When I lived in Germany, in annual utilities bill there was an "internet cable fee" of EUR 100. Every year, from every apartment in the building. When I tried to push back they basically said "it's a cable fee don't fucking argue with us". In another apartment there was no "internet cable fee" but the fastest internet available was 16Mb DSL, so fuck them as well.
I guess that fee likely comes from the fact that the owners of the apartments voted to install cable internet hookups to the building and pay over time since it's a large fee and everyone can benefit from it. It's often the case in an apartment that a shared service, such as a new elevator, is paid for collectively, even if you don't use it, so it's not surprising that you did have to pay. I wouldn't lump it in with the specific discussion here because it's not about "hidden fees" since it's tangential, as the internet company wasn't charging you a fee through some backhanded method. If you moved in after the connections were added you should have seen this when you got the initial contract as well, so it shouldn't have been a surprise.
We are talking about annual collective fee in thousands of EUR for the entire building. For the fucking coaxial cable setup, at that time over ten fucking years old. Did they have to reinvent the fucking coaxial cable during the process? Were the cable guides owned by some alpha predatory rent seeker?! I'm really curious what kind of corrupted opaque deal it was because all I got in response was "THIS IS CABLE FEE PAY IT!!!".
