Over the past ten years, the telephone service in Spain has come on in leaps and bounds. The National Carrier -
Telefonica, is by far the biggest of the communications companies and controls most of the lines in Spain. If you want a telephone in your new house, it is to Telefonica you will have to apply. It was about 6 years ago when the Spanish government decided to break the monopoly Telefonica had and almost immediately things started to improve. Slowly at first but things soon picked up. Even now, Telefonica seem unaware that they no longer have a monopoly. Rather like B.T. when they lost theirs.
Today in Spain there are numerous telecommunication companies able to act as call carriers but only Telefonica installs lines. It’s not worth making a comparison of prices between carriers because whilst the difference is significant, with Telefonica being the most expensive, the simple fact of the matter is if you have ADSL for the internet then all calls within Spain are free at all times. For calls to the UK or other countries, most people use voice over internet protocol (VOIP).
There are many voip companies but only two which can be described as really worthwhile. The largest voip company for the individual user is
Skype. If you have a Skype account you can talk to anyone else in the world who also has an account but you need to talk via your PC, which requires either a headphone or voip phone, the latter of which plugs into any usb port and then behaves as a normal phone.
Using Voip you can also phone any phone in the world, usually for a fraction of the cost of making a conventional telephone call. The other major player is Voipbuster. They offer the cheapest calls of any company and calls to telephones in many countries, including the UK are free. Voipbuster also allows you to send SMS messages at 1 cent each or 15 times cheaper than the mobile phone air time providers.
Apart from the rental of the telephone line, the cost of communication here in Spain is something which many are beginning to ignore when taking into account the cost of things. It’s hard to believe that five or
six years ago a call to the UK was costing around 25 pence for a single minute and today we can talk until exhausted for between nothing and 2 cents per minute. We do recommend that people sign up for Skype – not for the cheap calls because
Voipbuster beats them hands down on prices but because the quality of Skype is so good and Skype account holders talk free to each other for as long as they want. If your intention in reading this information is to one day be able to settle in Spain you will no doubt require and expect a telephone to be available for use when you move into your new house. For as long as the writer can remember, Estate Agents here in Spain have been promising house buyers that phones are available without difficulty in all areas. Unfortunately, this is a statement not made with an iota of poetic licence, it’s simply a lie.
In many areas telephone lines are not available and Telefonica have no intention at the present time of laying lines in these areas. This being the case you need to review your options should you find a plot of land upon which you would like to build but for which there is no telephone service available. As a routine, we carry out all sorts of checks on land before allowing the client to purchase and one of these concerns the availability of telephone lines. Until about four years ago, if no lines were available then that was the end of the matter but today, fortunately things are a lot more flexible.
For most Britons new to Spain, a telephone line is a “must have item”. Whilst mobile phones provide good communication across Spain, their use internationally is somewhat injurious to wealth and they are not a long term solution. Further, most, if not all, wish to be connected to the internet so as to be able to send and receive emails. Again, whilst this can be done on mobile phones, costs soon mount up. However, we’ll return to the subject of mobile phones a little later in this section.
One of the easiest ways of solving this problem is by using the Hughes satellite or Eutelsat W1 or W3A. This will provide high speed internet communication which can also be used for internet telephony. You need to purchase or lease the basic equipment, which will cost somewhere between 4 – 500 Euros and then a monthly fee for service will be required - somewhere in the region of 45 – 60 Euros. ADSL from the major providers via land line will cost about 36 Euros per month plus of course the cost of the telephone line, which is similar to that you will be paying in the UK. The equipment, including the dish is quite compact with the dish being about 20 inches wide.
Depending upon your location, another method which is proving very effective is one introduced recently in Spain by Vodafone, which is broadband internet via the mobile phone network. At a cost of 45 Euros per month for a 24 x 7 service both internet and telephone communication (via the net) are provided. A mobile phone is not required, a radio card being provided which slots into your lap top. A similar service is also offered by Movistar who by coincidence are charging the same monthly fee (owned by Telefonica) and other network operators are shortly to introduce the same type of service. Movistar are not using a radio card but a tiny “dongle” type device which simply slots into any available usb port. And there are other options as well ensuring that if and when you move to Spain, regardless of where you move to, you will not be out of touch with friends and family.