A phone line is considered a basic amenity and is considered to
be the norm especially in a brand new, purpose built home.
However, buyers of off plan property shouldn't be so complacent
to expect to be able to check your emails when away from work on
holiday or even make an emergency phone call without a mobile
phone.
Your off plan may be almost habitable and on a first inspection,
you may have noticed that the telephone sockets have been
installed. You will probably be told by someone connected with
the developers that you just need to arrange with Telefonica to
start using a phone etc. Likewise, do not assume that just
because you have spent in excess of a million euros on your
Spanish property, that a phone line will be part of the package.
Unfortunately, it seems that a phone line is considered an after
sales problem which developers and agents choose not to get
involved with. Buyers are often left minimum of two years
waiting for a phone line. If you are considering buying a resale
on an off plan development and a phone line is important to you,
it might be worth your while to do a bit of homework. Look at
the road in the urbanisation for metal access manholes cast with
'telefonica'. This means that the conduit channels have been
built in when the roads and pavements were constructed. Have a
look for overhead lines nearby, check with the neighbours to
find out if they have a phone and how long they had to wait for
it to be installed.
However, sometimes even this is not enough because the ducting
may have been built but without cables installed. If the
developer has not installed the lines the cost of installing
them may prevent Telfonica from doing so. The lines that have
been installed may not be the right type to use the Internet,
emails etc.
If you can't get a phone line, and need to use the internet, do
not despair as there are ways around the problem. We used GPRS,
a mobile phone data communications system for a while. It is not
a particularly cheap option as you pay for the number of bytes
that are transferred to and from the internet. It's also quite
slow, similar to a dial-up connection. Modern phones can take
advantage of the new 3G network which provides a much quicker
connection, but the network is limited and again, not cheap to
big users.
Unfortunately, we live on an urbanisation in Manilva, Costa del
Sol and it is unlikely that we will have a phone line installed
for a long time yet. However, we are lucky enough to have a
wireless internet connection that allows us to make phone calls
and use the internet. In order to receive this we must be in
line of sight of a transmitter located on Estepona Mountain. I
am told that there is also one on Mijas Mountain. The tariffs
are comparable to Telefonica although the ADSL connection is
slower. We aren't about to complain as we are grateful to have
found a solution. The company that we used is Iberbanda, they
have a website www.iberbanda.es. The best thing about this
company is their customer service, they are so professional.
For those of you that have no phone line problems, be prepared
because it is inevitable that you will have to deal with the
infamous Telefonica at some point. They are normally a total
nightmare to deal with. To have a telephone installed or
reconnected, you can visit your local Telefónica office. You
will need to take your passport or residence permit
(residencia), proof of your address such as a recent electricity
bill, and a copy of your property deed (escritura) or rental
contract. You will pay an installation fee and for the phone
that they provide you with. Making Calls
Spain's country code is 34. Numbers beginning with 9 are
landlines. Numbers beginning with 6 are mobiles.
To make a call from one phone in Spain to another just dial the
number beginning with 9 or 6. There are no town codes as such in
Spain, where each province has its own area code. All numbers
have nine digits and include the area code, which must be
dialled whether you're making a local call or calling Spain from
abroad.
The usual response when answering the telephone is diga or
dígame (meaning hello or literally, 'speak to me'). The caller
may preface what he has to say with oiga (listen). 'I'm trying
to connect you' is le pongo/ le paso con ... A call is una
llamada and to call is llamar.
Do not feel that you are tied to Telfonica. There are other
companies Auna or Jazztel. However, you will still need
Telefonica to install the actual phone line. If you were to
choose Jazztel as your provider and then decide that you want to
change to Auna, Telfonica will charge you a fee to go back to
their service. This is because you cannot switch from one
provider to another without going via a telefonica installation.
Once you are online, use a VOIP phone for free calls. This
allows you to make phone calls over the Internet. We use Skype
(www.skype.com), which enables us to call other Skype users
anywhere in the world for free and any calls to UK landlines for
less than a euro an hour. This is the future.
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