Alice or Tiscali?

07/07/2009 - 13:39

I've just moved to Carassai and until I get a landline I am having to use a dongle to get online. Reception is awful, no 3G just weak GPRS - very slow, not strong enough for SKYPE or BBC iplayer for radio. When i get my landline which hopefully will be soon - which provider do i go for - Alice 7 or Tiscali 8? Anyone have any experience in this area as to the better provider/reception? Tiscali seems to be faster but as a technophobe I don't know which to choose. All help appreciated.Also, for interest - I'm the newcomer mentioned by Karen in her mail re Hertz breakdown - pleased to be here, still madly unpacking etc and waiting for residents permit so I can get my own car.

Topic

Technology

Location

Marche

Comment

Definitely Alice. It is impossible to speak to a real person at Tiscali! Telecom Italia may have their problems but at leats you can speak to someone

when we had internet installed we created everything with the Tiscali server including all our addresses etc.when we found out that our local comune had broadband we immediately called Telecom.people were sent round who made it very clear that if we wanted broadband it would have to be Alice we didn't have any problems with that but asked the technician to put the settings on Tiscali so we have a contract with Alice but use Tiscali as our server.this does not procure any extra costs for us it also avoided having to change all our email references.As far as i'm aware if you check out our municipality under Tiscali to see if you can have broadband it still appears you can't(?).there is another aspect to all this IF anything went wrong in a big way only telecom have the infrastructure to deal with it ....it's a bit like ENEL stick to the devil you know ,tiscali can offer,for example no on the ground assistance in this area ,it's probably different in large cities but here thats what you get.On the other hand broadband coverage in italy is in fact more complete than in the UK and i know of some fairly large towns in the south west of englandthat don't even have it yet. so we feel rather lucky to live in such a relatively remote position and have broadband.

We have Alice via Telecom, and I've found their service exceptional. Whenever I've had a problem I get superb service from their operative over the phone (once it was Christmas Eve and we were looking forward to Skype-ing relatives in UK), and when I've needed a house call the guy arrived within the day and refused to leave until the problem was sorted. He was always polite; efficient, and has the patience to explain all that he was doing. That will do for me.

Hi HazyI need broadband for work and where I live there is only one option for a landline connection for braodband which is Alice. This was only introduced last year and was a godsend as we only had ISDN before that which was so slow that you clicked a link and went to make a cup of tea while the page loaded.The Alice broadband speed isn't too bad - an average speed test for my home connection shows that it downloads at 0.65 MB/sec from a server in Rome with a ping of 78ms - I know this is a bit too techie but in real world terms means it takes 1 minute to download an MP3 file of 5MB. This is still an ideal as usually you will be downloading web pages from servers in UK or further away but it's definately usable.The Alice broadband is a bit tempremental (it went down this week for 24hours and a couple of months ago it was down for a week) I went out and bought a mobile connection as a back up. It costs 20 Euros per month for 100 hours and the connection is definately faster than my landline but I have a good signal where I am. The downside is that the 100 hours limit is not enough so I use my landline mostly and switch to mobile when I get frustrated and need a bit more speed.I'm afraid I don;t have any experience with Tiscali but as Sebastiano says I feel privaliged to actually have broadband and am overall happy to have Alice here - there are lots of people where I live who can't get it because there is a waiting list with a very long wait (some people have been on the list for a year and still not got a connection yet)Kevan

Since today I am on a Fastweb connection. I have pestered Telecom / Alice for 2 years to get broadband, but they said it was not availbale for me, despite the fact that our next door neighbours have it with Alice. Finally they conceded they could change my line and phone number, but it would cost me €200!. So not only would I have the inconvenience of telling everyone about my new number, I would also have to pay for it.Fastweb sorted the problem, also with the change of number, but for free. Also I have most of my landline phone calls for free now and in my quite limited experience I have actually spoken to real people on the phone. So far so good. Oh and the download speed is 2.76kb, not sure what it means, but it's infinitely faster than before.

Hi,really interested in your reply as for the second time the Telecom man has not turned up to connect my landline. I am new to Italy, don't speak the language but have a lovely lady upstairs who acts for me. She called Telecom re non appearance and was told that Alice does not cover my area - I have just bought an apartment in Carassai. I am desperate for broadband as the signal is so weak here i cannot get BBC iPlayer for Radio 4 etc and what I can get is very slow.What is Fastweb, never heard of it.? Costs?Any info re Sky in Le Marche?. Will also post on the main forum but really appreciate any help you can give me.Thanks!hazy

www.fastweb.it. Not in English though. I was just phoned by them and was receptive to change, because I've had such bad experience with Telecom. People told me to be wary, but surely it couldn't get any worse. I have a fixed €45 a month (€16.99 for the first 3 on promo) and get a fast broadband connection, unlimited calls to Italian landlines and 1000 minutes free abroad to all of Europe and North America. So as far as I can see only calls to mobiles will be charged unless I call deaf Auntie Ellie in Sidney for a day. Haven't had a bill yet, but asked the question several times. So fingers crossed.

Thanks so much for this info. I will get my friendly italian speaking friend to look into this. One major question though - does fastweb support Skype? I do need it to speak to family and friends especially as my daughter has just succumbed to Swine Flu - she does not appreciate me calling her Miss Piggy! How is fastweb set up - dish, cable , what? As you can gather I am a technophobe!

I'm not very technical either, I don't even know what skype is, but as for the set up it goes trough a regular phone line which they apparently rent off Telecom. How they manage to be cheaper than Telecom beats me, but there you are.

We have Alice via telecom and it works fine. The modem is an elegant number which is complete with wi-fi and if it goes wrong you take it to a local agent and they give you a new one without fuss. Some setting up to do so reasonable Italian helps and radio 4 is very good . Occasionally the server is down but not very often.