Just reading down the first page of this blog and I note that I didn't come back with an update after the transmitter mast knocked out the 3G satellite connection.
Had no internet for 5 days....5...long...days!
And no, Orange didn't pay me compensation - even though they were quick to charge me €20 when I was late paying their factura one month.
Their loss - this contract runs out in December of this year, and I hear Carrefour have a great offer on a PAYG dongle, that you can also contract for 1 month at a time.
Wouldn't it be nice if that giant conglomerate that goes by the name of Telefonica would get their finger out and connect Muscaret to the rest of the world?
Whoever says that Spain is not a third world country is kidding themselves on.
They can send a man to the moon, they are in the process of sending men to Mars, yet they can't send a group of workmen 20 miles up the road to connect a few cables!
TELEFONICA IS A JOKE!
Showing posts with label telephone lines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label telephone lines. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Telephones and Storms
It has come to my attention that a really weird thing happened in the village last week.
We've been having a lot of electrical storms recently, in fact the weather in the whole has been atrocious this year. We are still waiting for the normal sunny weather we usually have at this time of year. It might start of sunny, or end sunny, but in between is another matter entirely!
There was a bad storm with thunder, lightning and rain. I actually saw a fork of lightning landing pretty near or on top of Campo Rosso from my window. I'm a storm watcher, can you guess?
Anyway, it seems that the lightning hit the mast, and knocked the telephones out! Not something I'd know about seeing as I am still waiting for a line. Look at the photo here. I was actually trying to capture a magnificent rainbow that appeared during a recent storm, but I've accidentally captured the proximity of the telephone poles and how close they are to the house. That is my chimney in the picture to the far left, and the nearest pole (not connected to the distant pole) is to the right of the foot of the rainbow. There is actually another pole right outside the garden of the house two doors along, also unconnected.
Now, getting back to the telephone lines in the village, they were knocked out, so Telefonica sent engineers out to re-connect them. All was well until Eileen got a call for Andrea. The caller, English, asked if she had dialled 348. "No, this is 652". Or words to that effect anyway.
Turns out the caller was looking for her mum, who runs the Sonrisa bar. A day or so later, with no-one in her family having phoned her (unusually) Eileen used her mobile to call her home phone, and it didn't ring inside her house. Instead, Andrea from the Sonrisa bar answered. That was when it was realised that the phone numbers had been switched round. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Conversations with others in the village revealed that this had happened to quite a few people, at least those that realised something was amiss.
Telefonica were duly summoned out again, and the phone numbers returned to their rightful owners. But who is to say that someone will not end up paying for an international call they didn't make?
Meanwhile, Eileen found her internet access no longer worked. She called Telefonica who sent an engineer to her home. He fiddled around with her connection box, then announced the problem had been caused by someone changing the wires around and demanded a €50 call-out charge!
She hadn't touched her box,and anyway, explain to me how a DSL user can mess around with wires - doesn't DSL use the same line as the phone line - you can make calls and go online at the same time, unlike dial-up?
We've been having a lot of electrical storms recently, in fact the weather in the whole has been atrocious this year. We are still waiting for the normal sunny weather we usually have at this time of year. It might start of sunny, or end sunny, but in between is another matter entirely!There was a bad storm with thunder, lightning and rain. I actually saw a fork of lightning landing pretty near or on top of Campo Rosso from my window. I'm a storm watcher, can you guess?
Anyway, it seems that the lightning hit the mast, and knocked the telephones out! Not something I'd know about seeing as I am still waiting for a line. Look at the photo here. I was actually trying to capture a magnificent rainbow that appeared during a recent storm, but I've accidentally captured the proximity of the telephone poles and how close they are to the house. That is my chimney in the picture to the far left, and the nearest pole (not connected to the distant pole) is to the right of the foot of the rainbow. There is actually another pole right outside the garden of the house two doors along, also unconnected.
Now, getting back to the telephone lines in the village, they were knocked out, so Telefonica sent engineers out to re-connect them. All was well until Eileen got a call for Andrea. The caller, English, asked if she had dialled 348. "No, this is 652". Or words to that effect anyway.
Turns out the caller was looking for her mum, who runs the Sonrisa bar. A day or so later, with no-one in her family having phoned her (unusually) Eileen used her mobile to call her home phone, and it didn't ring inside her house. Instead, Andrea from the Sonrisa bar answered. That was when it was realised that the phone numbers had been switched round. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Conversations with others in the village revealed that this had happened to quite a few people, at least those that realised something was amiss.
Telefonica were duly summoned out again, and the phone numbers returned to their rightful owners. But who is to say that someone will not end up paying for an international call they didn't make?
Meanwhile, Eileen found her internet access no longer worked. She called Telefonica who sent an engineer to her home. He fiddled around with her connection box, then announced the problem had been caused by someone changing the wires around and demanded a €50 call-out charge!
She hadn't touched her box,and anyway, explain to me how a DSL user can mess around with wires - doesn't DSL use the same line as the phone line - you can make calls and go online at the same time, unlike dial-up?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Telefonica
While I'm here I really can't miss out Telefonica.
They have the monopoly on phone line installations.There are plenty of phone suppliers out there, but only one for fixing you up in the first place.
Well, I have waited 6 YEARS and still don't have a phone, despite reapplying last year and finally getting some kind of response from them, where they wanted to me to send them some certificates to prove the housing here is legal.
Got the required papers from the Town Hall, then sent them off.
They phoned my partner a few weeks later so say we couldn't have a phone because there were NO LINES!
Duh!
He pointed out that there were lines in the campo, a matter of a few metres away and could be seen from the window.
About two months later, two or three new poles went up, in a direct line from the nearest pole on the campo, the final one being actually on the estate. Wow! I was so excited! A phone line at last.
Sadly, no. They have not yet been connected.
I didn't want to pay Satellite Dave €500 or whatever he charges, plus €30 a month or so for satellite internet access. Everyone tells me the line is slow and is always dropping, and that he doesn't reply to calls for help.
I asked both Movistar and Vodafone, the two big phone providers, for 3G dongles, but both said 3G wasn't available here.
Finally my Spanish neighbour told me, only this summer, that Orange had 3G internet access and so I signed up on an 18 month contract at €39 a month, but with the frist three months discounted.
I am pleased to report their access is GREAT, if a little bit on the expensive side. All the providers seem to want €39 + VAT. We need some real competition here in Spain, like we have in the UK.
I'm told Euphony (http://www.euphony.es/) is good too; they use the Orange network.
They have the monopoly on phone line installations.There are plenty of phone suppliers out there, but only one for fixing you up in the first place.
Well, I have waited 6 YEARS and still don't have a phone, despite reapplying last year and finally getting some kind of response from them, where they wanted to me to send them some certificates to prove the housing here is legal.
Got the required papers from the Town Hall, then sent them off.
They phoned my partner a few weeks later so say we couldn't have a phone because there were NO LINES!
Duh!
He pointed out that there were lines in the campo, a matter of a few metres away and could be seen from the window.
About two months later, two or three new poles went up, in a direct line from the nearest pole on the campo, the final one being actually on the estate. Wow! I was so excited! A phone line at last.
Sadly, no. They have not yet been connected.
I didn't want to pay Satellite Dave €500 or whatever he charges, plus €30 a month or so for satellite internet access. Everyone tells me the line is slow and is always dropping, and that he doesn't reply to calls for help.
I asked both Movistar and Vodafone, the two big phone providers, for 3G dongles, but both said 3G wasn't available here.
Finally my Spanish neighbour told me, only this summer, that Orange had 3G internet access and so I signed up on an 18 month contract at €39 a month, but with the frist three months discounted.
I am pleased to report their access is GREAT, if a little bit on the expensive side. All the providers seem to want €39 + VAT. We need some real competition here in Spain, like we have in the UK.
I'm told Euphony (http://www.euphony.es/) is good too; they use the Orange network.
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