Jeanie27

I have a house in Estepa, in Seville, and, although not a full time resident by any means, we are there for several weeks out of the year. Not enough to justify a telephone line permanently. We recently bought a My-Fi mobile broadband connection but it is horrendously expensive and we have been told by our local Movistar shop that a dongle would not work where we are (street too narrow apparantly and would block the signal)

Does anyone know or have any ideas of anything to help us over this? I have heard that it is possible to get broadband without a telephone line and would like to explore this. There is apparantly a shop in Estepa that can provide this but I don't even know what to ask for - it's not the Spanish that's the problem, it's just me being a complete klutz about anything technical.

Help/advice would be enormously appreciated.

bobd22

If you have a mobile phone do a manual signal search to see what signals you get if you can get a decent orange signal try masvovil dongle. It works fine for me and I live in an extremely narrow street so don't think that has much to do with it. You can order and operate masvovil online their rates are poss cheapest no need for a contract. Cheapest method if not their all the time is to set up a auto top up. Lets you know when this will happen and can be cancelled anytime, how it works is when credit drops to 5 euro automatically tops up what you set as low as 5 euro . As I say if you get decent orange mobile signal should work as they use orange to operate on but cheaper than orange direct.

lovingthesun

We've just had satellite broadband installed and I'm delighted with it after using a slow dial-up connection for the past few years.

When it was being installed, I enquired for a friend who. like you, is here part time and they said that they charge just €10 maintenance per month when the customer is away - not bad I suppose for the convenience of having it!

bobd22

Is that the one where you have the little diamond shaped dish to receive it? I was thinking of getting that when we move out full time if I can get it

lovingthesun

I don't know what shape it is as I didn't actually see them installing it and now it's out of sight on the roof

We have to be in line of sight of an aerial on a distant mountain top and the signal is good & strong. I can't believe I put up with dial-up for so long - mind you that's because originally Telefonica said there was no way we'd get broadband out here in the campo, we were lucky to get a landline at all - and we believed them

bobd22

Yes I think that's the same thing I've seen as I say at the minute we use the dongle but obviously when there full time your method would be better

lovingthesun

Well, it's pretty good that they do a maintenance deal for when you're not here - maybe if you shop around you'll get a better deal. these firms usually advertise in the expat free papers or, as I did, get referrals by word of mouth

Rotor

Thats not satellite , its probabley radio/wifi .

jimenato

So it's not actually satellite it's Wireless Internet - which is what to ask for.

One company that does this is Iberbanda which is (or at least was) owned by Telefonica/Movistar. We tried it and it is a bit slow and expensive and in our case unreliable. Be very wary of www.Iberbandainenglish.com If it's anything like www.telefonicainenglish.com they'll rob you blind - it's a complete scam.

There are other companies in the same game.

Try searching on wireless internet spain

jurdyr

dongle in you area if the moblie phone net work is good are wimax

lovingthesun

Sorry - not technically minded

We didn't have good reports of Iberbanda - but the company we did use - Anda networks - were recommended by several people in our area and we have found the service very reliable in the 6 weeks or so that we've used it - we pay about €30 per month which seems to be average around here - annoying though after I was paying £5 per month with Sky back in UK - and that included unlimited free landline calls to Europe and the USA!

Jeanie27

Thank you for the advice/information. Husband is now looking into satellite broadband. There are so many to choose from but he has managed to find one fairly local and, hopefully, we shall be on in the next week or so.

Thanks again.

teuchterpete

Hi Jeannie.
We also have a house in Eteppa. I know its a bit of a trudge, but did you know that internet is free at the local library? Just go along and they will give you a password. You then log on with your lap top and thats it, for every visit. OK its not at home but we find it good enough for what we need until we can get there full time. There is a fire wall but we can still book flights etc.
Pete.

petew

According to their coverage maps, Orange and Vodafone both have pretty good 3g coverage in your area. Your living in a narrow street shouldn't affect it. Have you Vodafone and/or Orange shops in your locality? - they should be able to advise you. If you have a good 3g signal you should be able to get pretty good broadband - I used to get 3 mb on Vodafone - enough to use Skype and watch Youtube.

jurdyr

if there 6 resident more in your street that looking for DSL there new company now giving Sdsl , supports data only on a single line and does not support analog calls , ot better and work out cheap in long run , T&C are that have for 12 months and need Cat5e and Cat6 cable are a wireless system
get in touch if want to know more
30 Mb is lowest package and can offer speeds of 100Mb aswell

jurdy