“Activating a VPN consistently resolves issues for affected users, suggesting routing/peering problems rather than general network congestion.”
German consumer groups and civil liberties organizations just filed a formal complaint against Deutsche Telekom for throttling services that don’t pay up. The affected list reads like a who’s who of the modern internet: Discord, ChatGPT, GitHub, Reddit, YouTube, Steam, even Germany’s own public broadcasters. Users report 100 Mbps connections dropping to 25 KB/s during peak hours. The tell is the VPN workaround. If this were real congestion, routing through a VPN wouldn’t fix it. This is manufactured scarcity to shake down content providers.