Hello, I just moved to Madrid two days ago. I´ll be here for eight months.

I "need" cable. What are the steps or companies to deal with? Thanks for your help!

Mmm...I recommend you an "ADSL" connection. It isn't expensive at all, you don't need to pay a cable installation, and it usually works fine.
I live in Valencia. I have a cable connection but it doesn't work as well as I expected. The ADSL connection seems to work better.

I think in Madrid, as in Valencia, the leading cable company is ONO.

Ono does not operate in Madrid. Only Auna (Madritel) is allowed to do it. However, they charge you monthly fees for the cable modem. The speed they offer is supposed to be higher (777 kbps). ADSL has speeds of 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps and 2 Mbps.

Note that this is not the real speed. In fact, ISPs only guarantee 10% of the maximum speed.

Sorry, I didn't know. I tought it because I saw ONO advertisements in Madrid...I guess they were related to phone, not to Internet.

How does the Madritel cabl connection work? In Valencia, it's worth getting an ADSL connection more than a cable one.

BOINK!

THIS JUST IN!! Got a kind of SPAM email (which I NEVER read) but this one was intriguing.

It was from and about a new (?) site http://www.TelefonicaInEnglish.com/ so I checked out their website. Decent site all about getting phone lines installed, internet connections, etcetera and ALL IN ENGLISH.

I was especially interested in internet offerings (broadband, that is) so I checked out their page @ http://www.telefonicainenglish.com/adsl.htm which gives the ADSL connection speeds and fees. Wow. It's all SO shocking SLOW and all SO shockingly expensive for what you get.

So I went to my the website of my current CABLE internet provider, RoadRunner, here in the USA and compared their services and prices. Wow. What a difference. Their page @ http://www.rr.com/rdrun/ states the following: Then I went back to the TelefonicaInEnglish.com site and they offer the following:

BASIC
- 512 Kbps connection
- 10 x faster than dial-up*
- Unlimited access 24/7
No monthly usage
- SPECIAL OFFER
Free modem
39,07€ a month

CLASS
- 1mb connection
- 20 x faster than dial-up
- Unlimited access 24/7
No monthly usage
- Wireless Router
74,98€ a month

ADVANCED
- 2mb connection
- 40 x faster than dial-up
- Unlimited access 24/7
No monthly usage
- Wireless Router
120,00€ a month

I won't go any further than this although there is a faster, more expensive additional option.

Summary: The ADVANCED 2mb connection in Spain costs you about $160 USD per month when a 5mb cable connection in the USA costs about $50 per month.

What a sorry state of affairs. WIRE THAT CITY WITH CABLE/FIBER OPTIC WIRE ALREADY! But why bother doing that when they can charge (and apparently GET) people those high prices and low connection speeds. Ugh!

Saludos, MadridMan

I live it here every day MM. I have the Telefonica Basic Package(512 Kbs). But it works very well. I have only had 2 or 3 episodes of temporary outage in 13 months.

Telefonica is not the best choice nowadays in Internet access.

There are great offers in Wanadoo : 2 Mbps Internet access plus all your calls between spanish phone numbers for 36 €.

Or via cable-modem, for 36 € you get 3 Mbps with Ono .

For Spain it is like science fiction

Fernando

But Fernando, there's almost no cable modem access in the city of Madrid - UNLESS something has changed in the recent past. Seems the last time I checked the only place was at the Exposition Center (Parque Ferial) outside of the city.

And how can Wannado charge 36 Euros for 2Mb connectivity (ADSL, I suppose) PLUS your in-Spain calls when Telefonica is charging more than double that price???

Saludos, MadridMan

You are right in both things:

1) There is only one cable operator in each region. In Madrid we have Auna Cable , which has an offer of 1 Mbps Internet access for 45 € per month. It is not a good company because its strategy is to grown to be bought by Ono. They don't care to have good offers and being competitive.

Note that cable deploy in Spain (and in general in Europe) has happened in the last 10 years, while in the USA cable operator have been on-air for decades (that's due to political decissions, in Europe was easier to deploy telephone and TV due to distance and population density).

2) Telefonica has been the unique telecommunications operator for 80 years, having a virtual monopoly in telephony till 1993. When the market was liberalized due to european directives and political decissions, Telefonica instantly became the dominant operator.

To protect free competence, our telecommunications laws state that dominant operator have intervened prices. Telefonica would want to offer very low prices to put a high entry barrier to its competence, but Telefonica's prices are regulated, and can only be lowered by the regulatory institution.

You can make yourself an idea: Telefonica still have a 85% of the market share in fixed telephony, a 48% in mobile telephony and a 40% in the Internet access market.

Fernando

Jazztel is offering 4 Mbps plus free calls for 32,95 €. In fact, that's the ADSL line I'm going to hire. I'll tell you how it is when I have it available but I have a friend in Barcelona that says it's very good.

Note that this offer only applies to those areas where Jazztel has coverage (the same applies to Wanadoo).

OhMyGod, Antonio!

33 Euros per month with a 4Mb connection PLUS free calls???? Doesn't Jazztel have coverage throughout Madrid? I'll have to check their website.

Well Gee! (sarcastic tone insterted here..) WHY WOULD ANYONE want to spend ONLY 33 Euros for a 4Mb connection when they COULD have the Telefonica PREMIUM service for ONLY 150€ per month? Gee! I WANT to spend 4X the cost for the SAME service! Oh yeah! That would be REEEEEAL smart! (end sarcastic tone here) hahahahaa.. What silly fools (Telefonica) if their prices are "regulated" I guess they don't compete on prices.

Antonio, I REALLY REALLY REALLY look forward to your review of this Cheap-and-Fast-internet service and connectivity with Jazztel.

Saludos, MadridMan

I have Jazztel. Its pretty good but they do have outages when upgrading the speed. They don't tell you they just go ahead and do it.

One word of warning. They can take 6 weeks plus to get you connected. And their customer service really sucks. We've been waiting for a replacement wireless router for around 7 weeks now. Apparently we are on the 'Emergency' priority and will recieve the router in the next 72 hours. That was two weeks ago!!
Normske

normske, all Spanish ISP's customer services suck. That's the reason why I've been waiting a long time before deciding which one to choose. You just have to cross your fingers and hope you won't have problems with your ISP / connection.

Just go to www.adslayuda.com , www.bandaancha.st ... and you'll see hundreds of people having lots of problems with their ISPs.

Wanadoo's ADSL is the one that has more complaints:

Have a look at this MSN group called "everyone against Wanadoo, aka "scam-doo".

http://groups.msn.com/todoscontrawanadooaliastimadoo

you'll read scary stories...

By the way, now the Spanish government has a website with information and how to complain at http://www.usuariosteleco.es. It seems it is a little bit easier now to solve your problems.

Madridman, "free calls" have a limit of 5000 minutes / month and it's only valid for landlines calls (calls to cell phones or special numbers such as 902, used by manyt companies are not included.

Ya.com doesn't say that in their small print, but I guess they will charge you if you overuse that "free calls" offer.

Another important point is that 4 Mbps is the maximun download speed and it's not guaranteed. Upload speed is much lower (I'm not sure but it could be like 300 Kbps) so that your favourite p2p program won't work so fast...

Antonio wrote: Any new news, Antonio? Do you have it yet? Looks like a GOOD deal.

Saludos, MadridMan

Any new news, Antonio?

Well, I've had Jazztel "up to 4 Mbps" offer from May 25th. So far, tests have only shown a maximum speed of 2 Mbps. The best thing is the price and the free national calls (landline, standard phone numbers only).

Jazztel says it will start offering 20 Mbps with a new DSL technology (called ADSL2+) in September together with TV, calls, etc. I don't know which will be the price.

Apart from Jazztel, I've heard very good things about Comunitel , a company that mainly offered their services to small businesses rather than home users.

Furthermore, Telefonica has just starting multiplying the minimun speed offered in a standard ADSL line in Spain. In 3 months nearly all the lines will have 1 Mbps / 300 Kbps. Jazztel, Comunitel are mainly the only companies offering their own network when you use ADSL. The rest of them they just resell what Telefonica has.

Antonio wrote: Question: How long did it take them to install/set-up the service from the time you ordered it?

Question: Did the phone service negate/cancel/overide your previous national phone call service? (with Telefónica?)

Question: If the free national phone call service does NOT apply to calls to cellular/móbil phones then are you charged through Telefónica for these or can't you make these calls at all?

Question: Does the service have to be put in the name of the person who's name is on the phone bill? I mean, for example, if YOU ordered the service and your father's name is on the original phone account (to Telefónica) could the new Jazztel service be installed/charged to YOUR name with YOUR name on the bill?

Saludos, MadridMan

I think it took about 15-20 days. Jazztel now promises the service will be working within 20 days or they will give you one month for free.

No. The line still belongs to Telefónica and you still have to pay a fix amount every month to them (around 15 euros / month including taxes).

The people at Jazztel did not connect the line they way it should be and I had no line (neither voice / data) for one day. I had to call Telefonica and they promptly sent a person to fix the wrong connection.

Calls to cellular phones are billed by Jazztel at their rates. Some of the phone calls are diverted through Telefónica (a friend told me about 902 numbers being billed by Telefónica)

No, the ADSL service can be hired by a person other than the line bearer. However, that person has to sign granting permission to hire the ADSL service.

Starting September 19th, Jazztel will be offering ADSL2+ with a maximum download speed of 20 Mbps + free national calls + fix montly cost of the line for 42.90 euros + 16% VAT. You won't have to pay Telefonica anymore and Jazztel will take care of the line. Note that this is still unofficial (I read it on a Spanish forum), but it's sure the offer will be launched in September.

In Spain the phone loop is "divided" in the way that you can hire different services with different companies paying different bills over the same loop line.

For example, you may pay the fix line fee to Telefónica (that can't be hired to other company), your calls to mobile phones with Retevision, your international calls with Aló and a DSL with Jazztel.

Currently Jazztel has broken the market with its offer of 4 MBps per 32,95 €/month but is offering poor quality of service.

Telefonica, as incumbent and dominant operator, has its prices and services constraint to what the regulator decides, which is 1 Mbps per 39 €/month.

The unique cable network in Madrid (Madritel - Retevisión) is not offering a good connection, since it is on the verge of being acquired by Ono, the main national cable operator, which, I'm sure, will be far more aggressive.

Fernando

Hello there just wanted to share the latest adventures of a non teleco person.... I've searching changing my internet access at home.

Regarding providers not all of them are available throughout the city. Specially cable access.

Auna (recently bought by ONO)has not deployed fiber networks in some areas of the city center. That was my case, option out.

Since the ADSL access (DSL access is not widely available) speed is just a theoretical maximum, I got info from the stats of the average speeds of access. Unfortunately, jazztel was not the best in that area....

To make long story short, since a needed satelite tv and watch movies in english. I finally took the imagenio package (Telefonica) so I had the access, the TV channels and madrid calls included. Not the cheapest but it works for me

Jazztel has started offering ADSL2+ up to 20 Mbps + free calls for 29,95 € + 12,95 € (line rental, no fees to pay to Telefónica) + VAT. So far it's only available in Sevilla and in a few other places in Andalucía. They will start in Madrid in October / November.

By the way, we are having problems of speed in the last week. :-( Hopefully they'll fix it soon...

Thanks for the update, Antonio. Say, are you "locked-in" to the terms (i.e. line speed) of the contract or can you upgrade your account as the available speed increases?

Saludos, MadridMan

Once the 20 Mbps speed is available in your area, Jazztel will contact you (or you can call them) to upgrade to that offer. First, you will have to sign a contract to change the line rental from Telefónica to Jazztel. Then you'll pay:

29,95 € + VAT (ADSL2+)
12,95 € + VAT (line rental)

TOTAL = 49,76 € / month everything included.

The WIFI router Jazztel is offering right now (Comtrend 536) is "ADSL2+ ready" so you won't have to change that. Total price for the router 56,28 (including delivery and VAT).

You can check which offer is available for your phone number here

I can only laugh in reading this thread about Spain and the horrible phone service. In this aspect, Spain has progressed very little.

I remember back in 1987, a direct dialed phone call to the U.S. cost 4 times as much as if you dialed from the U.S. to Spain. All of my friends and I would place a collect call to our parents or whomever. The operator would take all our information and they would call us back when it was convenient for them (usually 30+ minutes) to place the call. Our parents already knew not to accept the charges and to hang up and call us back. What a nightmare!!!!!

I can only imagine what you guys are going through trying to get DSL or cable modems. GOOD LUCK!!!!

Guiri Grande, we had such high rates in Spain because Telefonica was a monopoly. Now we have some competition and we even have free national calls included with most DSL connections.

Currently, we also have Jazztel and Wanadoo offering 20 Mbps connections plus free national calls. Ya.com , Superbanda and Comunitel will have similar offers soon with the the ADSL2+ technology.

When subscribing to one of these services, do you always have to sign a 12-month agreement or can one pay month-by-month without a long-term contract?

Saludos, MadridMan

With many services signing up is free (wow!) as is the modem. But if you back out within a certain time frame, usually a year, they suddenly recall their charity and land you with the bill. You pay month by month and after the time frame has elapsed, can, I believe, take your custom elsewhere.

You have to sign for at least one year with most of the ISPs. Wanadoo and Jazztel are among the ones that don't have that condition. Note that Wanadoo has the worst reputation in Spain and I wouldn't go for it.

As for the special offers ISPs usually have, if you cancel the contract before 12 months they will probably ask you to return what you got for free (gifts, special discounted rates for the first months...).