Very strange

We count ourselves lucky that all we lost was the cane fencing because a lot of people have suffered more damage than that. According to Meteo, the weather channel, the winds gusted up to 117kmph in this area during the period from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning.

We did loose our connection to the Internet at about 9:00am yesterday and I had wondered if the mast up at the Pedrera had been blown out of alignment. I tried phoning Clear Communications several times to alert them and got no reply. Other people on the estate had come to the conclusion that the company were going out of business. Some are already looking at an alternative company which uses a similar microwave technology. We got the answer to our concerns this morning when the connection was back on.

Telefonica will definitely install phones on our estate sometime in the near future so I can see little point in paying out a lot more money for an alternative microwave system at this stage. However, interestingly enough someone delivered leaflets about the Bigastro Connectate system to all of the houses on Villas Andrea yesterday evening. According to the Bigastel website, coverage is only for the centre of town. Maybe they are considering extending that which is why they have delivered leaflets to us. I shall certainly fill in the application and take it down to the Ayuntamiento and see what happens.

For the Bigastel connection you can pay 99,99€ for a 1Mb Wi-Fi connection in the first year. The German company Aeromax, that people are looking at, are offering 512Kb i.e. half the speed for 45€ per month including a phone connection with call costs of 3,9c per minute to the UK. We currently pay 40,60€ per month for 1Mb from Clear Comms. plus £3.51 a month to have a UK phone number with call costs of 1p per minute to all of Europe. If the Bigastel system works out we could be paying just 13,46€ for 1Mb internet including our phone per month.

It is a no brainer really! Now where is my pen?