Wireless Internet

Help / advise needed please. I have been researching and enquiring for the last two weeks for the best options available.

Initially my thoughts were quite straight forward - obtain a Telefonica land line and simply sign up to broadband.

I have now become totally confused as I have been warned off Telefonica due to so many people´s bad experiences with daunting bills etc   ...............   Can anyone out there please help or advise from their personal experiences as I need internet access quite urgently hopefully with a skype facility. Any ideas on the best deal or options would be greatly appreciated.

Location near Manilva.

Regards

John

Hi John

There's lots of threads referring to this I believe in Utilities in Spain (click blue link) so have a look in there.

Good luck, it appears to be a nightmare.

HI;

Have to say we have had no real problems with Telefonica...

We have an uncapped 3 Mbps service which costs 39.99 Euros a month, with line rental at 14.99 Euros. We make very few calls to Spanish national numbers and maybe the odd one or two to UK Mobiles. Provided you keep the calls to a minimum and to the 8pm-8am period or all day Saturday/Sunday there is no reason why the bill should be particularly high.

ADSL is expensive in Spain no matter who you are with; it's one of the things you have to learn to live with...also they tend to treat the line speed as optional; in reality our 3Mbps service only gives a download speed of about 150Kbps. Quite what it's like in the big cities I dont know...

Being out in the sticks on a shared ADSL line we do experience some line speed drop offs and / or service breaks. In the case of a service break a quick call to 1004 normally brings a quick response. (Quickly by Spanish standards ie up to 48 hrs).

Sign up to Skype separately and away you go...

One thing I would suggest however stay well away from 'Telefonicainenglish' they are a bunch of cowboys who only get it right occasionally. They have nothing whatsoever to do with Telefonica...there are numerous tales of their failures on this forum and many others...their main success is in extracting over 100Euros admin charges...if they later fail to fulfil their contract with you you can get your money back but you have to push like hell to get it...NUFF SAID!

Hope this helps

fb

We didnt have a problem with Telefonica, until it comes to moving or cancelling. Or anything wrong on the account as its a nightmare to sort.

They dont have capacity everywhere either, and I know of people who went ahead withe the land line but couldnt get adsl. Then couldnt cancell the contract!!!

Vodafone do modem stick, 3g unlimited for 39.99 per month, and you can take it anywhere. I find it fine, takes a while if someone sends a huge MB file, but other than that its perfect!

John

Have you tried contacting www.freewifispain.com/ ?  They do internet access, but also have a Skype phone package.  I haven't used them myself, but plan on contacting them.

They've been recommended by people in Coto Real - so they obviously cover the Manilva area.

I use Iberbanda as does someone else I know. It is a 1mb line speed up and down, although in reality if you use a wireless router the speed does drop considerably. It is free installation and equipment, plus €39.99 per month unlimited. Skype is usable on the connection.

Mark

I've been using Bamboo Telecom /Costa Del Sol OnLine for 4 years now - 29.99 a month - telephone available for extra charge with either Spanish phone number, or a number from your home country.

good service from them 99% of the time

thanx for the helpful info about wifi

Thank you very much to everyones very usefull information and feedback. This has certainly helped to put me on the right track as there appears to be an awful lot of "dodgy" offers out there. Unfortunately as mentioned previously ADSL is very expensive in Spain anyway without all the additional hassles / issues / scams  etc............Therefore am enquiring about the freewifi option. Hope this feedback will help others too.

Many thanks

John

Telefonica take some beating when it comes to incompetence.  Some of you may remember that I had a hell of a time with them fitting Wireless Internet/phone line, etc, just before Xmas after waiting 2 years.  When they came they even attached the dish to my next door neighbour's TV aerial (and he has threatened to sue them for tresspassing).  Even then the internet didn't work so they were told to come and take it away straight away, which they did but in their own sweet time, and just left me with a landline.  About a month later they took over EUR200's from my account for installing the internet.  Obviously I made the bank cancel it.  Each month I kept receiving a bill for EUR45.24 for internet and each time I rang 1004 and asked them what it was all about and each time they told me at telefonica that they have no record of me having Internet only a landline for which I was all paid up and was paying my bill every month like a good boy!  This month I received 2 letters from a debt collection agency in Madrid telling me that they were chasing me, on behalf of Telefonica, for unpaid bills amounting to EUR319's for UNPAID INTERNET CHARGES.   I don't have the internet, their engineer installed and uninstalled it and took the equipment away so what is their problem?

I don't know what to do next and I am really fed up of being bled dry by Spanish incompetence and greed.  So my advice is steer clear of Telefonica they couldn't organise a p**s up in a brewery.

 Im sad to hear that but not suprised. Its incredible how inept they are. Theres nothing you can do, just let them send the letters and sit tight. If it ever gets to court, which I doubt, then they will have to prove you owe the money!