Typically, when a person connects to an online service like Netflix, the ISP connects to the network hosting the service, and the data flows freely. As traffic increases, the ISP and the host work together to increase capacity, so every user gets the same fast connection.
However, citing customer service complaints and first-hand accounts, the NGOs allege that, instead of increasing traffic capacity for free, Deutsche Telekom will ask the host network to pay them a fee to increase capacity, which is against the industry standard of free data exchanges — but not unheard of.
For me these actions of the Deutsche Telekom are already impacting usability and access for specific services. It also happened in my family where a game patch Download (FFXIV) was extremely slow and the update would constantly crash/stop. Only solution was using a VPN and first connecting to some other region like Japan.
And this despite the Deutsche telekom being on the premium side of pricing…