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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Martin who wrote (2936)	3/30/1998 5:39:00 AM
From: Daniel Goncharoff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Well, the days of having to hotwire your laptop into the phone line is pretty much over... But dealing with Deutsche Telekom is an unpleasant experience, although they have been aggressively promoting their own ISP service, T-Online, and ISDN, which is VERY expensive. Private ISPs charge more than in the US, and services like home pages are not free. Starting and running a small business is very difficult here; there is no culture of risk taking or innovation. A recent issue of controversy was the creation of a new job of 'Electric Technician' that would require 2 years training to be allowed to, eg, hook up a data network. Without this training, it would be illegal to advertise these services. Germany is probably behind France (which I do not know well) and Britain (which I do know, and which has a more entreprenurial spirit), although it was only a few years ago that it was illegal to hook up any equipment to a phone line that wasn't approved by British Telecom. The most interesting innovation has been mobile phones -- they are everywhere, particularly in Italy. In Germany, new services offered by coalitions of companies comfortable dealing with infrastructure are competing strongly with DT. It will take a few more years before Europe has the technical availability of the US. DanG