Bedrock

This entry is predominently aimed at readers in our corner of Spain who are looking for a better broadband setup and has been dramatically updated in March 2023. In the area where we live and in our village of Galera 18840 in particular, choices are limited as to Internet providers… or are they?

This entry – originally started back in May 2022, is for people in the outskirts of Galera (and probably other areas including Huescar) who have broadband issues and actually want to solve them. It COULD however have some interest for pretty much anyone looking to escape the clutches of their broadband provider where there is a reliable 4G/5G signal available.

If my experiences seem like they might be of use to you, then further down, for one option, you would need a half-decent mobile signal and be prepared to pick the right Spanish mobile (yes – mobile) provider for the job – keep reading….

If you are only interested in a solution, skip this section but I suggest below is worth checking.

Where We Began

For well over a decade now – until May 2022, here in Galera , my wife and I were using wireless-dish-based broadband supplied originally by Iberbanda and then moved onto the once-helpful Habland ( used to dealt with a fellow called Antonio). The company is now part of Excom. Originally a PAINFULLY slow service, maybe in 2020, Habland started to offer a barely good enough 30Mbps (MAX) download (TV, surfing etc.) and 3Mbps (MAX) upload service.

The actual AMOUNT of data that Habland allow in a month is unlimited like most broadband services (our home typically goes through 250GB+ a month on TV and PC use – not to be confused with SPEED above). At its best, the Habland scenario was OK for HD TV and general Internet browsing and email, but this Internet setup was limited in many ways… speeds were rarely if ever at the contracted rate and in bad weather, the local antenna in Galera gets turned off, presumably for safety, given storms and less-than-ideal electricity here.

Broadband Speed

The download (TV watching etc) speed provided by Habland was at best just about OK. Even today, sometimes people complain of poor speed when in fact it could be their own internal WiFi at fault, other times the speed genuinely drops, others are on a different antenna to the one we had, some have old dishes and all of these issues and differences are lumped together into one local Facebook group – which seems not to be achieving anything – hence this article originally originally drafted in May 2022.

Some (who are lucky enough to have telegraph poles nearby) are using the Habland fibre option and I regularly see complains about that, too. Spain has been allocated billions in EU grants to fit out rural areas with fibre but it is looking increasingly obvious that providers are being selective where they provide their services – the same happened in the UK:-)

So, Habland: DOWNLOAD SPEED is OK but only at best. As for UPLOAD speed, 3Mbps and below is not really fast enough for modern life – video calls (Zoom, Skype, Discord, WhatsApp, Facetime and a miriad of other social media communications) and as for sending video to YouTube – uploading video under Habland was like watching paint dry.

Then there is the question of reliability. We didn’t do that badly at our home but others have regular problems with little if any feedback from the provider. I thought, as almost no-one in our area seems to be getting anywhere, that I’d start up something constructive in here without getting over-technical (I have a technical blog for that and I HAVE written a tech article elsewhere for further reading for those with some tech background who are interested).

On February 28, 2021, Habland offered our street fibre broadband “soon” – Antonio at Habland emailed me directly on this – see below – even though I told them we have no phone masts here in our area – they would supply fibre anyway, so they said:

“No need to put your order, as soon as the fiber is in your street we’ll call you to switch free of cost. Then you can ask for the speed and IP.
Due how the market is moving… may be on the summer we only sell 1000 Mb fiber plans …. who knows..…”

The above was followed by another short email on April 8, 2021:

“We’ll contact you as soon as it is available (anyway you will see our crew laying fiber in town soon)”

On June 2021 , Jesús at Habland wrote to me:

“I’m Jesús. I’m writing from Habland. I do my best to help you.
We still do not have the fiber optic installation finished in Galera.
Before the end of the year we are sure that we will have this service.
We are very sorry for the inconvenience.”

By now I was getting excited – but then around September 16, 2021, all of that changed…

“We have been reviewing the map but we see that it’s too far from the box to be able to pull a fiber cable there. I’m sorry but it’s not possible. We throw our own fiber.
Regards, Rubén”

Finally – October 8, 2021:

“I regret to inform you that our fiber does not reach your property, we have sent a budget to your neighbor of the Cueva Encantada to install fiber in that area, if you want together you can pay that budget, so we can install the optical fiber in your area.

Regrets,

Lucía G.”

I informed others in our area – the response at first seemed enthusiastic – then with one exception, nothing. I hoped Habland-Excom would have a re-think. Later it did occur to me – if we are too far from the box, how would US taking responsibility for pole installation costs help?

Then the merger with EXCOM and all hope was lost… the first thing to magically disappear without explanation was the long-standing ability to drop to lower speeds and price (just enough to support security cameras) when we’re not at home. Habland would not explain, stating only that they did not offer such a service – which was utter nonsense of course, we’d used that option for several years while living here part time – and I mentioned it in here in January 2022 and probably much earlier).

Late in 2021, Habland changed their story to one which said they would give us fibre ONLY if we installed our own poles, fibre was left to the house owners – and we’ve all seen how well collective action works – NOT. As you might imagine with our next door, retired neighbours and ourselves being the only ones really committed to getting fibre from Habland at the time – after the above initial promise “soon”, that fibre option went no-where and I don’t now believe it ever will – I got sick of griping and worse – listening to others griping.

There is, of course always Elon Musk’s world-leading, revolutionary Starlink low-altitude satellite network – but it remains stubbornly expensive at this time both for monthly rental and installation. For those who already insist on paying €75+ a month, Starlink should come as no shock – good luck to them I say (of course for business use that kind of outlay may well be easy to justify). I was enthusiastic about up to €35 a month on the now broken promise of faster service “real soon” from Habland.

Testing the Speed

Here is a measurement of Habland speed I took in April 2022, simply by running the web page in my PC browser (Chrome) and pressing a button. I did this on my PC which is cabled to the router – NOT WiFi (always a mistake using WiFi for testing as internal WiFi issues could influence the speed adversely).

SO, with a dish maybe a year or so old from Habland and a clear view to their antenna in Galera from here in the hills above (there must be no visual obstacles – important), the results above were within reason given what we were (until May 2022) contracted for, above the norm for Habland users, some others in the area claim they get far lower speeds on average.

Up until 2021, I occasionally used my phone as a “hotspot” to ensure I had a viable emergency backup option and then moved onto the dedicated 4G router (GL-iNET PULI), image on the right (any half decent phone will have a hotspot facility) but I didn’t have a spare phone.

During 2021-2022 I had my own amateur-night-out 4G backup (low cost, low data, low speed) using that GL-iNET 4G router (white – right image) feeding secondary Internet to my system on demand in case of Habland failure.

SIMYO (Orange), HITS Mobile (Vodaphone) and other mobile company’s limits typically make even their most expensive offering unfeasible as a full replacement for broadband.

Initially I positioning that (designed for mobile use) router high up externally but as it isn’t waterproof that wasn’t a long-term solution.

In summary, my backup until May 2022 allowed only wireless connection from the above 4G router to my main router – hardly ideal… but things change with time – read on…

An actual Alternative solution

In early May 2022 I came up with a 4G alternative to Habland (xenet.es) and it has now been running for over ten months with only infrequent speed drops.

For the data LIMITS issue, I stumbled on a company called XENET who have a €21 (all inc.) a month plan including 300GB max download data (amount, not speed) a month (supposedly unlimited but on enquiring they said it was “fair use” 300GB dropping to 64Kbps if exceeded – no-one else seems to come close to this offering at the price). This is proving to be enough for heavy TV/Movies and typical web use with one small caviat – see below.

The caviat is: I soon exceeded the 300GB/month due to excessive TV/movie use 3 days in a row. I discovered that I was typically turning off the TV at night but would leave the TV Android box on overnight and the particular service was constantly downloading shows – took me 3 days to realise, but I quickly cracked that – the box and TV now go to standby when we go to bed – problem solved.

By mid-July 2022 we were ensuring the TV box is on standby overnight (hence not un-necessarily consuming data) and we are now using well under 10GB a day without taking any other precautions or reducing general data use. I’m on the PC blogging regularly as well as uploading videos to facebook and YouTube – also we regularly binge-watch movies and TV shows.

Hotspots for Backup?

For the SPEED issue, I found out an EXTERNAL 4G router with POE (power over Ethernet – see below) on Amazon.es, reasonably priced i.e. sub-€70. It also had WiFi and I figured I could use the latter for external devices that don’t need to be part of my internal network.

But as always you get what you pay for and the KuWFI router was not very sensitive at picking up 4G signals.

I used the new cheap 4G modem/router for over 2 months and it worked well but I did need to mount the modem outside on a pole to get a clear signal above the roof – thankfully the router had POE (power over Ethernet – see the end) and so only needed the one cable. I bought cable from the new Chinese store in nearby Baza complete with connectors already fitted on each end – for just a few Euros – no tools needed.

In our first test with the router in the window I got the same download speed as Habland, i.e. 30Mbps, but an UPLOAD speed of around 4* Habland speed – i.e. maybe 12Mbps. In our best tests at the time, near the top of our Chimney with a phone on Orange (i.e. Simyo initially) we briefly managed 150Mbps down and 50-60Mbps up.

Holding the ROUTER near the top of the Chimney I regularly achieved maybe 60Mbps download and 30Mbps upload – not as good as a phone but good enough. Either way this blew Habland’s dish broadband offering out of the water for less outlay (our monthly “broadband” total now being €21 inclusive).

Ultimately I picked a convenient location (on a simple aluminium pole) which did not offer the top theoretical speed but was regularly pumping out upwards of 50Mbps in one direction and not far off in the other.

The Xenet deal includes calls (but no texts if you want to get clever – I don’t).

Here for reference is the inside setup (photo right)…. ignore the irrelevant mess of wires in my office. The bits to watch are the black power supply (included with the router) (photo below right) on the left, plugged into the wall – and my black router on the right.

There’s a single black cable coming out of the provided power supply/POE unit and into the top of my main router.

So where does this take me? Time for a quick testvelocidad. 56.1Mbps download, 38.8Mbps upload, 38ms ping. I put the cable inside the aluminium pole for protection from the sun.

The aluminium pole came from our local Ferreteria – i.e. hardware store.

While I could not achieve with the router what I can with a top-of-the-range phone, this rig cost a fraction of a top-of-the-range phone! Here’s a typical reading:

The difference between griping and acting was exhilarating.

After all that work – success in more ways than one

In addition to switching from Habland to Xenet for our “broadband” as above, I also switched mobile providers.

Previously I was paying Habland €35 all in, and Simyo €5. As I was now down to €21 for broadband, I felt I could manage a slight increase in mobile cost and still win out. €10.50 got me unlimited calls and 70GB data a month with Xenet which meant I would have some spare data for emergencies – my main router would automatically switch to using the mobile hotspot if it is was turned on – all sorted.

Is this something only techies can do? Almost 5 years ago I was seriously ill and my memory and concentration is now SHOT. If I can do this so can others.

All seemed well with the new setup until the summer 2022 heatwave. As the temperature rose, the reliability of the KuWfi 4G router went down. I put this down to the external heat (I should have housed the router in a wooden box) and so I replaced the KuWfi router with a TP-Link Archer MR600 (V2) 4G router from Amazon. As it happens, the aerials on this router are better and I don’t actually need to place the TP-Link outside. I’ve found success mounting the Archer in the far corner of my office where it sits to this day (March 2023)

That is working fine within the limits of the 4G service i.e. a (high – 300GB) monthly data quantity limit and variable speed depending on the time of day.

Meanwhile on one of the forums I spotted someone talking about a broadband company called MiFibra.Online – they also insisted that Calle Ceuta 25 opposite us is, according to their records, able to get fibre and comprises several chalets – I challenged this as Calle Ceuta 25 is opposite us and comprises one family and no chalets and has never had any broadband other than Habland dish service. Ultimately the company were VERY helpful but could NOT offer fibre. They informed me that MoviStar ultimately need to install poles so that they can provide a service and until that happens, if ever, they cannot help. Mifibra also dismissed a local-group Facebook claim by one person that the latter has a 5G service with them, they are very clear that they only provide fibre services on the back of, for example, MoviStar-installed telegraph installations. Summary – utter timer-wasting.

Update March 2023 – Things change – Sometimes for the Better but Beware

As mentioned above, xenet.es as a 4G provider has worked well for us since May 2022. I simply use the TP-Link MR600 modem/router to feed 4G to a much better (but not 4G) GL-iNET FLINT router. I’ve also used wireless tethering as a backup option to get a data signal from my phone into the FLINT using teh phone’s mobile hotspot. This month I was writing a review about a another new router and in the process remembered having read, some time ago about USB tethering on mobile phones.

Back in 2022, my Xiaomi PocoPhone and router combination didn’t seem to want to know about USB tethering. Well, NOW, my Samsung phone and the FLINT router WILL co-operate over USB and this week I managed, using SpeedTest.net on my hardwired PC to get 160Mbps+ download from that combination of the two 4G signals when needed. All that’s needed now is a cheap, 4G-sensitive phone that WILL support USB tethering (I know, good luck finding a supplier that would know USB tethering from a hole in the ground).

Aside from the initial router router outlay, xenet.es and my two routers are a FAR better bet than our original HABLAND/EXCOM dish broadband setup – and for approximately €9 LESS per month, cheaper, faster, better service – and I’ve learned a lot in the process. As far as I can tell, the only limits are 4G and we should eventually get 5G – but I’m not complaining. I could run several HD TVs at once on this lot. For simple home use only the TP-Link router is essential – the second router is a luxury.

Please note that while Xenet unlimited (300GB) still remains ok for the house, the €10.50 deal 70GB/month for my phone is no longer available. I made the mistake of dropping my phone contract to 30GB/month for one month and when I then attempted to raise it back to 70GB/month having discovered I could use both my main 4G contract and mobile phone together to increase speeds, they said that they could not offer this. I’m a bit disappointed about that… but again “shy bairns get nowt” so I checked their terms – the contract can be terminated at any time without penalty – so I’ve just asked for a replacement contract for the phone.

On the subject of phones – this will vary but down in the village, my phone, using xenet.es (Orange), will pull in download speeds in excess of 200Mbps.

Of interest, our local pub gets far faster speeds than this as he has fibre at the pub and has chosen to go with another company – we don’t know who yet but Speedtest reports Orange as the provider (500Mbps download).

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