Using The Internet

[chris(madrid)]

Also - whilst it's not "oficially" the case.

If the problem with service is a Telefonica "wire" and you're a Telefonica client - they generally throw resources at it till it's fixed. Might take a day or two depending on what happened. We had a 3 day outage here in December because somebody cut and stole 5 kilometres of wire from the trunk cable to where I work. But they fixed it first by routing via an Indian owned backbone - was a bit slow, but at least worked.

If it hits other suppliers customers - they generally get dealt with last and it may take a while if TF is not convinced it's their fault.

And it is often not TF's fault. In a previous "life" I had a client who used another "supplier" in Madrid centre. They run a business centre. It took two weeks before their supplier finally accepted it was their issue. Turned out to be a series of damaged routers. They steadfastly blamed Telefonica. It can seriously damage small businesses - it lost my client half of theirs.

[libove]

How about Internet via ONO cable television service in Barcelona? Anyone have experience with that? Comparing ONO cable Internet and Telefonica ADSL2, ONO seems to have the performance/price advantage.
Thanks!
Jay in Atlanta
(Moving to Barcelona some time later this year when I get my visa)

[chris(madrid)]

Jay - ONO generally use their OWN dark fibre backbone. If this is the case - then should be OK.

I've a business contact (supplier) in Madrid who's just moved his business across to ONO - but where he lives the ONO service is not as good. You need to find out how it is where you have the flat/shop etc!. CASE by CASE.

ONO was VERY hot on getting their backbone into business parks and newer developments. But there's not always been a chance to cable ALL streets especially in older sectors.

I've seen businesses die in Madrid CITY moving from one ISP to another - seriously. Why? because despite what they've sold they in fact use somebody else backbone to make the connection. And when it went kaput NOBODY would accept responsibility.

[El Capitan]

Originally Posted by Stravinsky

Telefonica can cover my area, but Ya.com can't even though they harrassed me by phone for days and days. I heard this from others also, but as I say it depends on area ..... we are on ADSL rural

Having now had Ya.com for a few weeks, everything is fine. Still with Telefonica for the phone line but Ya.com take care of the internet and calls. Yes it depends on area and as I am not in the city centre, I only can get a 3 Mb connection whereas a techie colleague at work has got 10 Mb from Ya.com in the city centre and is delighted with it. In fact the main reasons for me to change was that Telefonica wanted to charge me 80 euros to fix a blown modem after a lightning strike on their network and all the techies at work are moving over to Ya.com at their homes because they cant get satisfactory service or maintenance from Telefonica. We are of course talking domestic services here as our business lines are well taken care of without Telefonica at all.

[Metman]

Has anyone any workinh knowledge of using an Internet USB roaming connection. I have enquired about setting this in the UK first, but have been told this will be an expensive way of doing it.

[libove]

Originally Posted by Metman

Has anyone any workinh knowledge of using an Internet USB roaming connection. I have enquired about setting this in the UK first, but have been told this will be an expensive way of doing it.

Technically speaking, there is no such thing as a "USB roaming connection". USB is just a way to connect devices - including various kinds of networking devices - to computers. Most likely, this is referring to the new trend of mass-marketing mobile phone data networks to mobile computer users. In this case, the USB device is a mobile phone without the voice capability, and the data network is the 3G/HSDPA rapidly becoming available across Europe (and, slooooowly, dragging its feet across the US...). In a 3G/HSDPA area, with a good signal, you can get several hundred kilobits/second with relatively low latency - something similar in performance to the first generation of ADSL several years ago, and certainly good enough to regular work and web browsing.

I've only looked for prices on this service in Spain, where it runs around €50 to €60/month (probably plus tax) for "unlimited" use. There are different ways of defining "unlimited" depending on the carrier. Last I looked a few months ago, Vodafone had what I considered the best combination - a very large quota monthly at the highest data rates supported by the mobile network, after which quota is used up a slower but still usable for email and basic web browsing rate until the beginning of the next month. I think Telefonica's plan had penalty rates if you went over a (comparable) monthly quota.

So, unless your plan is to actually need to exceed the fairly generous monthly quotas, and assuming you don't mind committing to €60/month or so (which is unrelated to your regular mobile bill - totally in addition to your regular mobile bill) and you will be in the 3G/HSDPA areas, this is a good solution.

Your somewhat less expensive and much less generally available alternative is to sign up for one of the WiFi / 802.11 networks (coffee shops, airports, etc) at which you'll get comparable or slightly faster speeds only when you're in range of one of these businesses - rather hit-or-miss.

Or, if you're so lucky as to spend most of your time in one of the few towns which have built out ubiquitous public WiFi networks, that's of course even better.

Cheers,
Jay
(still from Atlanta; still waiting on the visa; still planning to be living in Barcelona by the end of the year!)