WiFi signals can measure heart rate

And I wonder why that hasn't been commonplace if its just that easy

It is commonplace in many parts of the world. Most (all?) of Europe, Australia, many places in Asia.

And look where that got Germany; my hometown and neighbouring towns are mostly on ADSL or rarely VDSL if you’re lucky, because the big players don’t want anything to do with the cost and legal side.

Local municipalities establish de-facto monopolies and drive prices up, because they offer slightly faster and stable lines.

There is a joint effort by local utility companies in Mecklenburg and they’re trying to make things better, but anecdotally are also challenging to deal with.

My now residence here in the UK is not really rural and for years Giganet/CityFibre/toob promised gigabit soonTM for years and the date got delayed and delayed and delayed.

At least here in Denmark, they seem to have opted for installing bigger "pipes", instead of just laying down some fiber cables. Then in the future they can just push new cables through the pipes. An idea I bet they wish they had gotten the first time around.

That is not the reason that got Germany to have poor telecom infrastructure. We also have poor 4G/5G coverage without the need of any FTTH setups.

There is a common case of excessive bureaucracy and extremely conservative population (thank you, low birth rates) which is hindering any significant development in the country.

Yeah the reason ain't so much some cables in the ground but general byzantine bureaucratic obscurity of a state that you germans created (or allowed to be created) and maintain for yourself. Its far from the only issue stemming form it, and all are just symptoms of underlying dysfunctionalities. Also the population seems to mostly sit around waiting for politicians to fix all problems.

The GDR was deploying fiber, but the west is using capitalism as underlying mechanism so the fiber was left unused and even replaced by copper after reunification because why use the latest technology just yet when you can get people to pay both for the downgrade and the upgrade some decades later!

Cell towers need 'backhaul' too. Can't have them all microwave meshed.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optische_Anschlussleitung was not a thing of the GDR. Though one could think so, because of the ...errm... let's say 'mismanagement' :-)

That's what you get with arrogant and ignorant large bureaucracies, anywhere, anytime :-)

There was fiber deployment in the GDR and plans to extend it already before the OPAL project, which came after reunification. I remember our East German CS network professor talking about it with passion but fail to find information online. Which doesn’t surprise me, since history is written by the winners. I trust his personal stories more than the lack of information online.

It could be. Even much stuff from the 'winners' from before common internet access is lost ;->

OTOH, considering how well the 'megabit-chip' went, I'm wondering wtf they'd do with fiber, at the times? For the military, agencies, ministries and some universities maybe, but for the masses? How common was the 'stinknormales telephon' in households, back then?