Telefonica's Speedy - My Broadband Connection.



Since my relocation back to Mendoza, Argentina in January, I have been trying to get a grasp of the IT world here. Things are quite different here, than say the US for example. PC's specs sure fall short to say "geek US" standards. However, they are nicely spec models out there, but you better be ready to lay down some good money.

But, I wasn't so much worry at the computer side of things, as I was towards broadband services at my disposal. I was well aware that Argentina, is no US when it comes to broadband service (as a per speed and price comparison) nor is US like Europe or Japan. Regardless I was heading with an open mind, to whatever I was going to be offered.

First and foremost lets get one thing straight, broadband here it's not the main thing. Dial-up sure beats it, and LAN Cafes beat all them straight up. Broadband is expensive. Should you have "fast" broadband to your disposal (1 or 2 mbps, crap even 512k will cut it) you better have a LAN Cafe or some medium to justify the expenses having that kinda of speed gives you. I have 256/100 kbps..which means my theoretical speed limit is 32K/s downstream. Currently I'm downloading a trailer from Apple at ~5.5K/s. I believe the routing of packages is acting up again...

Truth be told, 256k should not be deemed broadband, C'mon now, you kidding me? 256k is an acceptable speed to browse webpages, do your email and basic tasks these days. They shouldn't definitely not make you pay 50 buck for this. Well besides this, they are some other bad-sides to this service, for example: For one, my service gets P2P ports blocked in part, as well as non-standard ports (Oh doing a VPN with this should be fun!). Secondly, the service entitles me (I'm not to sure about this one) to only have broadband on one PC. Thanks to my trusty Bellsouth Ethernet modem and D-link crappy router, that clause can go to hell. Linux and Mac are non-existent, thus they are deprive of any support/internet access in their books. The list can go on and on..

You know, is shameful that we have to pay around 50 US dollars for this kind of service. Speed, service -wise this sucks plain and simple. What sucks even more is Telefonica's (phone company) monopoly over these services. Only they offer the service, sure they are other broadband ISPs (FLASH, UOL)...but they have to go through Telefonica to digitalize the phone line and all that. So basically Telefonica decides who, when, and how much someone should pay for "broadband". Unfair, rightly so, but since there's no true competition, who's to call them out and say "Look your services suck"? Nobody. So you either take it, or you leave it. Another great example of us getting ripped off.

In perspective my broadband sucks, regardless of what any internet speed test says. Believe me I am not the only one that share these sentiments towards Speedy or Telefonica. Hit the forums here and have a look. I forgot to mention.. Tenes que hablar español para entender lo que dicen ..it's in spanish ;).

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