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

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.

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.

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

is that the real Jacky or the secretary

this is the second post today where we are in agreement

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.

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

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

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!

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.

http://live.kyero.com/2012/06/05/spa...f-smartphones/

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

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

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.

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.

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).