Hi, having returned to Costa Esuri after a few months, we couldn't help but notice a new mast situated at the top of the road where the mini market/bar is. Can anyone enlighten us as to what service it provides please? Thanks.

A 4G mast has been promised and expected for some time. Some say that it will be 12 months until it comes into service,

The mobile reception on Esuri and into Esuri has been awful for years. A member of CERA has campaigned over many years with Movistar for improvements and 12 months ago seemed to have succeeded when he was promised a 4G mast to be located where it is now positioned on Council owned land. A fibre optic land line was laid along the Boulevard past Encinas and onto the site terminating in a grey box on a telegraph pole. There it stopped due to local objections and a new site was saught and it was decided that it should go on the site of the Gihasa water treatment plant at the top of Esuri. Things stalled for a long time for discussions Movistar/Gihasa and in and among the Mayor decided that all of Ayamonte should get 4G at the same time so further delay looks likely until the rest of Ayamonte catches up.

From a poor to middling signal often defaulting to Portugal we now get five bars on iPhone 5 and 6 but only as 3G. It would be interesting to know if anyone has picked up a 4G signal. Also there is now fibre optic connection from Huelva to Esuri provided by Cobra on a Province wide contract to Movistar why can't we have super fast BB linked into that infrastructure?

Hello, in July when I was last in the area, I purchased a payg 4g sim card and had a good 4g signal in and around Ayamonte. Although as you confirm, a 4g coverage search on
http://4g.orange.es/cobertura/
still shows poor signal around esuri. I hope the coverage improves soon.
Regards
Mike

Hi. We use a Portuguese Vodafone SIM card and 4g Huawei Mi-Fi and are able to pick up a good 4g signal from the Vodafone mast situated on the hill across the river in Portugal. We are in Vistas del Guadiana, over the hill from the majority of Costa Esurians, and can't 'see' the Spanish masts. We are also out of range of the Priinet mast(s). We usually purchase 30 GB for 30 days, costing 30 Euros (from Vodafone at Faro Airport) but this time there was a special deal, so we ended up with 60GB for the same price! Top-ups can be purchased at any Vodafone shop (nearest is in VRSA we think) or payment counters in some (Portuguese) supermarkets, including Pingo Doce. Reception is great. Barry and Sue

Is reception good enough for TV? And if so how long - in minutes - do you think you would get for 60Gb?

That sounds like a great deal. I stay near La plaza shopping centre. I was wondering if your vodaphone Portugal signal was good around Ayamonte area as well as esuri. If so I would gladly follow your lead and get a similar data deal.

Hi Mike

It depends if you are streaming SD or HD.

Somewhere way in the past I did some numbers and posted them, with the maths, but I wont find that now.

My rule of thumb approximation is that if you watch 1 min of TV a day, you need 1 GB a month.

So 30 mins a day is 30GB/month

If I recall correctly that is SD... but it could be HD - I forget. However...

Bottom line after all the discussions is that wherever I am ....and whenever I need streaming TV, I need an unlimited package.

Ergo the most expensive one.

Usually you have to take a monthly contract over a period of x year(s)

So for a secondary residence for the months you are away, its money down the drain - as you are not using the net (at its most expensive monthly cost)

Having done the calcs a few years back - I recommended priinet (for OUR usage) as you only pay 7eur for the full months you are away. If you are there - or overlap their monthly dates then you have to pay the full month, even though you leave before its end (likewise if you arrive early).

Still FOR OUR usage its the best deal, and the last time we were here, into high season they were finally delivering the speed necessary for HD streaming (hence SD also).

Since streaming is our 'toughest' usage. Then once we can stream OK, anything else we want to do with IT is easily handled

Jon

Hi MikeJ

This is Barry's domain! He will try to calculate our usage over the weekend and get back to you on this.

Regards,
Sue

Hi. We only have experience of this from where we are in Esuri, looking straight across the river to the Vodafone mast, but I guess if you are in line with it from where you are, you should be able to pick up a decent signal. We were lucky with the 60 GB deal, it could be just a one-off. Vodafone Portugal tend to offer different deals each time we visit 🙂

Sue and Barry

It depends very much on what program you use to stream the content, and the compression ratio and picture quality. I have a VPN connection to my PC at home and stream content to my laptop in CE over a Vodafone Portugal 4G MiFi. I rarely get buffering but the picture struggles a bit when there's lots of movement. Today I was watching F1 Qualifying and it was using an average of 700MB per hour so 60GB would keep me going for nearly 90 hours!

Hope that helps.
Regards, Barry

Thats interesting, we dont compress and get no bufferring. The only degradation Ive seen is at Wimbledon, the speed of the ball. The picture wasnt bad, but wasnt perfect when viewed.

So my rule of thumb is a bit suspect. But I recall getting the numbers from a tech site on the net.

1GB/month = 1 min TV / day. I guess thats HD.

Ergo 60 GB = 60 min/day. = 30 hours/month. For us. We watch more than that so need unlimited internet.

You get 3x more. Either you compress more than us or watch more SD.... Or my rule of thumb means I may have my thumb up the 'wrong place' .

It does seem to work for us though in our travels

Jon

Currently we have Priinet which is working well for us at the moment. I'm just 'scanning the horizon' as we old consultants used to say - to see what new technologies are coming down the track (or in CE's terms what old technologies are finally getting here!) to improve our TV access. Bring back satellite .
I don't know where you've stuck your thumb, Jon, but your maths is a bit suspect

Hmmm.... Next week is an anniversary for me, I retired and got my last paycheck on 30/9 a few years back. That means I am surely rusty and not so much in touch. But as a qualified scientist & engineer surely my maths hasn't also all gone?

Mike you are highly qualified expert in this stuff, so perhaps you can help me.

There are 60 seconds in a minute, yes?
There are 1000 KB in a megabyte, yes? (See PS)
There are 1000 MB in a gigabyte. Yes? (See PS)
We can assume 30 days in a month, yes? (It's a rule of thumb after all)

Now one can go 2 ways here, calculate down from this, but I'll go up.

My Slingbox needs 600 KB/s STEADY STATE internet to stream SD.

600 x60 KB a minute, data downloaded, yes?
600 x60 x30 data downloaded in a month, yes?

= 1,080,000 KB. = 1080MB = 1.08 GB which is 1 minute a day, 30 days a month.

If you answered 'yes' to all the above questions, then you will agree that my rule of thumb is pretty much perfect i.e you need a Gig of download for a minute a day of TV (SD).

Going 'down' from 1GB gives you 1 min/day at 555KB/s.

Have I still got some of my marbles left?
Jon

PS if you are a QI fan you may argue the 1000 vs 1024, but its a rule of thumb after all.
PPS the best internet speed tester is TestMy.net Broadband Internet Speed Test for streaming as it measures a steady state. Others test the peak speed, which isnt the best for streaming
PPPS from Slingbox, quote, Slingbox.com - Recommended bandwidths for optimal video quality
support.slingbox.com › en-US
SD streaming, 600 Kbps (or higher)

Oops, looks like I stirred a hornets nest. Sorry, sorry, sorry if I doubted your calculations - sloppy wordage and I should have used multiquote but I've only just learnt how to do that. I was basing my reply on Barry's practical experience of 700Gb per hour and 90hrs per month which would be around 3 hrs per day using 4G.


Mike J


BTW Yout soon?