The River and the Bucket - Part I:
Holiday in Berlin (full phone)

So I’m on this business trip to Europe. Having lived in Taiwan for a decade and a half I’m quite excited to return to ‘the continent’, as Brits used to say, and experience what cities like Berlin have to offer in terms of lifestyle. Upon leaving Hauptbahnhof I seek out a SIM card - connectivity being of vital importance to a tech media chap covering the delights of IFA. The boss expects me to get the best subscriber contract a visitor can get in terms of overall bandwidth, but especially upload speeds so we can upload video on the hop throughout the week. So I’m looking for the best 4G SIM card I can lay my hands on. 

Thankfully, there’s a T-Mobile shop in the station. After two minutes in the store however, I’m left standing on the kerbside outside, scratching my chin in a state of profound disillusionment. The conversation that led me there goes something like this:

T-Mobile Dialogue 1

“Hi. I’d like a fast Unlimited Data SIM card please.”

“Excuse me, what?”

“A fast unlimited data SIM card.”

“That is not possible.”

“Oh. I see.”

I look out of the window briefly to see if there are any other telco stores.

“Are there any other places that sell SIM cards around here?”

“Sure. There are several, but not here in the station.”

“Ok. Thank you.”

“But, you will not find Unlimited Data.”

I stop in my tracks and ask out of genuine curiosity.

“Really? Why is that?”

My head starts spinning. Perhaps there are rules about visiting foreigners and the kinds of SIM cards they can buy? HHmm…surely not. Not here in liberal German society. As I consider the possibility that folks here also consider privacy laws and copyright concerns to be a socially fundamental aspect of German socialist ideals - the sales clerk lady stands up, looks me squarely in the eye and informs me with no little irritation:

“In Germany, we do not have Unlimited Data!”

Standing kerbside moments later I’m not happy. I laughably consider how Germany might actually have a limited ‘store’ of data that can only be dished out, rationed and paid for in byte-sized chunks. Like cake. German cake.

But I’m in a hurry and don’t want to cause trouble this early in the trip so I act professional and take her word for it, deciding not to inquire further into the possible existence of any mythical German unlimited data plan, T-Mobile or otherwise. I head back inside and scan pre-packaged T-Mobile-brand SIM cards on a revolving stand. I figure 10GB should suffice for now.

How is it possible that folks in Germany (the continent’s largest and preeminent economy) are still paying ‘per byte’ for their internet? Do they know they’re being ripped off? It’s a conundrum that kept a light on in my head for some time, and one that feels once again very relevant as we (continue to) enter the AI age.

But right there, as I installed the new SIM, I felt somehow diminished, and even a little cheated. I want to scream aloud in the center ofHauptbahnhof…

Why all the datastrudel?

For context. In Taipei, I got my first mobile phone around 2004, and the first 3G data connected smartphone around 2009. I have never known a limited data, pay-as-go, or a top-up contract. In Taiwan, some tourists, students or grandmothers might use such contracts, but virtually every adult on the island has known nothing other than unlimited data - or ‘all-you-can-eat’ internet as the locals here prefer to say.

My first ponderings consider retail economics, weighing up different product delivery strategies, environmental and geographical factors (there are plenty of mountains around and it is a pretty big place), plus the big bad presence of profits margins, shareholder dividends, and infrastructure investment. T-Mobile just happens to be one of the largest telcos on the planet. They know what they're doing with the bottom line and how to squeeze every ounce out of customers. Cynical thinking from a left-leaning snowflake? Perhaps. However…

Taiwan’s telecommunications industry is heavily government regulated - the dominant player being the formerly public-owned ChungHua Telecom, with smaller rivals FarEastone and others fighting for scraps. It always felt like internet access in Taiwan was rather like a civic right, in the same way that, thankfully, universal education, healthcare and other facets of social wellbeing are considered inalienable rights here in the Republic of China.

In 2003 most homes were offered affordable ADSL connections which soon evolved into high speed cable broadband connections at home, and fiber-optic fixed lines for commercial clients. Ubiquitous mobile connectivity spans back to 2004 and the first 3G connections - the last of which was turned off just a few years ago after 20 years of service. 

As of early 2025, 5G user subscriptions in Taiwan surpassed 10 million, which means approximately a third of the population currently have unlimited access to the world’s fastest telecommunications technology (outside of South Korea).

Let’s repeat that again - a third of the population of Taiwan currently have unlimited access to the fastest mobile telecommunications technology - and they pretty much always have. Everyone else has just regular old 4G access. In terms of high bandwidth connectivity, Taiwanese have enjoyed unfettered access ahead of most societies. First it happened on their computers. Then on their phones. In their pockets. Every day. All the time. And the whole thing is founded upon governmental mandate, paid for by taxes.

To some ears this is probably starting to sound outright socialistic (and borderline communistic among our more fervent and semantically probational right-wing brethren). In fact, it is somewhat apposite to find technology and politics so intertwined in this rambling narrative, and a topic that sustains a much broader discussion on the political (self) motivations for limiting internet access to the general public. A broad discussion perhaps taken elsewhere. 

Just as the printing press vied with the message delivered from the pulpit, the benefits of maintaining the status quo - a concept virtuously extolled, maintained and protected by those who benefit most from it - naturally powered by fears of the empowerment of those beneath them, must above be preserved.

Condemnation arrives covered in feathers of ethical purity, strutting on a stage atop moral high ground. Its message is clear and legibly squawked.

Internet access is not a right, it is a luxury to be earned

The generational influence in this perspective is startlingly apparent and uniquely pivotal to the ethical framing of ‘unlimited data access’ mentioned above.  To people my mother’s age, unbounded, unfettered, and unregulated internet access is, by definition, both morally questionable, and corrupting. It promotes idleness, a lack of self disciplineIt’s akin to having unlimited TV (as if 24/7 TV broadcasting with late night infomercials and poorly acted, 1980’s Australian soap operas aren’t corrupting). 

But enough about generational attitudes to media consumption, TVs, newspapers and the gradual dumbing down of society - despite 99% of the sum total of humanity’s history, ideas, conflicts, innovations, successes and failures being freely available to most of us - with an Internet connection.

Another story for another ramble. Let’s stick to the moral turpitude for now.

Unlimited data is another blow to the safeguards that keep young minds tethered to a morally straight road already broken and hobbled by liberalism, leftism, secularism and TikTok. Good old fashioned Lutheran economics must prevail - work and life intermingled and coexistent in a smileless, subservient moral cleanliness and purity that only work can provide.

Beware the left hand URL

The flock must be protected from, and perhaps even cured of, its own tendency toward hedonism, its predilection towards gluttony and sin. And also wanking.

The framing is not so dissimilar from the strategies that greeted the birth of the printing press and ability to create books cheaply - a relatively early knowledge retention and dispenser system which still has its fans to this day. The Catholic Church can be seen as an early gate keeper of knowledge, and litigator of nudie images.

The internet is the poster-boy of humanity’s modern descent into immorality. Lazy young ‘video gamers‘, thieving ‘downloaders’, dangerous ‘scammers’, and the morally questionable (and predominantly right-handed) consumers of ‘pornography’. 

It has the power of technology to connect all of humanity without prejudice - President and paedophile alike. Do we really need it everywhere, all the time? Should it not be tempered? Scrutinized? Audited? Censored? Metered? Will someone please think about the children?

From a purely political standpoint, it’s hard to believe that the first democratic Chinese nation on Earth, one that has had a front row seat during some pretty catastrophic Communist-led regimes across the strait, is in fact a democratic socialist republic.

It’s hard to swallow considering a) the historic socialistic traditions and left-leaning voices present in Europe, and b) the distinct lack of such voices in South Asian, and culturally Chinese politics generally. Any form of social altruism seems unlikely key factor.

Perhaps the reasoning for the sudden presence of spittle on the lips of an unassuming T-Mobile sales clerk is purely technological? 

It’s no easy feat - providing an entire population with access to fast, reliable internet connectivity. If Taiwan is somehow ‘ahead’ of the Germans, is it simply because of technical circumstances? It’s a smallish island, yes, but has a dense population of 30 million and some of the biggest mountain ranges on the planet. If we remove geographical impediments, was Taiwan simply out the gates earlier in terms of infrastructure and investment? Leaving German consumers as unwitting victims of turgid, lethargic infrastructural complacency?

Surely not. The Germans are globally revered for their technical acumen, their bombastic collective might and an iron-clad work ethic. Not a chance. I can understand why a YouTube clip might stutter in the Black Forest mountains of the Rhine, but surely the trendsetters of Berlin would demand full-bore, no-limits, worry-free, 24/7 connectivity - perhaps not as a human right, but almost certainly as a symbol of national pride.

Perspectives and the mothers of deception

I’m now starting to believe the answer lies in marketing, the ultimate art of product framing. Marketing dictates how you conceptualize a product (and much more besides). Examine the question logically for a moment from a purely marketing perspective and it begins to make sense.

In Germany, users pay for data. Bytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, and Terabytes. Data quantified, chopped up into units, measured, packaged, and sold - then itemized with cold bureaucratic precision on your monthly bill. 

The framing is beautifully illustrative, easy to communicate, simple to understand, and wholly relatable to our everyday experience of the world and how it works.

From the perspective of T-Mobile, the imaginary conversation goes like this:

T-Mobile Dialogue 2

“Can you please explain how the internet is sold? Thanks”

“Sure. We sell this stuff called data. When you go online, your computer or smartphone downloads data from us. We precisely count how much you use, and charge you accordingly. For example, if you ‘download’ 2GB of data, that is what you pay for.”

“That sounds expensive and inconvenient. Can I just buy a key to the stuff place, then I can take what I need whenever I want it?”

“No. It doesn’t work like that. When you purchase 20GB of stuff and store it on your hard drive, it is the same as when you purchase 20 bottles of milk from the supermarket, 20 liters of petroleum at a gas station. What could be easier to understand?”

This framing is deeply flawed. Sadly, it’s also utterly convincing.

The deception lies in the idea that data is stuff that we may, can, or must store. It isn’t.

The deception also implies that the internet is the source of the stuff. The stuff repository. It isn’t.

When you select a carton of milk from the supermarket shelf, put it in your trolley, purchase it at the till and take it home, that particular carton of milk no longer exists in the supermarket. Its existence (or atomic energy, to add clarity from our friends down the hall in the physics department) has been moved to your refrigerator.

Without stating the bleedin’ obvious, milk is matter. Data is not. Even though matter never entirely disappears, or gets used up, only moving from one form to the next, data is not corporeal. It exists, but not in the same way as cartons of milk do.

The river and the bucket

My favorite analogy is that of the river and the bucket. In this story, T-Mobile built the river, mostly using existing infrastructure, money from taxation, and people with deep pockets who like a sure bet. However, T-Mobile didn’t create the water.

In this analogy, consumers in urban Taiwan have had unlimited access to the river and its waters since approximately 2003. Instead of giving folks a bucket of water, they gave everyone unlimited, uncensored, unrestricted access to the source. 

I could be wrong, but as far as I know, Taiwan does not have a higher rate of death grip syndrome, or massive hoards of illegally acquired music libraries.