How to get internet at home in Spain without a landline?

How to get internet at home in Spain without a physical contact such as landline or fibre?

Many people live in remote locations in Spain where there is no possibility of getting a landline or a fibre optic line. It used to be very difficult to get internet in remote places but now it it usually not too difficult. The suggestion on this page are based in order of how much they are recommended.

Get Internet with a 4g or a 5g connection. 
Assuming you or someone with has internet on their smartphone the first thing to do is do a speed test. Use this link or this link or google "internet speed test".

If you have over 5Mb per second then that will be perfect. Over 2Mb per second would still be OK. If you have under 1Mb per second it may be problematic and you should maybe see if there are any wimax providers. (See below)

When you are testing, try several locations around your house. Normally the higher you go then the better reception you will have.  So if you have enough 4G speed then you can consider using a 4G conection. For a quick fix you can set up a mobile hotspot  to share the internet connection of your smart phone with other people and devices in the house. In android just go to settings->connections. On iphone it is Settings > Personal Hotspot. It is very easy to set up a mobile hotspot so that you can share your internet connection. The trouble with this is that the moment you take your smartphone out of the house nobody else will have internet.

I am now going to tell you what I do myself becuase I live in a remote place and I use 4G:
The best thing to do is to get a 4G router. The model I use is a TP-Link TL-MR6400  you can buy them on amazon. You insert a phone chip into the back and then it will work just like a normal ADSL conection that you would get in a city. You can also get an exterior antenna to boost the signal. I get around 20Mb/s using a booster antenna and about 12Mb/s without.

The information I give here will probably go out of date  but in November 2021 this info is  true.  The cheapest way of having two (or more)  chips is to get a mutisim. Multisim are sims which are identical.  You could call them clones. The have the same phone number.  You put one in your 4G router and one in your smartphone. The data is unlimited so it is like having 2 internet connections for the price of one.

I use Movistar unlimited  which has unlimited data.  "datos ilimitados" It costs around 40 euros a month. This is so much cheaper than I used to pay for unlimited data on my smartphone and in my house. I am not sure if other companies besides Movistar offer multisim.

This is a link to the movistar  page offering unlimited and multisim Click here (links like this often become unusable)

The maximum speed of a 4G connection is 22Mb/s.

Note: The only thing to take into acount with multisim is that sometimes sms messages will only go to one of them.  So you have to work out which of them it is if it is important. 

Wimax or WIFI internet.
Many companies offer internet by wifi. They come around to your house and do a test. If you have enough coverage to one of their masts then they install a small antenna on your house and install a router which will supply internet to your house. It is best to ask people in your area about the companies which provide these services.

Satellite internet.
You would  only use satellite internet if the 4G or wimax is not available. It is more expensive and more complicated for the installation of the equipment and the price of the service.  However, the technology is changing rapidly and companies like starlink are sending up thousands of satellites to provide affordable broadband. One day we might all be using satellite internet if the price and reliability become attractive enough. I used satellite for a while in 2007. It took me ages to correctly point the dish. Starlink is now available in Spain it costs €40/mo, with a hardware cost of €450. (correct at 2024)  for some  people this is too expensive but if you are very remote and you don't mind spending 450 on the installation  it works very well and is very fast.

Notes

The router  I have mentioned is available on Amazon Spain: Here is a link  I actually used one of these routers with a multisim sim card in an airbnb type rental apartment to provide internet. It has ddns which means it is possible to access the admin remotely. This is useful for changing the wifi password etc. The neigbours would ask the airbnb guests for our wifi password so they could use it afterwards and then they would use up all the bandwidth.

The antenna I bought was about 40 euros. If I were to buy one now I would maybe get one that is suitable for 4g and 5g.  I spent time around 2008 deperately  trying to improve my 3g conexion. Here are a couple of tips. Put your router in a colander or a big saucepan to see if it makes a difference.
Also get some tin cans like tomatoes or fly spray cans and experiment with forming a sort of crescent behind the router. Experiment with different distances and different curves.  I used to be able to get a 25% boost using these techniques.

By the way: It can be very confusing when considering  Mb or MB. Mb is used for transfer speeds and MB is used for storage space.  This is what the abreviations mean. megabit (Mb) and the megabyte (MB). To convert a MB to a Mb you divide by 8 so if you have a 100Mbps connection, that's actually 12.5MBps.  For example. If you have a 50Mbps connection a 750MB file will be downloaded in two minutes.

Links:
Learn 100 Spanish words connected with internet. Click here

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