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The Local Germany reports:
Shunned by government and big telecom companies, [Sollwitt, a village of 123 homes] in rural northwest Germany is set to expand the super-fast internet network they built to a second village.
[...]The project is the latest effort of Burgerbreitbandnetz, the Citizen's Broadband Internet Company, a small group of locals who took it upon themselves to build a super high-speed internet network in the village of Lowenstedt when Germany's major telecommunications companies turned them away. The group hopes to connect 59 villages in the county by 2021.
"Their answer was no," said Ute-Gabriel Boucsein, head of the village internet startup. "They say the region where we live [in Schleswig-Holstein] is too far away and there aren't enough people."
For the big telecom companies, that meant there wasn't enough money to be made. But for the villagers, it was a matter of survival.
"In 2010, the villages had problems selling land," said Boucsein. "People want to buy, but they ask how fast, how good the internet is and when it's not so good the people don't buy." Not only do new people not move in, but the young people leave, says dairy farmer Holger Jensen. "Then, when the older people start to die, the village shrinks."
[...]For €999, villagers could become shareholders in the company and provide the money needed to get financing to build the fibre-optic infrastructure. The Burgerbreitbandnetz team needs 68 percent of households in the village to sign up. As of this afternoon the company had signed up 72 percent of the homes in Sollwitt.
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday September 18 2014, @01:23PM
It's not that easy...
reading through the (german) strategy (PDF) [www.bmwi.de] from 2009 I saw the definition of broadband ("Breitband") is anything > 384 kbit/s.
Until 2014 75% of all households shall have > 50Mbit/s (actually the paper says 50 Mbit/s per second, which I doubt to see realized...)
No time to search for any numbers for the present status
(btw, what does the checkbox "No Karma Bonus" in the Submit form mean?)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:17PM
Only VDSL [wikipedia.org] with 52 Mbit/s downstream and 16 Mbit/s upstream using the frequency band from 25 kHz to 12 MHz. Has any chance to deliver that speed using existing infrastructure. Provided the subscriber lives within 300 meters from the telephone station (DSLAM).
(VDSL2 provides 100 Mbit/s)
This means those plans hinge on fiber optic expansion. And such plans are dependent on excavator machines that has their speed regardless of political intentions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @03:02PM
If your Karma is high enough, your posts start at score 2 instead of 1. This extra +1 is called "Karma bonus". If you don't want your post to be scored higher by default, you can check that button; then your post will start at +1.
If you go to the page of the comment I'm currently replying to, at the moment you'll see:
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday September 18 2014, @03:25PM
btw, what does the checkbox "No Karma Bonus" in the Submit form mean?
It means you've crossed the karma threshold where you get a +1 bonus to all of your posts. Welcome to the club! I noticed a lot more responses to my posts after hitting the +1 karma threshold, and it was nice to feel more involved in the conversation. I hope you find it a positive experience as well.
Clicking that box means that you post at a score of 1 instead of 2; in theory this is kinda like modding yourself "overrated" up front. If you expect to get modded down on your post then it limits the karma damage you may suffer (only 2 points to lose instead of 3). If you're into karma whoring then it gives opportunity for +4 karma gain on your post instead of only +3, at the risk of lower exposure. Hopefully that isn't something you're overly worried about; if your karma is rising you probably aren't a habitual troll, and if it's rising slowly you probably aren't consciously whoring for upmods. Good for you! Once you hit 50 karma (which doesn't take long) it doesn't matter anymore, since there's no extra benefit to up-mods. As long as you're keeping Wheaton's Law in mind when you post you probably don't have to worry about whether the "No Karma Bonus" box is checked or not.
Again, congrats; I'll look forward to your future comments!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday September 19 2014, @07:06AM
Thanks for explaining, also to you AC!