From 100 Mb to 3

I needed to get myself an Internet connection.

Now Spain isn't exactly the third world. On the telly the big phone operators like ONO and Jazztel are offering fibre connections of up to 100Mb. La Union is small but it is a town, or at least a large village, not some rural hamlet, so I didn't expect any problem in getting a decent deal on a connection. I thought there may even be fibre.

Using a combination of my mobile phone and borrowed internet connections I had a look around the suppliers. ONO looked good but when it came down to it they have neither fibre nor ADSL to my new building. The Jazztel website seemed determined to cause me grief - it has those pages that lose all the details if you want to change something and annoying popups with offers to get someone to phone you. They didn't have coverage either. One of my work colleagues suggested a small local operator but it was the same story for La Union. They suggested another local firm who bragged of offering a breathtaking 3Mb without being correspondingly cheap.

My choices were rapidly disappearing. In Culebrón, until recently, the only people who could offer internet to such a forgotten backwater were the old state monopoly people. Although they've never treated us badly their offer isn't generally up to the opposition and I had held off looking at them. At least they could, according to their pathetic website,  supply a line. Their worst online offer was 10Mb.

After ages of fighting their website I bit the bullet and phoned a sales rep. I started with my please be gentle with me plea regarding the language and as per normal she forgot after the first sentence. As usual the sound quality  between the rep's headset and my mobile was appalling but, eventually, and at 8Mb for 35€ a month, I said yes.

The tricky bit came next; the voice contract. Blah blah blah - is that correct? she said. All correct I replied.

Who knows? I  may well have swapped Eddie the cat for a bit of telecoms kit.