Wireless Internet killed by bandwidth caps
After using it in Japan, I had a great opinion of LTE technology to deliver internet. Small modems that can be forgotten, an Internet service that could potentially be carried with you and quite good speeds.
So when I saw that here in Germany Telekom was now advertising its LTE services, I was willing to try, with the promise of an increased bandwidth and a wire-free setup. The epilogue is that today we’re back to using DSL.
Testing Telekom LTE Call & Surf via Funk
We tested, and moved out from Telekom’s lowest LTE offering (35€) due to its bandwidth caps being impossible to meet, and additionally to the horribly slow speed you end up with when such bandwidth cap has been reached.
Their lowest offering covers a bandwidth cap up to 10GB.
Overall this option was more expensive than DSL and a great deal slower.
This product is at it is completely broken, unless (and I suspect this is the reason) you have no other choice than wireless internet.
A 10GB bandwidth cap is nowhere near sufficient for a couple with three computers in today’s internet/software ecosystem:
- Auto-updates (downloads behind your back)
- Advertisement (especially video ones)
- Videos
- Websites such as Facebook or Google maps
Even when deactivating/controlling all this it is difficult not to pass over the cap. And when you do, which for us was after two weeks of use, you end up with mobile <2G data speeds.