OTE to offer first Greek satellite HD programs

It seems that Nova, the only company offering Greek satellite programs, is finally getting some competition. A few days ago, OTE has applied to the Greek National Council for Radio and Television (NCRTV) for permission to emit satellite programs.

The new venture will use the existing HellaSat platform, but with a small difference. It will be called HellaSat HD and will offer HD programs, a first for Greece. Permission to start is expected in June, the official launch will possibly come in September with the International Exhibition of Thessaloniki. (continued)

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How I upgraded to 24Mbps but ended up with 2Mbps

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Up to the start of January 2008 my 1Mbps ADSL connection with Otenet was working ok, apart from some very scattered disconnections when somebody was calling my home line. It was a minor problem, as I use the home landline only for Internet work and since OTE -the owner of Otenet- is the largest Greek telecoms company that effectively owns all lines in my hometown in Greece I did not dare move to another ISP.

So when OTE advertised 24Mbps speeds in January 2008, I jumped to the opportunity and applied for such a line on the 8th of January 2008. Here is what followed:

• I was informed that the necessary ADSL2+ modem that was necessary was not in stock, so I agreed to wait for its arrival. I asked for my line to be upgraded after the modem’s arrival, since the modem I was then using was not able to handle speeds higher than 8Mbps.
• Guess what! Next Saturday morning -12th of January 2008- my line was upgraded to 24Mbps and I was stuck all weekend without Internet as OTE offices were of course closed and the hotline could not do anything about my modem upgrade. The dirty story is that Otenet does all speed upgrades on Saturdays so that technicians get paid overtime. I am in no position to confirm the validity of this statement.

2 ways to get reliable Internet connections in Greece

At the end of 2007 I wrote about the troubles of Greek broadband users. Since then, we have heard a lot of nice statistics about how Greece has the highest broadband growth rate in the EU and how a lot of Greek homes are coming online. But are statistics the true picture? Far from it…

In the last two months a lot has changed in terms of speeds offered, but not much in terms of quality of service. In February, under pressure from competitors and in order to stop defections, OTEnet-the ISP branch of OTE- decided to offer 24Mbps ADSL+, up from the 8Mbps that was the maximum till then. I was one of the first to apply but do not want to get in the details of the mess that ensued to get a barely working line after three whole weeks!

To cut things short, I ended up with a 2Mbps DSL connection that disconnects many times every hour -should it be called a disconnection?- and cannot be used reliably for many tasks I need to undertake. Maybe I will get in the details of the story above in a separate post, but what is important here is that I am not the only one to have these problems.

Deutsche Telekom to buy 20% in Greek OTE

Deutsche Telekom is going to become a major shareholder of Greek OTE with an almost 20% stake that it is going to buy from Marfin Investment Group (MIG). The transfer will be at €26 per share with a total value of €2.5 billion.

ElectronRun run has already covered the situation with OTE prior to today’s news, here. MIG had been methodically buying OTE shares for some time with the ultimate aim of finally controlling the Greek state telecom company. This alarmed the Greek government as the later always sought strategic partners from within the EU. As an emergency measure, a stake limit of a little less than 20% was set (which is what Deutsche Telekom is now receiving) for any private investor of OTE.

How soon is OTE going to be privatised?

Speculation over the fate of OTE has reached an all time high when earlier this year the Greek government sought startegic partners in an effort to make the organisation more competitive. An expensive early pension plan for staff failed to attract a large investor and has not reduced the risk of falling behind in terms of infrastructure and service quality against similar European companies. The current position of OTE could be described as extremely critical for its future. The stock market euphoria of the end of the nineties and the need for more cash of the Greek government to meet EU targets of this decade have brought repetitive sales of government packages. The current Greek government holding to OTE is a currently low 28%.

The troubles of Greek broadband users

We have already written about the difficult road of introduction of wireless internet to the masses. Amazingly, some countries have not even resolved wired access problems and Greece is unfortunately one of those places. To start with, ADSL2+ is the best connection tech available and is marketed as the solution to all our problems. But is it like that? Not quite… The largest part of the country gets 2 Mbps maximum and the only provider is OTE, the national telecoms company. Some areas get 4 or 8 Mbps but for only parts of the country, in other words Athens and Thessaloniki, Athens and Thessaloniki & of course Athens and Thessaloniki. You want a connection from another supplier? Sure! But you have to pay them the monthly ISP charges and OTE the line lease charges. But the best part you have not heard yet! In the case that you have a problem, the ISP blames OTE and OTE blames the ISP. Sounds funny? Well it isn’t, simply because when you call any company’s hotline you might have to wait for hours (it is not a joke, it happens all the time) and then the service you get might be very very far from what a customer would expect.

The biggest complaint of existing customers is that of low download speeds. My connection of 512 Mbps was upgraded for free to 1 Mbps last year, but for the largest part of the day I get speeds of my old 512 Mbps or even slower! What’s the whole point of promising speeds that cannot be offered? Moreover, what’s the point of paying for speeds you only get between midnight and 8 am? Open any computer magazine and it will be full of ISP adds offering 2-play, 3-play and speeds up to 24 Mbps. These only apply to private networks which currently exist guess where… Athens, Thessaloniki and hopefully soon in other places too…

New TBN network linking southeast and central/western Europe

The new fiberoptic TBN network (TransBalkan Network) of Oteglobe is now ready and links the Balkans to Central and Western Europe. It runs from Greece all the way to Frankfurt in Germany via Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. Oteglobe is a subsidiary of OTE, the Greek state telecom company. Apart from the obvious crucial support of OTE’s investments in Bulgaria and Romania, TBN is an alternative 100% land based route to Oteglobe’s GWEN network linking Greece to Western Europe via Italy. The combination of TBN and GWEN forms a complete backbone network of Southeast Europe open to internet and telecom customers that require a link between Western Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East. For more information you can refer directly to the Oteglobe site or use Google translate to convert the article here.