Chile Forum

Wow, dear all, thanks to all your replies and suggestions ....I HAVE MADE IT!!!! Joehoe!
Without having to go through VTR (useless attempts).
Thank you very much,
Suzanne!

Claro i am told is the only internet company that does prepago with a device that connects to your laptop.
its a one off payment for the "Doggle" as they call it in u.k. of 69900peso.Then you buy a normal topup stratch card (per month)
,the same as recharging your mobile.The one month unlimited download fee is 34990ps for 30 days.This is expensive but an option if you cant cant get a connection through your landlord.
The trouble is...no one can tell me if you can use skype.I had a similar setup in South Africa and skype was hit and miss each day.The skype website gives the limit kb that it needs to function with phone calls but i have found that it needs more.
Anybody have any experience with wireless internet setups in Chile?

VTR just a few days ago announced to double the connection speed of their users. The campaign ad is here: http://vtr.com/go/go.php
For those living here in Chile, if you recall, everytime we've seen those "speed doubling" waves in the recent past, it's like a chain reaction and Telefónica as the large ISP it is couldn't be behind, so they announced that they'll be doubling their users speed too: http://www.lun.com/modulos/catalogo/pag ... talla=1260
(although they still fail at math, see the ad xD... of course it is understandable as the service is just normal ADSL)

Since Telefónica purchased more bandwidth they started to promote that Banda Ancha 2.0 thingy, promoting p2p and the like too, because they don't do any traffic shaping (since they upgraded, of course). I don't have Telefónica but since the upgrade I've seen better opinions floating in forums, and the same positive experience from some friends. I think with this new measure, problems may arise again... but, who knows.

Let's just hope they provision more bandwidth through international backbones, and work on latency as well as raw bandwidth.

Damn, no other ISP has made an announcement yet... (Telsur! I'm pointing at you!)

they normally need to start loosing a few clients first because they are not happy with the speed. I think a lot of users are already not touching everything they have. Give it 6 months. telsur will likly be the last. telefonica first.

I have read in the past week or so about massive DNS problems with VTR. The problem appears to plague LInux and Mac users and not Windows.

Other than using OpenDNS and other similar hacks, here is one solution to the problem:

http://www.tuxpan.cl/fcatrin/es/

I am heavily reliant on the internet and phone service. Took a long list and boiled it down to 3 countries into which believe I will relocate. Chile is one of them. As such, issue of ISP quality and connections are critical to me. I note that little new info has been posted for months to this forum. My questions are:

1. Any new general updates on Chilean ISP services, quality and personal experiences from those previously posting?
2. If I relocate to Chile, it will either be Santiago or Vina del Mar (sorry for the technical misspelling of "Vina"). Any notable difference between the quality of ISPs and Internet connections in Santiago and VdM?
3. Who are the top 2 or 3 ISPs in each area?
4. Overall, I sense that Internet service is adequate in Chile, with a diverse set of challenges depending on region and local ISPs. I am from the United States, where similar problems can also exist (personally, I have been spoiled by always living in major cities - currently, Chicago). However, are the overall problems with ISPs in Chile something that "throwing money at it" will help the problem go away, or is it a matter of system capacity and technical competence, where even wheel-barrels full of gold and bending over for a proctology exam won't resolve it? I am thinking "fibre optic options", or knowing someone's cousin's best friend, who happens to moonlight in setting up cable / Internet connections, because he actually knows what he is doing? I've done business internationally for 26 years...I know how things get done in general, but can anything be done to get a first world Internet connection in Chile, if one is willing to spend the extra dollar or go the extra mile?

Any help is appreciated. I note that "admin" seems to have the closest needs/capacity issues that I do, so a reply from him would sure be helpful.

Gtd Manquehue started rolling out FTTH in a few Santiago neighborhoods last year. They have no immediate plans for Viña (I asked them a couple days ago). Apart from that, it's pretty much a duopoly between VTR (cable) and Telefonica (DSL). The other DSL providers are actually reselling Telefonica Megavia for the most part. See the wiki for more details (I last updated it a few months ago). I've played just a little bit with Claro 3G, that was not entirely convincing. Entel might work better but I wouldn't count 3G as real broadband anyway.

I don't see fiber or significantly faster dsl/cable rolled out in Viña for the next several years, my guess is they feel their 8Mbps/550Kbps is hot stuff already (well it is if you compare to Bolivia, or what Chile had 2/3 years ago). Anyway, I feel the bottleneck is likely to move upstream at the backbone level, given Chile is connected to the larger internet only through just a few connections, and I don't know that these are getting massive upgrades. I might be wrong though.

For the last month or so VTR has been very flaky for us, with our cable modem rebooting at random. You can "throw money" at the problem to some extent by going dual wan like the Admin or myself are doing. I would advise strongly against working using just single residential ISP anywhere, especially here in Chile.

No matter what you do, you'll get higher latency than in the US, so things like streaming video won't feel entirely "first world." It's fine for regular business web/email/VOIP. "Consumer" internet use is actually more frustrating (e.g. Hulu doesn't work outside the US and video streaming in general can be a bit choppy).

Thanks. Appreciate the prompt reply and comments.

otravers,

Checked the Gtd Manquehue website. Thanks for the heads up. Totally dropped the ball and was not aware that anyone was offering residential FTTH service, even in a limited capacity, anywhere in Chile. Unfortunately, I need a RUT # to fill out an online inquiry as to which neighborhoods in Santiago have FTTH service available. Do you (or anyone) have any info as to which neighborhoods are serviced by FTTH? I already have a point of contact for an exec with the company, so I am only asking if someone has the info readily handy. Otherwise, I will give them a call in a few days and talk to them directly.

Yea, telefonica del sur in Temuco has been good up to a few months ago and then I noticed they switched to Telmex as their upstream provider and things have gone downhill since then. Telefonica has been fairly stable and predictable the last few months.

Yea, latency is an issue. typical ping time to the states is about 168 ms to 200 ms, as apposed to ping time from my telefonica dsl connection at home to my tel sur connection at our office in downtown Temuco of about 40 to 50 ms. The ping time to the states makes it just barely usable for say doing things that are fairly real time dependent such as playing video games or streaming movies. Streaming video is normally not a problem, except at high demand hours such as right around 4-6 pm or so when everyone is using the internet.