We've had a home in Spain for more than 14 years and it is now our permanent base though we retain a small home in the UK.
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A life without Broadband
Well, not a life as such but a few days cut off from the world… may as well have cut my right arm off…
3 days ago, the Iberbanda broadband went off… not for the first time, it went off months ago and it turned out that some local turds had disconnected the plug… quickly fixed..
This time, no such luck, the broadband just stopped. I checked to ensure all the connectors were in, cycled the power etc… nothing, dead. Over here in Spain in the mountains I have a wireless broadband system. An Aerial points from our cave down to the village centre and that’s where we get the broadband from.
Now this might be of interest to those of you in a similar situation using Iberbanda… basically as far as foreigners are concerned they’re worse than useless. Without a phone, you can’t ring them. There does not appear to be an email address you can use… so the only way is to ring up on your mobile… they don’t speak English but will have someone who speaks English ring you back…. but – and this is second hand from various sources – they will NOT ring you back on a UK mobile… They have a British speaking off-shoot of the company but unless you signed up with them in the first place – they won’t touch you!!
I got a couple of local Brits to help me and very welcome too – but the information needed is ridiculous – they need your national insurance number, the number of the phone you have with them (which being broadband based doesn’t work when the broadband is off) and the CUETA number off the invoice…
After over 2 days of struggling with this and getting no-where, I finally got desperate and starting taking connectors out and actually LOOKING at them – and that’s when I discovered a problem… the RJ45 connector going into the dish itself was black – like carbon black – I have NO idea why as the socket looked ok. I got out the wire brush – and the WD-40 – and gave it a good old clean – plugged it back in and hey presto – broadband. Back in action.
All of this does however beg the question – how on earth are you supposed to get a fast response when you need it?? Between that and needing passports at some garage our near the town of Vera when taking payment, either the Spanish REALLY don’t trust us Brits – or they don’t trust people in general – at this point I don’t know which it is.