Netzbremse: How Telekom Throttles the Internet

Deutsche Telekom (AS3320) refuses to peer directly with Cloudflare at DE-CIX Frankfurt, forcing traffic through congested transit providers like GTT. This causes latency spikes from 10ms to 180ms+ during peak hours, degrading roughly 20% of the internet for German fiber customers paying €70/month for 1 Gbit/s service. Telekom, a privatized monopoly built on taxpayer-funded infrastructure, demands above-market peering fees from content providers — a practice consumer advocates call 'double paid traffic.' Vodafone has now followed suit by withdrawing from public internet exchanges. A coalition including Epicenter.works and Stanford professor Barbara van Schewick filed a formal complaint with Germany's Bundesnetzagentur. Workarounds include switching ISPs, routing Cloudflare traffic via a VPS with better Telekom connectivity using Tailscale, or using mtr/traceroute to document issues for regulatory complaints.