Hiya,

Does anyone have any experience of wimax broadband on the Costa Blanca or elsewhere?  We’ve been offered 2 meg SDSL (following a site survey),and heard positive things about the customer service of local provider, but all the feedback I’ve had locally has been from people who are not dependent on it for their business, ie leisure browsers… I would very much welcome any feedback on reliability, contention and any snags we’ve not uncovered - before we sign a lease on a house Telefonica have no intention of ever laying a landline to…

thanks in advance,

BDP x

Be sure to read the small print if they offer unlimited downloads…
Unlimited downloads invariably translates as limited by a Fair Useage Policy…
fb

VERY good point FB, small print in Spanish is not my forte but this is an important question to ask!  We all like the odd little download…

BDP

hi

i live near benidorm and have two wimax services - wipzona and telitec.  I cant get telefonica at my villa so had to resort to this because i rely in the internet for work.

Generally when it works it works well.  Overall I think wipzona is the most reliable service but the very nature of it means it can be unreliable.  I find i get faster speeds with telitec but better reliability with wipzona.  I use VOIP to connect to my work telephone system in the UK and it is the voice that can be unreliable, although now winter is over it is improving.  Generally for browsing and downloading they are both OK.

Speeds at the mo for me are:
Wipzona - 2mb down 512 up farily constantly
Telitec - about 1mb each way but getting up to 2 down

hope this helps

wimax broadband - not good and kids are on it , god it slow up , you be fast via astra sat net ... it works
jurdy

We are doing OK with the wimax from Telitec, its not totally reliable -tends to get odd packet loss, just for few seconds but drops VPN and phone etc which is a pain for work, also occasional bandwidth plummeting in the evenings (when we want to stream LOL),

Jurdy I wish we could afford a satellite connection I know that’d be much better, let me know if you hear of any good deals!

Mx

I had WIMAX with Iberbanda. The service itself was fine, it’s only when I cancelled the service due to moving house that I had problems. They agreed my reason for cancellation was legitimate and waived the cancellation fee when I contacted them. A year later I received a letter from a debt collections agency saying that I oved them over ?200… Needless to say, I sent them copies of my written correspondence from Iberbanda and passed the details onto my abogado for backup.

I’ve never received any further contact since then, another year has passed, so I’m assuming they’ve realised their error. Either way, I still have records for everything. Any email contact is stored safely on a backup drive and written contact stored in a folder.

Currently I’m using a satellite system. I’m very pleased with it overall. Although my monthly cap is 6gb, I’ve used well beyond that and have yet to see the service throttled. I read all the small print and if I go over the cap, there’s no extra fees, just a restriction in service speeds. As I say, I’ve yet to experience any restrictions. Quite handy, because I’ve been watching both the new series of “V” (remake of the 80’s show) and “Pacific” (by the makers of Band of Brothers), in hi-def DIVX format.

Contracted download speed is 3.6mbps, but I regularly get 8+mbps. Upload speeds are the only snag, if I need to upload any sizeable files. Contracted is 384kbps, but I average around 200-300kbps at the moment.

Overall, I’m delighted with the service. Occasionally in really bad weather conditions I can lose signal strength completely, but it’s never usually down for long. Re-setting the modem usually does the trick to get the signal back. The only odd time that’s not done the trick, the connection has been down for an hour or so at most.

Finally, the one thing to be aware of with a satellite connection, is the ping. Having played quite a few online games, the high ping is a killer where online gaming or applications that need good latency connections.

Overall, I would only recommend satellite as the last resort if you’ve not got access to anything of lesser expense, or if the infrastructure locally isn’t great. For my own part, I live in a very rural location. If my house was 50 yards further up the hill though, I would have WIMAX. The main antenna for my region is only 10km away, but unfortunately, there’s no clear line of sight to my house.