ADSL in Sant Cugat

When we moved here, we did the normal thing and got the Telefonica ADSL connection. Unfortunately due to various factors, the best we could get was 3 megabits (or megas as they call them here).

Since then, I've invested quite a bit of time trying to find faster alternatives (no luck so far). Here are the results:

• Sant Cugat has ONE ADSL Telefonica exchange, located near the monastery. The length of the wire from the exchange to your house will limit your maximum speed:
  
  
  
• All ADSL providers use the same wires and switching station (and they also use Telefonica technicians to set up the connection).
  
• Be extra nice to your Telefonica technician. They have amazing powers that may require a little bit of monatery encouragement.
  
• I wasted 80 euros on JazzTel, who absolutely promised me that they would be able to get 20 megabits (those smooth talking Argentinians... should have suspected something). I was so excited until I looked at my router and saw that I was still getting 3 megabits. I phoned them to complain and they just said "Well, we said up to 20 megas, so you can't complain."
  
• The normal Telefonica router absolutely sucks. Complain and get them to send you a better one.
  
• Telefonica was going to deploy a trial Fibre-To-The-Home in Sant Cugat, but never got around to deploying it due to the crisis. Their web site thinks that they actually deployed it, but it lies.
  
• Your house may have bad wiring that limits your connection speed. If you can, go to your neighbor's house and try to find out their line attenuation. If it is significantly better than yours (the lower the better), then you probably have bad wiring.