Are the ads for Fiber-optic Internet here just....lying?

It's a mess, honestly. The fiber rollout here is real, but it's more like a slow crawl than the ads suggest. I got connected with Telekom in Friedrichshain last year, but only because my building already had the line in the street and the landlord let them drill. If your building isn't already wired, the "contact you soon" is probably them waiting for the street work, which can take years in Berlin. You might have better luck checking with a local provider like DNS:NET or even PYUR, as they sometimes cover specific neighborhoods with their own infrastructure that Telekom and 1&1 don't touch.

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yeah the whole fiber situation here is a joke honestly. i think the problem is that the ads are technically true but only for like 10% of the city at any given time. i live in neukölln and got connected through DNS:NET last winter after my hausverwaltung pushed for it, but that was only because they already had a deal with the building. if your building isn't on their list you're basically waiting forever.

one thing nobody tells you is that you can check the actual coverage maps on the bundesnetzagentur site, not the provider ones. the provider maps are always optimistic. also if you're in a building with more than like 6 units you might have better luck talking to your landlord directly about getting a group contract, because the providers actually respond to that. otherwise you're just in the queue with everyone else.

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The real problem is that the ads are national campaigns but the actual rollout is hyperlocal. I'm in Prenzlauer Berg and got fiber from Telekom last month, but only because my building was part of a street-level project that had been planned since 2020. The "contact you soon" means they're waiting for the civil engineering to happen, and in Berlin that can mean waiting for a permit from the Tiefbauamt which takes forever. Check the website of your local Bezirksamt for the actual street-by-street construction schedule, that's more honest than any provider's map.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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