[icebraining]

Personal experience is not FUD. I'm not a user, but all I've heard about Telefonica is complaints and grievances. They were also the ISP which forced a caching proxy on its ADSL users, breaking a lot of sites. Granted that was a few years ago.

[hamoid]

I and most of my friends and family in Spain have at some point spent hours trying to solve problems with our Telefónica phone and internet connections. Popularly it's known as Timofónica (Scam-ofonica).

When I hear the company's president mumbling [1] about how Google owes them money because Telefónica provides the networks, but Google makes the money thanks to their networks, I wonder how has the company grown so large, and how can a director be so incapable of coherent expression.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTOAyZxOTy0

Edit: I leave this comment because I like Mozilla and enjoy Firefox, but I was dismayed to discover a few weeks ago that Telefónica was involved with Hello.

[nevergetenglish]

"Lack of service for hours every day", is that a personal experience?

Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography (mountains, roads, ...). Now there is a big competition in Spain, for example Jazztel is offering 200Gigabit/s up-down for 36 euros/moth and phone tax included. Our country is getting better in the IT sector and telefonica was the pioneer. It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option, and for many to have the opportunity to be connected is much better than to be out of the web.

[icebraining]

"Lack of service for hours every day", is that a personal experience?

Yes, it's clear from the post that it is from personal experience. Why would you think otherwise?

Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography

Yes, back when it was a public company; that was just their responsibility.

It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option

Yes, but neither BSousa nor I were talking about dial-up times. Nor was the EU when they fined Telefonica for anti-trust violations, multiple times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefónica#Monopoly

[nevergetenglish]

BSousa is commenting in another post down that in Manilva (a town in Spain) the service went down for two days ? (that's all). I posted a link in which Manilva is going to be the first town in Andalusia with 100% optic fiber (only telefonica) and now has 4G. There is one comment in that page from one people living there, and he says: At last we are going out of the prehistoric time.

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider

[icebraining]

I don't see how is the fact that Telefonica is wiring a town with FTTH incompatible with what has been said about them.

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider

Being a monopoly isn't illegal, abusing that position is, and that's what Telefonica was fined for.

[collyw]

Living in Spain, I haven't noticed much to differentiate ISP's on compared to the UK. Telefonica seem very average to me, and their service was pretty reliable when we had it.

I live in Barcelona, is it likely that bigger cities get better service than other places?

[nevergetenglish]

I can't see the reply button for the comment down this.

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider