Delta Brings New Pink 100GbE OCP Switches to Amsterdam

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altmind

Active Member
Sep 23, 2018
285
101
43
This is the reporting we all deserved... Pink 100gbe switches hitting the home page. Revoke my networking licenses right now, please.
 

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
920
698
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Germany
Deutsche Telekom's corporate color is "magenta", i.e. some sort of "pink". The switches were probably made by Delta for evaluation by Deutsche Telekom as aggregation switches, so no surprise with the color there. They even sued others for using that color, and I think lost. Of course no German business is going anywhere near that color now. Nice chilling effect effected by a bunch of lawyers.

As of 2019, DTAG is the largest ISP in Germany (partly state owned), mostly vectoring VDSL2 these days and some 1% fiber (#72 in the world, because, who needs 1 GBit/s to run a tax paying business? right). There have been cases where citizens pursued fiber internet themselves, because neither DTAG nor somebody else wanted to invest in their location. Fine. But once the citizens' contractors showed up to dig up the road and lay down the speed pipes, DTAG suddenly also showed up, throwing their own line into the hole. After a few weeks, VDSL over the old POTS lines were suddenly available at that location, ruining of course the business model of fiber. Bunch of rats. When there is a copyright complaint they will transmit your personal data to whoever filed, no questions asked, so a civil court case can begin. Gee, thanks.

On the ISP side, through owning the last mile pretty much everywhere in Germany, they have blackmailed smaller ISPs for literally decades vis-a-vis peering with them. Some paid a fee to have a more direct route to a large portion of German customers, some gave up and used slow routes via abroad peerings.

They also operate the largest mobile phone network through T-Mobile and because there is little competition once you leave the densely populated areas (only Vodafone and Telefonica left anyhow, both a little problematic in rural areas), you pay 40 EUR per 6 GiB of data. About 20 times more expensive then for example France. It is a joke. Oh and when the amount of data is used up, they throttle you to 8 KByte/s down and 2 KByte/s up. Oh yeah, standard rate for calling mobile from landline is 19ct/min.

From 1996 until 2000 DTAG went through an IPO and then two more POs, aided by seemingly inescapable ads, lauding the company's value. The equity was manipulatively called the "Volksaktie" and promptly a traditionally equity-shy older generation bought shares. If grandma bought the shares really at the wrong moment, her savings went from 103 EUR to 7 EUR a share.

So yeah, pink aggregation switches.