Advice needed
 

So today, after a long wait for ADSL, the Telefonica engineer finally shows up at our house. He pokes around for a few minutes, says he'll be back in "5 minutos" and then never returns.

According to my Spanish speaking assistant who spoke to him on the phone, engineer said,
"...it is not possible to install a line in your house because there is no line available; that is, it seems there a limit in the number of lines that can be connected in that area."

There are phone ports & cable already installed in the house which is reasonably new, so it's not like the house is a complete non-starter.

So we're really stuck and have considered everything from leaving the house to leaving Spain. We can't live in this house if there is no internet (I need it for work 24/7). And, we're wondering just how long one has to wait for a line to become available. Seems archaic, but then I live in Lanzarote.

Any advice?
Stick around for a line to become available or cut our losses and move?

Re: Advice needed
 

Yes, in many respects Spain is well behind the times.

The exchange is clearly full and they won't invest in upgrading it or installing a new one.

Your best bet is to see if you can be served by WiMax or even satellite internet. This is far last drastic than moving house or leaving Spain:ohmy:

Re: Advice needed
 

yes, seems archaic, but could well be true. for every house put on the line out from the exchange then there will be a line voltage drop. It probably means exactly that - because adding you to the line will knock everyone else out.
just because a house has a telephone socket in every room doesn't mean they have a connection to a line in the street.

We were all prepared to have Telefonica connect us up - until he arrived to say there was no cable or conduit from the house up the road to ours, therefore we couldn't have it. Seems the old "aerial bundling" of stringing across the road isn't allowed any more.
So we went with a radio system, small antenna similar to a sat dish pointing to a tower on the edge of the next village.
so no need to move, look for a way round the problem, even if it means having to use a satellite up/down, but that can come to earth in the UK.

hth

Re: Advice needed
 

Unfortunately this could be true. In rural areas, capacity is severely limited.

Whenever we have moved in Spain, our first question has always been, how is the internet? In general, for good internet, you must live in densely populated areas.

If all else fails, try a 4G mobile internet dongle. Mobile internet has really improved in recent years

Re: Advice needed
 

Same here, agent told us we could get 6MB internet in the property.

I am currently using a mobile wifi router but 10G/m (on Orange @ 35E/m) isn't nearly enough bandwidth for work. I'd need a minimum of 30G+

Re: Advice needed
 

Was it satellite or a WIMAX system you are using?

Re: Advice needed
 

Looking into it now. Wimax would be preferable due to ping times vs Satellite. I've tried contacting Wimax providers here before but no reply from any of them :blink:. Any recommendations?

Re: Advice needed
 

have telephone and ADSL using Jetsur wimax service but don't think they are available from the Canaries

Re: Advice needed
 

[QUOTE=londonbee;10610731]Same here, agent told us we could get 6MB internet in the property.
QUOTE]

Agents lie. We called up the internet suppliers beforehand to give them our potential address before agreeing to move, to see what services were available

Hope you find a solution. A warning, satellite internet is usually pretty slow and unreliable

Re: Advice needed
 

I've only heard of 2oMeg on WiMax in Spain but I guess you might be able to get more in places.


When we bought our house, I asked them to leave the lines in so that we didn't get this problem. What did the old owners do - they cancelled the service!

Luckily we were able to get a line within a month of moving in but it was only 512 then (rural campo)!

We've now gone WiMax which uses a small 'squarial' and line of sight to a mast.

Re: Advice needed
 

We were told we could have wimax but when they came to install our line of site was not good enough, we have had satelitte internet now for a year and have had no problem, its fast enough my husband sometimes works from home with no problems and we are able to watch bbc iplayer. We also use a VOIP phone system, this can be a bit slow for the first 2 minutes then it seems to pick up stream very quickly and most people do not notice any difference from a landline. We tried Dongles but the reception in our area was no good, we found the weather really affected the signal. Whilst we were waiting for satelite to become affordable and more reliable we joined the local library and used the wifi there free of charge my husband did quite a bit of work from there, working in the mornings it was practically empty.

Re: Advice needed
 

The two non-fixed line alternatives:
- Satellite: The local satellite provider offers 1MBps for a rather expensive package (Orange mobile is better)
-WIMAX: doesn't cover here.

Third alternative is to buy a 1km signal booster and tap into the open networks here.

We live in the main town and in a relatively new development, so the fact that "internet is impossible" has just stumped me. I thought at least a slow line. But no line???? Or, maybe a year wait? :cry_smile:

The wifi coverage in wooden huts on the remote shores of Fiji was a lot better than here! Time for a rethink of plans...

Re: Advice needed
 

If you live in a new development then it could be that they ran out of money before the infrastructure could be finished. Spain has had five years with no money remember!

In the cities the internet is excellent. I have fibre optic 100MB internet as do my relatives in Barcelona

Re: Advice needed
 

Get used to it. It's part of the "charm" :blink:

...another "charming" feature is when it starts raining just at the time when you have 20 minutes to send a very important document by email.

Re: Advice needed
 

not wishing to be unkind - but did you actually PLAN this fiasco ??
the good people of BES keep telling everyone it isnt the paradise some think it is, and difficulties will be thrown at you from a great height if you actually want to do even the smallest amount of work here.

I believe you can get better wifi and internet in a hut in a Malaysian kampong. I have a spare pair of flip-flops, a tablecloth and coolie had left over from my last visit if you would like them.
;)
oh and although they have the monsoons that is normally when it is warm, not like the Spanish cold and rain.
:(

Re: Advice needed
 

I understand that technically, we are part of north Africa (geologically). Does that count? Maybe that explains a lot.

Re: Advice needed
 

Sorry to use the old cliché but it never ceases to amaze me that someone who needs the internet for their work doesn't move to a place with it already installed.:amen:

Re: Advice needed
 

considering the number of aircraft flying in and out of Morocco I woudn't mind betting that part of North Africa is better served with telecoms than the bananna islands.
;)

Re: Advice needed
 

I dont who that is meant to be offensive too

It may surprise you to know that Spain has one of the highest rates of broadband pentration in the world

And more Spanish people have a smartphone with mobile internet than any other nationality

So not as backwards as you would like to think

Re: Advice needed
 

is that the real Jacky or the secretary :confused:

this is the second post today where we are in agreement

;)

Re: Advice needed
 

We moved our business from one site to another and assumed that we would be able to transfer our number to the new premises. Each complex is allocated a certain amount of lines and, unfortunately for us, all the other houses had had extra lines put in and so had taken up all the available lines. One place had gone from a bungalow to a car rental with 5 lines. We had to wait until new cables were put in the complex. Telefonica only would agree to do this if the demand was there - just one place asking wasnt enough.
We were lucky that we still had our old line and just transferred all our calls to a mobile and we used next doors wireless connection for the internet. After 18 months we had a landline. We could have had a cable put in earlier at our expense but as that was going to cost alot of money, we decided to just transfer the calls instead.
Not a great way of doing things and alot of 'its outrageous' 'this would never happen in the uk' type thoughts were thrown around. But we got there in the end.

Re: Advice needed
 

cman - its no use having smart phones without the infrastructure, so there must be some smart (and rich) salesmen out there

without the infrastructure they just weigh you down when you fall into swollen rivers
:ohmy:

Re: Advice needed
 

Yes, we know, CMan, Spain is #1 in everything - including things that it ranks below #47 in.

Re: Advice needed
 

But the infrastructure is there

You have to realise that British people in Spain tend to live in the middle of nowhere or in coastal backwaters

80% of Spaniards live in the cities.

Spain is big and rugged. You can't put mobile phone masts and cables everywhere just to help the odd expat who wants to work from the middle of nowhere.

My in-laws live 10km outside of Oviedo and can't get a fixed telephone line or internet and have gone through 3 different mobile operators to find one that gives coverage in their house. If they wanted to do business, then they would live in the city!

Re: Advice needed
 

I have said elsewhere that we don't have a line because there is no connection to the end of the street - in fact there is no conduit to the end of the street !!

But that changed last month - the market trader next door in the same position as us needed it for his kids schoolwork, so he bought (or "found") some conduit and one morning laid it on the surface, covered it with loose soil and dust and jointed it with duct tape.
Telefonica sent in an engineer a few days later and installed for him, through the conduit he laid.

Re: Advice needed
 

Re: Advice needed
 

Go find a bit more pipe and extend it to your house!:thumbsup:

Re: Advice needed
 

you have that wrong - most expats live near the coast not in the campo

I live an enormous 32k from Granada - in a village/town with a population of over 5,000, with an ayuntamiento responsible for almost 15,000 in the area.
We have a Citroen dealer, a Ford dealer, a Peugeot dealer, 40+bars, 7 supermarkets including new Dia, and various other shops.
And the telephone and internet is crap when you can get it !!

But then the electricity is crap as well - we have all these huge pylons carrying the National Grid spoiling our view, marching across the olive groves - but we have to put up with 10+ power cuts a day.

Then we go into the big city and see the enormous expenditure in infrastructure - they even get good roads dug up and re-tarmaced whilst ours are falling apart, even the A road from the big city.
And that road was impassable for the 3rd time this year due to floods coming off the olive groves because there is no road drainage system.

So go back to your nice comfortable life in Madrid with all the facililities being paid for by those living in the sticks
:thumbdown:

Re: Advice needed
 

actually not so funny as you may think - my house has the conduits connected to the house next door, all under the footpath. It is the link between me and the solicitor that is missing - because it is an empty plot so no footpath and no conduit. that is where the pipe has now been laid.:thumbup:

but will stay with what I have, we are only renting and hope to move by the middle of the year to our own place - nowhere near here and in an area where we have checked the telecomms services, and no mountain between us and the TV masts.
:thumbsup:

Re: Advice needed
 

Well, I can confidently say that out of the many countries I've had the privilege of living, Spain has been by the far the most backward with regards to infrastructure. Telecoms, electricity, water, etc..

With respect to Telecoms, in Germany we paid €20 per month for 10Mb internet that worked reliably 24x7x365... AND it takes only 24 hours to get it installed AND same day service if it fails for any reason - AND you don't have to pay if it doesn't work, AND in the country, not the city, AND that was 10 years ago (it's even cheaper now)!

Here, we paid a minimum of €52 per month for 600Kbps, which failed for at least one hour every day, always failed when raining, AND service takes 2-14 days to show up (if they ever do), AND you have to pay for it whether it works or not.

Electricity? I don't remember the electricity ever failing, AND they actually read the meter instead of charging whatever they felt like charging. By the way, a couple weeks ago our electricty went crazy and burned up a lot of our appliances (Endesa's fault - a transformer problem). No chance of recovering those costs here, but if that happened in Germany, they'd be mandated to pay all claims.

Yes, we have one of the most sophisticated and competitive infrastructure systems in the world (AND if you've never lived anywhere else, you might actually believe that).

Re: Advice needed
 

It's a worthy warning to all prospective tenants and buyers that we both checked the property address on Movistar website and verified availability with the agent. Beyond that what are you supposed to do?

You can get ADSL here (my neighbors have it), it's just the local exchange here seems to have a capacity of about 10 lines for 1000 houses. And we live in a reasonably sized Barrio with hotels, shops, supermarkets etc.

Re: Advice needed
 

Hi Londonbee,

Have you tried the 3G dongle service? I have received 6Mb speed on it! There are many suppliers - probably the cheapest option is to buy an "open" dongle (available through the internet) and buy a PAYG internet sim card and do a speed test (assuming you can get a signal)

Davexf

Re: Advice needed
 

I've been using Orange contrato 10Gb/mes but I need 30gb+ a month to do my work. The line however is reliable and would be great the day I can get good bandwidth on one of these things. Unless there's a viable alternative I may have to pay 140e/m just to get a basic connection.

Re: Advice needed
 

Hi

If you know that the Orange service works - there are cheaper options who use the Orange network; I believe Carrefour use the Orange network - might be worth investigating - there are many threads on this forum

Davexf

Re: Advice needed
 

Technically its a EU right to have a telephone , I have a cortijo with a sat phone as land lines and radio phones dont work there , it was supplied at the same price of a normal land line and came a note saying how it was financed by Brussels! internet via this is very slow BUT teleconica can switch on a faster option for a rather high fee.Check it out and say you want a satellite phone if you cant have a land line , dont accept a radio phone as by all accounts they are crap.

Re: Advice needed
 

thats what I have via Jetsur, it works, both for telephone and internet, bit slow at times but it works - unless they let water into the cabling at the repeater, but that could happen with a landline

Re: Advice needed
 

Somebody else told me about the EU rights. I wanted to confirm it before going to the agent and being that guy spouting his rights to the locals who couldn't care less.

Re: Advice needed
 

Are you sorted yet? as had the same problem i now use a mifi which is basically a dongle and router in 1,really fast and no phone line needed.