers!
Actually, timothy, I'm an American living in Germany myself. Of course, it depends on where you are planning on living in Germany. I am signed up with freenet.de which has a couple of options. I am on the plan where it costs 89/100 of a euro cent (about 96 / 100 of a U.S. cent) per minute. There is no monthly fee, however, which means to hit the 20 US dollars per month you'd pay, I'd have to be on for about 37.5 hours. That seems to be the cheapest option for dial-up around here. http://www.einsundeins.com seems to have the best DSL rates. The DSL line will cost you about 20 euros per month (about 21.55 USD) and the service depends on what level you choose. Unlimitted is about 25- 30 euros, I've heard (26.94 USD - 32.32 USD), but I'd recommend looking into one of the time based of volume based plans. For me, it'd make more sense to get the 2GB per month plans for 9.90 euros (10.67 USD) as I can download files over the school's flat rate DSL for free, but I'll be leaving Germany in a few months (anyone know of any openings for an intro level tech job in the Moscow, Idaho area? :) ) and so I didn't want to pay an installation fee or anything like that.
Good luck.
I have no
I pay (I think) around 30 euros per month for 768/128 ADSL flatrate. I'm only not sure how much cause my girlfriend takes care of all of that stuff since I'm far too important (and it's all too complicated for me cause I'm also too dumb).
check out T-DSL, the service offered by the German Telekom, which is the phone company and also the biggest ISP. We got our cable modem thrown in for free when we signed up, don't know if they'll still give you that and they gave us a good price on a router/ISDN system/hub/ISDN modem/USB NIC wonderbox bursting with flashing lights too.
The german might be a problem when filling out the forms but most of the support people on the phone will be able to speak english
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
This much I know. They have some built in ready to run config scripts for most German ISPs, including dial-up, cable and DSL. (From a somebody which runs SuSE on their server) Too bad they were useless to me, as I live in Canada.
My rights don't need management.
If you live Italy, in one of the following cities:
:-)
Milan and province, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Naples and Genoa, thanks to FastWeb you can get 10Mbit optical fiber Internet access for about $70/mo (67 euros/mo).
Quite cheap and works like a charm
Over here in Germany, connectivity is actually no real problem:
w ww.telekom.de
;-)
Wired:
- Analoge and Digital (ISDN) lines, while ISDN is much more popular nowadays. Deutsche Telekom provides most of the normal telephone connections. Visit http://www.telekom.de . Prices for a regular ISDN line are about 25/$ a month for 2 phone lines with a total of 3 phone numbers. Setup is around 50/$.
- ADSL is a widely available option for either analoge or digital phonelines. Deutsche Telekom provides an ADSL-line for about 10 a month on top of your phonebill.
- Flatrates for ADSL are around 20-30 on top of the phonebill which already includes the charge for your ADSL-line.
Wireless:
-WLAN hotspots are coming up everywhere in big and small cities since some months. It's quite amazing how many nodes you can find within a day of WarDriving around Frankfurt, i.e.
-CellServices provide almost a complete coverage of the whole country. GPRS is widely available but still a little on the pricy side: 5cent for 10kb with my cell-provider "O2". Cell rates are usually 10-20 a month, calling-costs not included (average bill around 50 , if you don't hug the phone 24/7)
Hope this helps.
To get into much more detail visit:
http://www.billiger-surfen.de (cheaper-surfing)
http://www.onlinekosten.de (onlinecost)
http://www.mobileaccess.de
http://
http://www.heise.de
or go
http://www.google.de
and help yourself.
enjoy germany!
-benny
OK,
When you get a phone, get at from the Deutsche Telekom and not from any other local carrier.
Why? Their rates might suck, but only if you use Deutsche Telekom can you use ALL call by call carriers which are billed by the normal telephone bill. The majority you can use without registering at the other phone company, so basically you check out which operator is the cheapest for a call, pick up the phone, and dial.
Calls to the US start at 4 cents per minute using Call by Call.
To check the cheapest rate and which call by caller operator to use, checkout www.teltarif.de
ISDN phone lines are very popular over here, you can get a special rate that calls on Sunday are free within Germany. These can also be used to call up an internet provider with "normal" telephone number. www.teltarif.de also has a list of these which you can use together with usernames/password.
Local phone calls are NOT free.
Internet dialup you also usually use call by call ones. Check out www.billiger-surfen.de to find out which operator is cheapest. Cheap ones start like 1 cent per minute. That's about the best rate you can get.
Flatrates for internet dialups do not exist.
Broadband:
DSL is the way to go, you need to get the DSL line from the Deutsche Telekom. And in addition to that, you must subscribe to an Online service, either the Deutsche Telekom's own (T-Online) where a 768kbit down/128kbit up costs 29.99 Euros per month with no limit regarding time or bandwidth. Note that this flatrate is not available if you use the 1500up/192kdown service. 1und1 (www.1und1.de) has better deals if you have less traffic.
Basically, for an ISDN telephone with the calls free on Sunday plus DSL 768Kbit, you would pay 41.27 Euros a month. Add to that the online rate (29,99 for t-online dsl flat)
If you sign up at 1und1.de you get a free USB DSL Modem, for 9.95 you get an ISDN telephone switch to which you can connect analogue phones to, and they pass on your request to the Deutsche Telekom. You also have to pay a setup fee, which is charged by the Deutsche Telekom, but doing it with 1und1 currently offers the best deal.
Hope this helps.
Yeah, they don't like having Americans like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Ashcroft around. Most other Americans are welcome, even the ones from the US.
Geez Louise,
This thread is really getting on me ninnies...
Anyways, I live as an expat in Germany. DSL is trivial to get, try Deutsche Telekom although I do not not know if they are exactly the cheapest.
There is a website that contains a list of all the
German DSL providers (there are loads) but it is in German. Google for it (try DSL Deutschland). 768/128 DSL is available almost anywhere, and some providers (yahoo) does 1500 as well.
As far a cellphones are concerned the service is very good, but do yourself a favour and get a contract from Viag Interkom (now O2). They are the best, especially with their Genion at Home thingie. That is quite cheap.
It is possible to dial fairly cheap. www.billigtelefonieren.de should give you all the details you want on that, again, in German. You usually dial with a prefix code to get the different providers.
If you do not want to go DSL, ISDN is very much more wide-spread and cheap than in the US and pay-per call may be mucho cheaper than a DSL, depending on how much you are online. Now that DSL is getting very popular you can get cheapo ISDN cards second hand. ISDN is pretty OK for most things anywa, and with it you can call for free on Sundays for a few Euros per month extra.
Telekom does take a few weeks to install DSL due to a serious demand-driven backlog (and the !"!"ers do NOT tell you that they have done it, you have to try to see if it works!) but ISDN install is fairly quick (2 days in my case)
Telekom has been banned as of last year to give away DSL modems for free (it was stifling competition) so now you have to pay, a small DSL box with a router with 4 ports that can do masquerading and set with a web box is available for about 70 Euros, and one with a wireless port as well for about 200 (At media markt). I picked up an old Pentium 100 for 25 euros and Linux it and put up a ethernet card and a hub to use as a DSL router behind Deutsche Telekom DSL, works fine but at that time the routers were still expensive so a crouter is probably the cheapets way to go.
You can also get a hosted server (a complete Linux box with full root control) for 39 Euros per month.
Computers are generally more expensive than in the states but not too much. You can pretty much find everything you need, try www.arlt.com to get a feel for prices. (I buy there, do not work for them).
If you wish to know more, drop my a line on my home page.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Forget broadband... rent a nice MB/BMW/Audi and hit the fastest roads in the world.
"Times may change, but standards must remain the same." - George Carlin.
I'm in Germany, and was going to write about IDSN and DSL, but given that everybody and their dog has already done that, here's some other advice:
Beaurocracy!
Lots of it. You need the right piece of paper with the right stamp on it, or things don't happen. Probably the worst thing about Germany, this.
Learn German!
Yes, lots of them do speak English, but that's no reason for being lazy. As soon as you have to do anything important, you'll probably find yourself needing to communicate with someone who doesn't speak English. A little German will go a long way, especially in terms of the impression you make.
Get your lane discipline sorted.
Cruise on the right, overtake on the left, and then move back to the right. If there's a BMW behind you flashing his lights, don't worry too much - BMW drivers are like that. If it's some other make of car, you're going to slow - get out of that lane! They make nice cars in Stuttgart, by the way.
Watch out for speed cameras
They take your photo from the front, so there's no "it wasn't me" excuses. There are both stationary cameras on posts and mobile units (hidden in hedges or wherever). More than 30km/h over the limit can result in a 1 month driving ban.
Watch your speed on the Autobahn
Not all of the Autobahn has no speed limit. Where there is one, it's clearly marked. Where there isn't one, enjoy yourself! Be aware that having no speed limit doesn't often help, due to the volume of traffic (and the guy three cars ahead, going way too slow in the overtaking lane).
Most bottles have a deposit on them
So take them back to the supermarket. Germans like to buy drinks by the crate. Look for a "Getränkemarkt" if you're thirsty.
German beer is stronger than US beer
Purity laws and all that. The lack of nasty chemicals means you can get hammered and not have a major hangover next morning. Make sure you get to the world's biggest Fest - the Oktoberfest in München (not called Munich on Germany!), or the second biggest - the Volksfest in Stuttgart. If you want an English-speaking pub, look for an "Irish Pub". It's a chain (I think). There are quite a lot now; they stock Guiness too.
There are no Reeses Pieces
If you find somewhere that sells them, post it on Slashdot :-)
Not as many really fat people
This one will only hit you when you go back to the US...
.... don't tell anyone you're an American.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
live w/o the net in a new place for several years?
so give up one of the easiest ways to get cheap airfares, learn about holiday destinations, get bus/rail/s-bahn/u-bahn schedules? since this person is planning on returning to the usa, they should give up their online access to their financial info and instead use more expensive and less convenient phone/fax/mail? more importantly they have friends and family back in the usa. they should give up on an inexpensive way to keep in touch with their friends and family? give up email, pictures of newborn relatives, holiday snaps, etc?
get real.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!