The impression we have of European utilities is one of large, non-competitive beasts that don't care about the consumer. Antonio, you're post seems to support this thought.

I can totally understand your attempt to portray a more accurate picture of Telefonica. The good business-press probably had more to do with the mega-deal with Terra and Lycos. You have to understand that many of us in my area of the US were a little too bullish on the "internet-economy." Well, we all know how the tech-economy is doing now .

If it makes you feel any better, you should know the customer service at SBC Pacific Bell (my telephone and ADSL provider) is probably no better than Telefonica on service and instalation. Funny note: They were so bad that the State of California stepped in - they now issue do-it-yourself instalation packages.

I certainly didn't want to give Telefonica more credit than it desearves, but simply stating that the price-to-bandwidth in Spain looks to be identical to what I pay.

Reliability, though, is another subject, and sure when access isn't free of disruptions. Pacific Bell's service is horrible here too, but we do have (knock-on-wood) reliable and fast connection.

Antonio, what service provider would you suggest - based on reliability. Or, do all providers still route their service through Telefonica's system??? Our utilities (like yours?) are also in the process of being privatized/expanded - here, anyway, the competition is still somewhat limited.

Well, from the point of view of a "money making machine" Telefonica might be a great company but they do it at the expense of their customers. For instance, with the new year public phones in Spain have increased their rates by 25%-33%.

Despite having several telecommunications companies in Spain, there is no real competition. In fact, about 95% of the voice traffic (phone calls) goes still through Telefónica (obviously having a 95% market share means they are still a monopoly).

As you know, whenever there is a monopoly a company can do whatever it pleases. That is, if you don't like what Telefonica is offering you, you just can decide not to use the phone. It's as simple as that.

As for a "reliable" provider.... well, it's sad but I think they are all quite bad. I'm using a dial up connection at 56 Kbps. I used to be with http://www.eresmas.com and they convinced me to change to http://www.iddeo.com. Both ISPs belong to http://www.retevision.es but the latter is meant only for businesses. Amazingly, the connection speed is not faster than the previous one but furthermore it gets cut off much more frecuently.

I remember Jeremy saying lots of people complaining about Eresmas but I heard the same about Terra (one of the biggest providers in Spain).

As for the cable, I heard very good things about the reliability and the speed of connection but they limit the amount of data you can transfer per month. Thus, it's not a real flat rate connection.

In a previous post, someone from a European country was complaing of the bad quality offered by Telefonica in the ADSL lines compared to what he got at his country.

I know I seems to be very pesimistic but that's the way it is with the internet in Spain. Hopefully it should change in the near future.

I agree with Antonio that Telefonica is a very disgusting company in means of giving a good and cheap service. However, as far as I know, is more or less the same service given by other companies.

I think that the ADSL is reasonably priced (though it is too expensive for me) and has a good QoS.

As Antonio says, the rest of the companies are resellers of the Telefonica ADSLs. That means that, for example, Wanadoo, puts its own modem ADSL in your home, then they go to a Telefonica local central and puts their own DSlan in Telefonicas connection. Then if the ADSL doesn't work you can't complain the Wanadoo because they don't own the line, nor you can complain Telefonica who says that the problem is of Wanadoo.

EresMas is the worst connection I have ever seen. I have experienced through two of my closest friends. They have the worst connection rate, the worst service to customers and the worst services. Perhaps Antonio was lucky and it's working ok with him

My recommndation is Wanadoo if you want a 56K connection and Telefonica if you want an ADSL connection.

Fernando

Thanks (!!!) Antonio and Fernando,

I was trying to "grasp" the high-speed environment in Spain, and the dialogue was sure helpful!

Antonio, I didn't see your posts as pessimistic from a cynics standpoint - just brutally honest. You know, if no one complains or feels shortchanged by a service, it will never get better.

The biggest problem is the monopoly situation. We had the same situation in the U.S. until the federal government split ATT into many different little companies.

This may explain our "broadband" reliability, but don't be fooled. We don't have a monopoly anymore like Telefonica's, but some would argue the Baby Bells (all the little phone companies created by the government when ATT was split) are quasi-monopolies. I can still only (practically) obtain phone service from ONE company - SBC Pacific Bell.

As was pointed out, when monopolies exist there is no real incentive to offer BETTER and more RELIABLE services.

Thanks again for the colorful discussion on high-speed internet access in Spain. See you both around in this message board!

Jason

Well its been a long time since I was here, I guess I am th one from the European Community who complaained about Telefonica service.
To update you : my connection has been faultless since my original instalation hiccups. I have not STILL recieved the welcome package or anything that was promised. Suffice to say I have a reasonable idea of how it all works and that aint a problem for me now. As far as speed goes I still find it struggles a bit by comparison with Belgacom, but generally I have no cause to complain. Speed tests at various times and I generally use the facility on ZDnet or Download.com to check. It averages at about 190kbs, incidentally, using my laptop on the same hub gives me 220kbs dont know why its different. I must tell you it is a pleasure too use after being in UK and using 56k dial up.

I have never had an outage, and funnily enough even when the phone line went down one weekend I could still surf. Only thing I miss is Netmeeting and I have not been able to directly send files via MSN messenger or IM messenger. This is due to my firewall configuration and I have not bothered to try again.

Overall its not a bad service, it cost a lot to setup but I saw my 3com hub/router advertised at 460$ in the states so I guess it was a bargain at 30,000 pta however much that might be in GBP or Euros. I spend hours IMing my sister and surfing its never let me down.

DSl may not be what you are accustomed to in US, Telefonica DO give you the runaround,but once you get it up and running properly its a good service for the price. (Compare it with prices in UK)

PJTI

Does anybody have any experience with Madritel high speed acces?

Well having said all the nice things about telefonica I had bad probs with accessing my telefonica all day yesterday. Strange thing is my other POP3 mails wer not affected. Couldn't find anything on the website, well it is in Spanish. However thay have put some useful stuff like manuals and configuration settings on the DSL pages, the ingles pdf files would not download tho.
Did get a (hopefully) useful exe file that will set my router up next time I mess it up. That'll save a few days work, pity they didn't let me have it when they installed it.