The world is a village, and since the outbreak of the pandemic, the apartment has been the whole world in phases.

Or at least a workplace, classroom, yoga studio, cinema and boutique.

As long as the internet cooperates.

Unfortunately, it only does that to a limited extent in A's apartment.

The continuous streaming together with the huge amount of data used by one's own family and the neighborhood makes it lame.

Of course, always at the wrong time, for example when A. wants to play his company's new image film or when the Finnish business partner's face freezes over and over again in the zoom call.

Birgit Ochs

Responsible editor for "Wohnen" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Sometimes it makes him really nervous.

The Telekom representative must have caught him in this condition, who stood unannounced in front of the front door one beautiful summer's day.

There is no other way of explaining why A. abandoned his iron principle, which is: no door-to-door sales, never!

"The fastest connection"

From the window of his study he had seen the large cable drums down in the street for a few days.

With its offensive announced in autumn 2020 to offer 600,000 households a fiber optic connection, Deutsche Telekom reached A. nine months later.

The representative promised: a speed of up to one gigabit per second when downloading, up to 200 megabits when uploading.

"This means that you not only have the fastest connection for simultaneous streaming, gaming and home office, but are also well prepared for the future," she said and assured that a changeover on February 1st would be completely unproblematic.

The termination of the previous connection will be dealt with.

A. signed.

It works, it doesn't work

In the meantime, however, he doubts whether he will even be able to access the Internet by the deadline.

Because the previous telecommunications provider has confirmed the termination, the Telekom has meanwhile casually informed in a letter that unfortunately it does not work with the super-fast connection.

A. wrote e-mails and put himself on the phone with consternation.

He spoke to two responsible employees and received two different pieces of information.

One reassured: No need to worry, everything works as promised at the front door.

The other, however, spoke of a non-binding offer for all parties.

An external installation company still has to check what work is necessary in the house so that the fiber optic connection reaches A's apartment and make a cost estimate.

But A. shouldn't worry.

Thanks to EU law, he could not fall out of his old contract.

A., who values ​​clear relationships, makes so much contradiction nervous.

What happened to his internet and telephone connection on February 1st is a lucky bag.

But one thing he knows for sure: no door-to-door sales, never!