Bad internet is worse than no internet

When I decided to participate in this program, I asked my boss if I could have the time off from work. Her response was: "Will you have internet?"

"Of course," I responded.

"Are you willing to work remotely?" she asked.

"Yes, I'd be happy to!" And with that, it was settled that I'd be working remotely from Germany during my time abroad. What I hadn't expected was the dramatic difference between the quality of internet in the United States and Berlin.

Yes, I have internet. But I don't have stable internet. The hotel's W-Lan (the German word for Wi-Fi) is virtually useless, and IES' isn't any better. I work in IT, so I thought: "I can figure this out!" I decided to start searching for coffee shops or bars with free or for-fee connections.

I found a little coffee shop a few blocks from the hotel that has a Telekom (T-Mobile) hot spot and decided to give that a try. I bought a day pass and ran into the same problems I had experienced elsewhere -- an intermittent connection that couldn't support the work I was trying to do. I tried a few more and found the same thing. The internet worked, in the most basic sense of the service, but it wasn't stable when it came to needing a persistent connection. It seems to drop connection almost completely every few minutes, and then comes back to a reasonable speed. This has been my experience at coffee shops, IES, and at Kastanienhof.

So, I thought a bit more and remembered that nearly all universities are members of the Eduroam network, a high speed wireless network that allows members of one university to use Wi-Fi at other universities simply by logging in with his/her email address and passphrase.

I went to Humboldt Universität. The internet was no more useful than the coffee shops or other locations I'd tried, even on Eduroam. This didn't seem right.

I took the train to Frei Universität. Same thing. Unstable internet that couldn't maintain a fast connection for more than a few minutes at a time.

I took the train back to Humboldt and tried the buildings off Unter den Linden. I asked a couple students where they downloaded movies on campus, and eventually someone gave me a lead. A girl selling some used books outside the main entrance to Humboldt told me about a little nook outside a nearby building, between two offices, where the internet was "ganz toll!"

So I went there and she was right! I was finally able to connect to a (mostly) stable point on Eduroam and dialed into a video conference and had very few issues. Unfortunately, I had to explain why I was sitting in a dark alley with road noise -- but I had a persistent connection that worked, and that's what was important.

I haven't really explored this much more than my attempts to find a solid spot, but now that I have found one, I'd like to learn more about why the public Wi-Fi is so much less stable here -- and why it doesn't seem to be a big issue with the Germans I've talked to. 

Surely Germany isn't a third-world country (in terms of Wi-Fi). Do they place less value on a persistent connection? Is this why they still have DVD stores a la 1990's US?