Dear Steve, Not yet very familiar with blogging so apologies in advance...
Hello! Don't worry, we all have to start somewhere
As background, we used to go to my small finca in San Joan for 3 or 4 weeks/year so a Blackberry and local TV was fine (the family is Argentine); the signal presumably comes from boosters as there is no land-line. I’m not sure what Telefonica’s obligation is now but when I asked 12 years ago they were going to charge quite a lot to extend the line to my house which is about 8 miles from the nearest supermarket.
I live in the country about 2 miles from the nearest area served by Telefonica and I got a blunt "NO". My last house was on an urbanisation where one side of the road had the cables but my side didnt. The urb. was not complete and the builder had gone bust so many of the houses with infrastructure for telefonica didn't have it and would never probably have it (they were unfinished houses),. There was even the underground trunking from the existing cables and box to my house and I offered to pay telefonica whatever they wanted to shove a cable down the trunking and connect me - but they wouldn't… so don't hold your breathe for traditional fixed line services!
In future I will be spending at least 7 months/year and will be largely on my own so as an objective I want internet for e-mail plus BBC, ITV channels & radio. Next on the wish-list would be VOIP (cheap calls) and then streaming - quite soon I’m sure it will be possible to get everything through the internet - although my impression is that this requires a lot of capacity. I’m prepared to invest and did ask about a satellite dish 3 years ago but this was very expensive and my income will be limited so ongoing costs are very important.
For TV you can use the internet (although sattellite internet usually has strict download limits which may mean you cant watch as much TV as you want - WIMAX does;t usually have limits. An alternative for the TV would be just to pay someone to install a big sat tv dish and get you allt he channels directly, completely bypassing the internet. There is a guy on here called "Sat" who has written many interesting articles about this.
Be aware that if you want to get channels like BBC through internet you will not be able to with just a plain old internet connecttion. The websites will recognise you are outside of the UK and they are only permitted to broadcast within the UK - so you will geta message saying you cant do that in yoru area whenever you want to watch BBC, ITV or pretty much any TV station other than spanish.
You can get round this problem by using a proxy or VPN service - google British TV Proxy - there are many. Most charge you a few euros a month but allow you to connect to the internet through yoru connection BUT route your connection via their servers in the UK. This fools the websites like iPlayer into thinking you are in the UK and you can then watch them - not sure how legal this is but many companies offer it.
After reading your account and doing some preliminary research I see we have WIMAX providers but 5mb download and 1.5mb upload is meaningless to me because I don’t know what is needed for the above! However I can live with “times when the internet is a little slow or the phone doesn't work properly”..... as long as the need for technical support is very limited.
5mb and 1.5mb is great! I get 6mb now but it usually works at about 5 and its perfect for everything. You will be able to watch videos, tv, music, phone, everything without problems - in spain 5mb is pretty fast - my mother in law has telefonica and only gets 4mb!
Satellite sounds like it might be the best mid-term solution although I know this will cost ~1,000€ for the installation plus at least 50€/month for my needs, but this might just be acceptable if it was reliable and it was possible to watch BBC etc. on internet ie. free, and to feed this to a conventional flat-screen TV so there were no additional costs.
A tall order but what do you think? As I said, I hope to find out more next week.....
Many thanks for your inspiration, Robert
If you can get WIMAX i would go with that. Sat is expensive (although shouldnt cost 1000 for install - most are between 200 and 400 now. yes its faster sometimes BUT 5mb is very fast and suitable for almost evertything. Sat is subect to download limits usually and high latency which can cause problems with things like phone calls, and even TV.
For a phone call you only need about 0.1mb up and down - its the latency on the connection that determies whether the phone works or not!
I would look clsoely at the WEIMAX services - some offer their own telephone service and others dont, if they dont they contact soemone like voipfone.co.uk who offer great packages and UK and Spanish calls for about 1c a minute and they sell special phones to connect to yoru router so its just like having a landline.
Ask the internet provider how good their services is for Voip (many in Spain dont kwo what voip is so say Skype and they understand! - although personally i haet skype as the quality has always been bad for me).
As for TV, if your computer has the correct sockets then you can conect yoru TV, but if you go for WIMAX you will get install for either free or 100 euros (usually), so why not spend the rest of your money on a decent TV sattelite system.. then you get reliable TV, good internet, and a phone through internet!
Hope this helps!
AVOID SATTELLITE INTERNET unless you really really have to (my opinion) when you want to use phone services - in my experience it just isnt quite there yet on latency issues.
