# Internet and Telephone



## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

After years of faffing around and not making the decision, two neighbours and myself have decided to go with Aeromax for phone and internet, getting rid of Telefonica altogether

They are giving us 2 mb for half the TF price with free cals to Spanish and UK landlines

Just a heads up for those of you who are waivering. It does cost €200 for all the gear, but I will save that pretty quickly. We have a neighbour who has had it for 9 months with no problems. I dont know how far afield they go


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## Wannabe Expat (May 2, 2012)

*Internet and phones*



Stravinsky said:


> After years of faffing around and not making the decision, two neighbours and myself have decided to go with Aeromax for phone and internet, getting rid of Telefonica altogether
> 
> They are giving us 2 mb for half the TF price with free cals to Spanish and UK landlines
> 
> Just a heads up for those of you who are waivering. It does cost €200 for all the gear, but I will save that pretty quickly. We have a neighbour who has had it for 9 months with no problems. I dont know how far afield they go


How much is it per month once you have everything set up?


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

Wannabe Expat said:


> How much is it per month once you have everything set up?


€29.99 + IVA for 2 mb internet, free calls to UK and Spain
I presently pay €69 pm for .5 mb and no calls included

Plus you can suspend it by emailing them if you are away for two weeks or more, and I think you then get charged just €7 a month pro rata


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## xabiaxica (Jun 23, 2009)

Stravinsky said:


> €29.99 + IVA for 2 mb internet, free calls to UK and Spain
> I presently pay €69 pm for .5 mb and no calls included
> 
> Plus you can suspend it by emailing them if you are away for two weeks or more, and I think you then get charged just €7 a month pro rata


I think with them it's an 'it depends where you live' as to what kind of service/signal strength you get

there has been quite a lot of discussion on a local fb group about them & in our area at least they don't come out too well


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

xabiachica said:


> I think with them it's an 'it depends where you live' as to what kind of service/signal strength you get
> 
> there has been quite a lot of discussion on a local fb group about them & in our area at least they don't come out too well


Well we have someone on the hill that has been using them for over 9 months now and have had no problems at all. You have to be in sight of one of their mast. I can see one of theirs from my balcony.

With every provider you will have good stories and bad. Ive never had a problem with Telefonica for instance, but many people hate them!


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## Seb* (Mar 22, 2009)

Wireless internet in Spain .... well in this area it heavily depends on what you are doing. Just for browsing and email you will be happy with all of them. Where line quality comes into play that's where the problems often start, best examples are voice over ip, downloads, video streaming and online gaming.

So be careful when you rely on a neighbour "being happy for years", it completely depends on what he does. If he only uses the connection for browsing the internet he might be happy, but if you want to watch a lot of video streams it might not be that great. So just make sure your usage profile is the same. Most wireless provider's quality differes a lot on time of day as well. In the morning everything is fine, but later at night when people start using it more a lot of networks just go to their knees.

I prefer ADSL over wirless (we're using both for years now next to each other). Cause it's usually more stable and not affected by the weather. Depends on your local line of course - if you are too far away from the exchange or your line quality is crap, wireless might outperform ADSL. But with a good line there is nothing that can beat a 4-8 mbit ADSL line imho.


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## Trubrit (Nov 24, 2010)

I am on Costa De Madrid and I find Telefonica excellent. We have never lost either internet connection or telephone connection. I watch tv by streaming and the quality is like watching tv in the UK. I have just called customer service regarding my 2nd year bill and the girl who attended me was very polite and spoke excellent English, what more could I ask for?


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## Solwriter (Jan 10, 2012)

Trubrit said:


> I am on Costa De Madrid and I find Telefonica excellent. We have never lost either internet connection or telephone connection. I watch tv by streaming and the quality is like watching tv in the UK. I have just called customer service regarding my 2nd year bill and the girl who attended me was very polite and spoke excellent English, what more could I ask for?


My god, you are one of the lucky ones! 

We have no choice but to use Telefonica/Movistar ADSL, as nothing else (apart from satellite - expensive and limiting as regards usage) is available to us.

We would love to be able to set up a deal with a WIMAX provider (or any other provider!), but because of where we live we are unable to do so.

Nevertheless, it is good to read of a happy customer with Telefonica and I really do think it depends on the area you live in, as I know that there are others like you who are just as happy with their service.

One thing I will say though, is that today we have visited the Telefonica/Movistar office and have set up a new deal with them - our landline of course, plus unlimited internet (at our usual speed, but never mind...), plus a new smartphone for my husband linked to the same contract.
And, as long as he is sensible with the smartphone free data usage (250mbs per month, plus cheap local calls and free texts).... our new contract works out no more per month than the previous one.
So, fingers crossed!


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

Seb* said:


> So be careful when you rely on a neighbour "being happy for years", it completely depends on what he does. If he only uses the connection for browsing the internet he might be happy, but if you want to watch a lot of video streams it might not be that great. So just make sure your usage profile is the same. Most wireless provider's quality differes a lot on time of day as well. In the morning everything is fine, but later at night when people start using it more a lot of networks just go to their knees.
> .


Err .... do you think I wouldnt check that before I made a decision that I have been researching for 12 months?

No it doesnt fall over, yes he uploads and streams TV and films, no I dont download much TV. 

Its for such reasons I have discounted three other providers locally.

The neighbour is an ex Microsoft employee, and I didnt state he had been "happy for years" He, being well into technical stuff has been monitoring it for 9 months and he has been totally satisfied with it.


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## Seb* (Mar 22, 2009)

Stravinsky said:


> Err .... do you think I wouldnt check that before I made a decision that I have been researching for 12 months?
> 
> No it doesnt fall over, yes he uploads and streams TV and films, no I dont download much TV.
> 
> ...


My statement was mainly aimed at the general reader who might think, just cause your neighbour thinks it's great it will be the same for you. The amount of people in this area who think that Telitec's (as an example, cause we are customers atm, there are others who have similar issues) wireless is fantastic is staggering. Then you look a bit further into it and they only use it to browse their favourite sites, totally useless for anything else. A lot of those wimax providers start out really good and then it goes downhill, cause they connect way too many customers on their infrastructure. For example: 2009 Teleitec was fine for us, then from 2010 onwards it got worse and worse and now since 2011 it's basically unusable for us.


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## onelifeliveitwell (Feb 27, 2012)

Ooh, we're just about to get telitec. What area are you in, it was them or connecta4 which seemed really expensive. Would you not recommend :s


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## Seb* (Mar 22, 2009)

onelifeliveitwell said:


> Ooh, we're just about to get telitec. What area are you in, it was them or connecta4 which seemed really expensive. Would you not recommend :s


We only stayed with them cause we paid 300 odd EUR in 2009 for the equipment and installation. We are in Benissa Costa, connected via the mast in Maryvilla. They offer 2Mbit up and down, but they have been limiting the upload to 0.2 Mbit for months now. Most of the day the speed is bad and high packet loss is often the norm. Youtube videos are buffering constantly and voice over IP via Skype is nearly impossible (lots of connection loss, bad quality and break ups). Video streaming in general has lots of buffering most of the time - sometimes you can be lucky, but as a rule of thumb it gets worse towards the evening. Generally their network performance went downhill from 14.00 onwards. Normal web browsing and email works fine though.

In the past there were often days and weeks without service, cause they had some technical issues, mainly when it rained or stormed. I think it was 2010, where they had lightning damage and took over a week to get it back running.

Their technicians and support is staffed with nice guys (mostly). So if you have trouble keep hassling them without stop, keep ringing them several times a day. We did that in the first years, cause of the bad performance until they agreed to give us priority on their main gateway and masts, which solved most of our performance problems for a while.

We are now mainly using them as a backup line, main internet comes via ADSL, which is faster and more reliable. Sadly we went with Telitec ADSL. The main line is still supplied by Telefonica, but the routing after that is supplied by Carrierenabler S.L., Telitec's provider, which is poor most of the time. They regularly have routing issues and blackouts for several hours. Can be a bit tight during rush hour, but it's fine for most things after that. In the evening video streaming can be a bit difficult, but still miles better than their wireless stuff. When we were with Telefonica ADSL everything was fine though, low latency, high constant speeds and no notable interruption. Should have stayed with them - only reason we changed was the price. You get what you pay for


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

Seb* said:


> My statement was mainly aimed at the general reader who might think, just cause your neighbour thinks it's great it will be the same for you. The amount of people in this area who think that Telitec's (as an example, cause we are customers atm, there are others who have similar issues) wireless is fantastic is staggering. Then you look a bit further into it and they only use it to browse their favourite sites, totally useless for anything else. A lot of those wimax providers start out really good and then it goes downhill, cause they connect way too many customers on their infrastructure. For example: 2009 Teleitec was fine for us, then from 2010 onwards it got worse and worse and now since 2011 it's basically unusable for us.


Fine, I understand
And conversely there are people that think Telefonica are the worst company in the country, but we have been very pleased with them over the 6 years we have been with them. If it wasnt for the ridiculously low speeds they give us I wouldnt go elsewhere.

Telitec, well as usual when I looked at them I enquired locally as to who used them, and of course what they used them for. Some people said they were great, but others (high users) found that the speed dropped

Ive done most of the carriers around here, many of them will promise you 10 mb wired .... when I know its not possible because of the exchange here

However with your comments on Aeromax you dont seem to have personal experience of the fact that you say they are no good for streaming etc ....... can you advise who tells you this in our area then please and why?


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## Seb* (Mar 22, 2009)

Stravinsky said:


> Fine, I understand
> And conversely there are people that think Telefonica are the worst company in the country, but we have been very pleased with them over the 6 years we have been with them. If it wasnt for the ridiculously low speeds they give us I wouldnt go elsewhere.


Same here, never had the slightest issue with Telefonica.



> However with your comments on Aeromax you dont seem to have personal experience of the fact that you say they are no good for streaming etc ....... can you advise who tells you this in our area then please and why?


I never said Aeromax wasn't good for streaming. I did not even say anything negative about Aeromax as a company. Actually I did not say ANYTHING negative about Aeromax' services - I just re-read all my posts. The only thing I said is that people have to be wary when it comes to following recommendations blindly especially on wireless providers, no matter what company. I brought the streaming up as an example, cause it's one of the things most wireless providers struggle with. "One person only uses the connection for daily browsing, others for watching TV - it's a world of a difference". Your first post was a three liner telling people that Aeromax is very good, which is fine, but I thought I could add that especially wireless connections have to be treated carefully and so do the recommendations. All I said was tread carefully and do your research. In no way did I mean to criticize your decision, post or Aeromax. The post was meant for other members rather than for you since you clearly did some research and made your decision.

I have extensive experience with wireless internet providers using wi-fi and wimax here in Spain and in Germany. I have been on the customer side and I have been building setups. Wireless setups, especially with long ranges and relays (the ones that don't hang on a fibre line from the mast) are "complicated" and have weaknesses. Some companies and individuals get tempted into "making the quick buck" (it's not hard to build a simple wireless setup) and as soon as the number of connected users grows the infrastructure is not sufficent anymore and it needs investment in more equipment and upgrades. If this does not happen, quality of service goes down. Just to make it clear again, this is probably not the case with the above mentioned company. So, Aeromax rocks! but please, dear reader, make your own judgements and be aware, that performance can differ for different users, their location and usage.


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

Not tempting fate or anything, but we had aeromax fitted in three houses. Went really well, very clean install, all running well for downloads and such a relief to have a faster connection

I know these wont be exciting figures for most of you, but from rural movistar to this is a fantastic change for us 










I'll let you know if any disasters happen


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