Linken1647

My husband and I will be moving to Spain at the end of February. We are moving to Adra in Almeria area. Please can anyone tell me how easy it is to get high speed internet access installed. I will be working for my UK employee but from home in Spain. I will need a fast and reliable internet connection. What should I be asking for? How much per month should I expect to pay? Advice appreciated. Thanks

jdr

Firstly look in the free beer thread, there is a link there to find out if you can get ADSL, you need a local phone number though.
If you don`t have one yet, look up a local business and put theirs in.

XTreme

High speed, fast, reliable internet access in Spain? I wouldn't raise your hopes!

If you're looking for the equivalent of Pipex, Demon, or Bulldog.....you're out of luck. Think AOL or Tiscali on a very bad day and you won't be disappointed!

twyntub

Hmm, it depends... I don't know the area, but the first acid test is whether or not you have a phone line / can get one - and if so, whether you can get ADSL or not.

If not, things get a little more tricky, but there ARE several options - they may or may not be any good depending on what you need the internet access for.

As it's for business - reliability and suitability for the job in hand will be critical. Your company's IT people will be able to assist, and it would help if they could answer these questions...

- Is the Internet access just for e-mail / surfing or will you be accessing company resources using a VPN, and if so what type?
- Will you be accessing applications directly or be using Citrix / MS RDP? (and if so, which?)
- Will you need access to shared resources e.g. smb shares?
- Will you need to run any specfic applications directly over the connection e.g. MS Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle SQL-NET or VoIP?
- Seriously, how important is reliability to you? Will a couple of days downtime a month be relatively unimportant, or will 10 minutes of downtime lose your business millions and millions of pounds?
- What's the budget here? Is your employer expecting to pay £9.99 a month for 24meg unlimited broadband or are you at least prepared to pay several hundred pounds a month for a very reliable 512kb connection?

GrapeEater

We pay about €35 per month for 2MB "Satellite" connection for Internet and a Phone (with 966 number) as there are no landlines here yet (Hondon Valley, Alicante Region). This is a domestic services really. They offer a more reliable business service (about €50 p.m). I think it was about €120 connection/install charge. If you want a wireless router adding it'll be another €100 fitted and tested.

It's not that reliable (guess about 90%) and there are few alternatives. The longest we went without a connection was 2 days. It's gets frustrating when you first move in to your house as suppliers/deliveries, etc want to call you, check youare in, i.e. missing a call!

It sometimes takes 2 days to get the engineer out even though most of the time the problem is at 'their end'. The itemised bills for calls are laughable and it's paid by Direct Debit via your Spanish Bank Account.

I guess the more rural you are the less likely to get reliability. Check to see if there are any English papers/freebie mag's in your area, the adverts are usually in there. But next time you are in your area ask the neighbours or in bars or a local business who already has internet.

twyntub

That doesn't sound like a satellite connection... more like a WiFi connection with a satellite backhaul? 2 way Satellite would require an 80cm dish, clear sight of the Southern sky (no people or animals allowed within 2 to 5 metres of the dish), transmitting equipment and depending on what you buy could set you back a couple of thousand euros for the equipment alone.

GrapeEater

"That doesn't sound like a satellite connection... more like a WiFi connection with a satellite backhaul? "

That's what I meant of course 'satellite'. Ah hem !!! Clearly the cost and bumpf with any ad/consultation would bring those details out as there is a massive cost difference. Again depends where you are/options in the area. When we looked the 'real' satellite option was available but way out of reach financially just for browsing/email and infact offered just as 'slow' speeds at that time. And I suspect still not 100% reliable!

twyntub

Actually, it's very reliable... more reliable than the electricity supply at least The only outage we've had in four months was a brief 20 minute period during a massive rainstorm where the satellite disappeared behind several thousand feet of cloud.

Even then, there are different service levels for satellite connections. Low-latency connections designed for VPN and VoIP (phone) use are probably double the price of the figures you've already seen and ruled out.

Without paying the extra, round-trip latency (the time it takes you to reach the Internet and back again) can be as high as 3 seconds which is OK for surfing but completely unusable for the vast majority of VPN / business applications and makes voice telephony very hard.

That's the reason I ask the OP exactly what they need to use their Internet connection for. Business applications can be sensitive to any and all of restricted bandwidth, packet loss, latency, etc - they won't just be 'slow' they won't work at all.

GrapeEater

Great to know... after that you lose me - too technical - keep it simple please !!

So it works? It's expensive and might be an option for business users ???

valenciatim

Just to stick my 2 cents in,(!) It is actually possible to have a 2-way satellite broadband set-up individually for about €500 install and €50 odd a month for a 1 meg connection here that will cope with voice data. I have my own 2-way satellite backhaul that I am reselling to neighbours, but it's using very high quality equipment and a wi-fi delivery system also allowing VOIP, as we have no phone lines here at all. The connection speeds are not fantastic, but enable phone conversations via Skype etc, and from a cost and value point of view, customers would be paying the same with Telefonica, IF it was available!
So it can be done!
Regards
Tim

twyntub

Sorry, yes, IT hat off.

Basically, a true 2-way satellite Internet connection is very reliable because it's just you, the satellite, and the base station somewhere in Germany (say) which is the bit that's connected to the Internet.

You have to pay for the equipment (or it can be bundled into the monthly fee). It's not cheap - and requires professional installation as it's transmitting as well as receiving (need to ensure it only sends to the right satellite!). As always, there are always deals to be had - but you do get what you pay for in terms of equipment.

Business 'applications' are pieces of software that you might use in order to go about your business e.g. accounts production, computer aided design, customer relationship management databases etc, etc. Few jobs 'only' require the Internet for web surfing and e-mail - most require you to access internal applications that are running inside the business.

To access these 'internal' applications securely, another layer is added called a 'VPN' or Virtual Private Network. This effectively turns your Internet connection into a secure connection to your office.

Both the specific applications and the VPN are sensitive to the reliability / integrity of the Internet connection (you don't get something for nothing). Any and all of the following can impact how good your experience will be:

Bandwidth - how fast your connection is. Bandwidth only partly determines how fast your application will work...

Latency - when you press 'ok' - it takes time for that to reach the Internet and then for the result to come back again. Imagine adding three seconds to everything you press on your computer (even every letter you type) and you'll realise that could be very important in some circumstances.

Packet loss - sometimes the data doesn't get through at all - and gets lost in the Internet somewhere. It's not the end of the world with a web page - in its simplest form your browser simply requests another copy of whatever's missing. That's not possible for many applications, or indeed a phone call. You can't re-constitute a phone call by requesting all the missing pieces again at the end of the call - it would sound like rubbish!

So - in short - it might be the answer - it might not - it very much depends what you want to do with your Internet connection.

Linken1647

Thank you all so much for your answers. It's all totally mind-blowing. I will print off your responses and baffle the minds of our IT bods now!