# TV By Wifi + ISP



## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

A friend of ours is renting an apartment in Javea and on his roof he has a wifi antenna, similar to ubiquiti equipment which plugs directly in to a STB and provides him TV. I'm a bit of geek and curious to know what going on here and how it's distributed. Looks intriguing, if not a little "expandable" 

Which companies supply such equipment.


On a second point he intends to move to either Lliber, what options does he have there for fast and reliable internet, he'd rather not ADSL given the for quality copper, and distances from exchanges, equally two way satellite links are not an option, cost prohibitive for him, so I guess it leaves him on WiMesh network. Options in the valley? Will need it for streaming, CCTV monitoring in the UK and reliable(isn) teleconferencing/facetime. Here in the UK we'd be looking for 10Gbps but realistic to what we may se here. Phone is not essential but I guess most come with a VOIP as an freebee.
Would be nice if there was an option to suspend when the house is not in use.


Once again thanks
Pedro


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

Companies are: Wifiways, Swiss Cable and Europa (and there are others, I think). If you look in the direction of Cumbre del Sol and the San Antonio lighthouse you'll see poles and dishes, it is from these that the Wimax coverage is provided.

I'm in Javea and I do IT work so need a reliable connection covering all the usage examples you give, plus some. I use Movistar for 42 Euros a month which is delivered with ADSL. In two years it has been down once due to a blown router which was replaced the morning after I called them at 4 p.m. in the afternoon to report the problem.

I often stream Netflix (Spain) and Wuaki (Spain) all evening without buffering. Channel 4, ITV, etc. all stream fine using a Smart DNS service although the BBC does buffer sometimes so I tend to use the download service for iPlayer. Why iPlayer has these buffering issues when the rest don't I have no idea, although it is a recent thing, it was fine until a couple of months ago.

I have friends that use the providers I mentioned at the top and having heard about their experiences I would not for a second consider switching. In fact, one has moved over to Movistar due to issues (a Swiss Cable user).

Movistar is not the fastest but it is consistent, reliable and fast enough for the most demanding activity, which is watching HD content. A big disadvantage is that you can't postpone service while away, so you pay every month whether using it or not. But if you're going to use a webcam for remote monitoring, then you need always-on.


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Horlics said:


> Companies are: Wifiways, Swiss Cable and Europa (and there are others, I think). If you look in the direction of Cumbre del Sol and the San Antonio lighthouse you'll see poles and dishes, it is from these that the Wimax coverage is provided.
> 
> I'm in Javea and I do IT work so need a reliable connection covering all the usage examples you give, plus some. I use Movistar for 42 Euros a month which is delivered with ADSL. In two years it has been down once due to a blown router which was replaced the morning after I called them at 4 p.m. in the afternoon to report the problem.
> 
> ...



Thanks, what sort of speeds are you get UP/DOWN with ADSL? 
Never considered the remote monitoring, he mentioned that he whated that capability so 24/7 up is going to be perfect..

We've set him up with a Raspberry Pi running a VPN for his live freeview channels but there seems as I described to be a dedicated wifi antenna just for the TV, under this sits his router and the TV box has no router connection whatsoever.


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

piersuk said:


> Thanks, what sort of speeds are you get UP/DOWN with ADSL?
> Never considered the remote monitoring, he mentioned that he whated that capability so 24/7 up is going to be perfect..
> 
> We've set him up with a Raspberry Pi running a VPN for his live freeview channels but there seems as I described to be a dedicated wifi antenna just for the TV, under this sits his router and the TV box has no router connection whatsoever.


Ah, sorry, yes you mentioned CCTV but in the UK, I made the leap to him wanting to monitor his Spanish property. I have a webcam in my place, they use next to no power and email if any activity is seen, very good to have if you have always-on Internet.

I also assumed the wifi antenna was on the roof of the building not under the TV, so I am not sure what that would be for. Many of the urbanisations in Javea have a communal connection for terrestrial TV and the major Internet providers in the area, which allows residents to take their choice of who to connect with without the need for an antenna of any kind on the roof. You also see lots of small dishes, too small for sat TV, which are in fact wimax for Internet from the dishes up on the hills.

I get about 8mb download and 0.5 up. The up is awful when compared to UK cable and fibre services but the fact is, unless you spend time uploading large files it is sufficient for normal uses. We use Skype in HD all the time and it works well enough for that. The only time I notice that I have slow upload is if I reorganize some local data and cause a massive re-sync with my on-line copy.


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## sat (Jul 20, 2008)

piersuk said:


> but there seems as I described to be a dedicated wifi antenna just for the TV, under this sits his router and the TV box has no router connection whatsoever.


It could be a local rebroadcaster aerial.
They collect signals at their centre, convert them into lower grade transmissions, and send on to clients via a "beam" system, using the small dish on the roof directly into a receiver.

I think Swiss Cable still have a beam service....

Of course, you get better quality images with a satellite dish  With freesat, pay for the equipment and installation and you can get 150 UK TV channels, direct from the broadcaster.


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Horlics said:


> Ah, sorry, yes you mentioned CCTV but in the UK, I made the leap to him wanting to monitor his Spanish property. I have a webcam in my place, they use next to no power and email if any activity is seen, very good to have if you have always-on Internet.
> 
> I also assumed the wifi antenna was on the roof of the building not under the TV, so I am not sure what that would be for. Many of the urbanisations in Javea have a communal connection for terrestrial TV and the major Internet providers in the area, which allows residents to take their choice of who to connect with without the need for an antenna of any kind on the roof. You also see lots of small dishes, too small for sat TV, which are in fact wimax for Internet from the dishes up on the hills.
> 
> I get about 8mb download and 0.5 up. The up is awful when compared to UK cable and fibre services but the fact is, unless you spend time uploading large files it is sufficient for normal uses. We use Skype in HD all the time and it works well enough for that. The only time I notice that I have slow upload is if I reorganize some local data and cause a massive re-sync with my on-line copy.


Hi Horlics, (Great username by the way, take me back).

I'm in the Telecoms/Networking/Voip game hence like my friend is and by the sound s of it you too. He will be needing a reasonable internet connection and upload too. You were right to jump in to the CCTV in Spain back to the UK. That's a very good idea, Ive build PC based systems in the past but only because the requirement was resource hungry cameras over multiple locations. He could of course look at those inexpensive chinese systems or a simple IP Camera. Nice.

In respect of the dishes there are small Ubiquiti M2 dishes which connected via a POE to his router but a much larger and weather enclosed M5 sized dish pointing up towards Cap de Sant Antoni which connects directly to a Set top box, via coax and then HDMI to the TV. Clearly there is some sort of re broadcast system, curious to know the encryption if any?


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

sat said:


> It could be a local rebroadcaster aerial.
> They collect signals at their centre, convert them into lower grade transmissions, and send on to clients via a "beam" system, using the small dish on the roof directly into a receiver.
> 
> I think Swiss Cable still have a beam service....
> ...


Sorry didn't read this when I posted. What if anything is the encryption method?


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

Yep, you've got it. The Ubiquiti-style dishes are used by more than one company but certainly Europa. I don't know what encryption they are using, if any. I could take a look next time I visit my friend's but he's away now and I won't see him for a month or more.

If high upload speed is needed it could be an issue. There are numerous sellers of non-ADSL services around here but I see bad things about them all. There's a FB group for people who live in the area and someone posted a link to a broadband speed test site and few weeks ago and asked others to screen-shot their results. One guy is on a new service from Telitec that uses a roof-top antenna for 4g and at a price gives unlimited downloads, and he was proudly posting shots showing 30gb down and good uploads. Since then I have seen numerous posts about the same company showing 0 and 0 (i.e. no service) and very poor results, and plenty of people saying they are leaving.

Yes, I worked in networking and data centres. The only time I deployed non-wired Internet was when I had to.

BTW, the cam I use is a D-Link. I started with a cheap Chinese one but it was awful and broke. The D-Links have the advantage of being a wireless repeater too, if needed.


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Horlics said:


> Yep, you've got it. The Ubiquiti-style dishes are used by more than one company but certainly Europa. I don't know what encryption they are using, if any. I could take a look next time I visit my friend's but he's away now and I won't see him for a month or more.
> 
> If high upload speed is needed it could be an issue. There are numerous sellers of non-ADSL services around here but I see bad things about them all. There's a FB group for people who live in the area and someone posted a link to a broadband speed test site and few weeks ago and asked others to screen-shot their results. One guy is on a new service from Telitec that uses a roof-top antenna for 4g and at a price gives unlimited downloads, and he was proudly posting shots showing 30gb down and good uploads. Since then I have seen numerous posts about the same company showing 0 and 0 (i.e. no service) and very poor results, and plenty of people saying they are leaving.
> 
> ...



Good to hear a like minded network engineer (in my missus words geek) with interest in that stuff. Do you still work in that field in Spain? I've alway thought there is probably a market for cabling and a data centre somewhere on the costa. 
Don't know where you are in Spain but be interested to know what if anything you have explored in terms of data comms. I'm deep in VOIP at the moment as that seems to be the way forward. PM if you prefer, I have some semi plausible ideas for work.

As for Telitec, I'm not that impressed with them. Blu in Javea seem to have a 'true' 10Mbps UP and DOWN or at east the adverts go... 

If you interested in the data comms and work drop me a line, always looking for new ways forward :thumb:

Pedro...


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## sat (Jul 20, 2008)

piersuk said:


> Sorry didn't read this when I posted. What if anything is the encryption method?


Last time I checked it was a viaccess card.


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

piersuk said:


> Good to hear a like minded network engineer (in my missus words geek) with interest in that stuff. Do you still work in that field in Spain? I've alway thought there is probably a market for cabling and a data centre somewhere on the costa.
> Don't know where you are in Spain but be interested to know what if anything you have explored in terms of data comms. I'm deep in VOIP at the moment as that seems to be the way forward. PM if you prefer, I have some semi plausible ideas for work.
> 
> As for Telitec, I'm not that impressed with them. Blu in Javea seem to have a 'true' 10Mbps UP and DOWN or at east the adverts go...
> ...


I've heard that Blu in Javea is actually Europa behind the scenes.

I'm in Javea. Will drop you a line.


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Horlics said:


> I've heard that Blu in Javea is actually Europa behind the scenes.
> 
> I'm in Javea. Will drop you a line.


Emm. Interesting.... I did wonder how they developed such infrastructure out of nowhere..


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## sat (Jul 20, 2008)

I think they share a director, but try to operate as two separate companies... which given the complains about Europa on local bookface pages, not surprised...


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Not seen that.... I have seen the very flashy Bentley driving around though🚘

Clearly the wireless internet still has a market !


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## piersuk (Nov 13, 2015)

Nice, did we ever get to the bottom of the best service in Jalon. 

Horlics - I don't really want to be funding €42 a month on MOISTER. Not impressed with TELITEC...

10Mbps Down and 3MbSs would be fine, especially if it can be suspended whilst we aren't there.

Anyone?


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

piersuk said:


> Not seen that.... I have seen the very flashy Bentley driving around though🚘
> 
> Clearly the wireless internet still has a market !


The Bentley is often outside Blu Property. I'm not sure if there is a link between the property and network companies.


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

You might find this interesting. http://javea-computer-club.wikidot.com/swisscable

It's about 5 years old but was taking a long-term view. Quoting slide 5, "high speed Internet is an unlikely event in the next 20 years".

That said, I've heard Movistar has been surveying recently for input to plans of fibre roll-out.


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