...currently discussing the US presidential election campaign until Inauguration Day.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Internet in Buenos Aires
An internet micro-outage (less than 10 minutes) at exactly at 12:45 today that I experienced in the middle of a call to Yanquilandia got me to thinkin' about anybody in a similar situation.
How are youse guys doin' on your internet connection?
God knows, we residents here are fortunate in terms of the web. This place must truly be one of the great good places for internet in the world. But getting your home-rig together has been a problem for some of us. I hope that we might be able to share tips here that could cut down on the headaches and surprises.
Personally, I run a Cablevision/Fibertel cablemodem setup that costs me:
$145.28 ARG
-$14.27 ARG free trial/2.5 mega that you see on all the billboards around town.
-$46.10 ARG because I'm a Cablevisión customer
+$ 3.80 ARG for 5 mega of extra storage...for which I think I'm billed every 2 months.
That's a grand total of $107.34 argentine per month.
I run all that through a VOIP gizmo that allows me a Chicago areacode/tel# for a normal "Ma Bell type" deskphone...into a wireless router for two computers.
Whaddya tink? What are you using?
What's your rig? Are you happy? Got any stories to tell? How hard was it to decide on a provider or were you locked in by what was available in your barrio?
Was installation a nightmare or a was it seamless?
Did you do a cost-analysis or did you just grab something without much thought?
Did you consider working/playing out of a cybercafe across the street or 'round the corner?
How's your speed? How do you measure it (meter or just plain satisfaction)?
Have you heard much about the efforts to turn BsAs into one big wireless hotspot? Are you interested in that?
Like I said, we should share such knowledge to wise-up ourselves and save some others headaches.
Gimme gimme gimme,
Mike
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5 comments:
That is a lot of money, considering the wages down there if one lives as a regular joe argentine. Most people I know seem to bring in 800-1200 pesos.
Yeah, you're right on the money...on the money, tanguita mia.
A year or two ago I heard the figure of $15,000 ARG is the average salary in Cap Fed. Coincidently, that was also the poverty line.
If there's a better/more expensive setup...I'm glad I don't know about it.
It's actually more expensive than that: I only get that price because I get my cable TV from the same company.
Super color scheme, I like it! Keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing this wonderful site with us.
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I say briefly: Best! Useful information. Good job guys.
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Had to drop you a line, via the Argentine Metropolis and Miss Tango in Her Eyes...
I think I've got the exact same Banda Ancha here in Barracks next door to La Boca (minus the Ma Bell part - I'm using skype for that). And surprisingly it almost always works quite well!
On the salary topic, I know two Portenos that work in call centers, one for Sony the other for Motorola - tech support in english for angry yanquis that get hostile when their gadgets break... so those two mega-giants save money and keep the slavery tradition alive by passing the calls here, to BA. The hourly salary you ask? $5.00AR (pesos) per hour. But the real tragedy is that they only get paid when they are actually on a call... when they hang up, the clock stops ticking. Oh imperialism is alive indeed. That's something I've been meaning to blog about for sometime, maybe this week.
goyo
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