pirx@apple.uucp (Jan Hinnerk Haul) (04/11/90)
dmwatt@athena.mit.edu (David M Watt) writes: >I read elsewhere on the net that Deutsch Bundespost has recently been >split into three parts, and is now competing under market conditions. True. One part for postal services ("Postdienst"), one for financial services (no-credit checkbook and savings accounts, "Postbank") and one for telecommunications ("Telekom"). >I understand that modems faster than 1200 baud are illegal (!) in the >FRG because of regulations that were promulgated and enforced by D.B. Not true. You can rent modems up to 2400 bps (V.22bis) async and 4800 bps sync. You can buy (sligthly modified) Trailblazer 2500s as "Logem T2500" from Kabelmetal Electro here. And you can (provided you live in one of the ten bigger cities, the rest of the country following until '93) go ISDN and use a PC Board (64 Kbit per second, about DM 2500, that's 1300-1400 US$) or terminal adapter (38.4 kbps, about DM 1250) if you like fast transfer rates for ordinary phone charges (national long-distance about 0.01 DM/second peek time). >I also heard that many, many people in Germany were disobeying those >rules. Could someone provide some background and history about all of >this? What does it mean to the German modem punter? True :-) Well, since the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Constitutional Court, like the Supreme Court in the U.S.) cancelled the law the Bundespost used to sue "inofficial" modem owners, subsequently another court decided that the use of a modem (or other telephone device) allowed by the P.T.T. of any European Community country is not legal, but you cannot get punished for doing so :-) The legal hassles will be somewhat unclear till midyear 1991, when all telephone equipment legal in one EC country will be legal in Germany. I hope this clarifies the situation a bit. Jan Hinnerk Haul