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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.

Scan through reader letters in any Greek IT magazine and more than half of them will be DSL complaints -to be fair these refer to all ISPs. So what alternatives are there? For now I cannot call them alternatives but hopes for the future. Let’s wish that my fingers will not stay crossed for ever… Let’s see by order of widespread availability:

1. 3G wireless connections, already here: given the landline mess, wireless operators start waking up to the opportunity of snatching landline users with data plans. Download speeds are not bad at 3.6 Mbps or 7.2Mbps. Even at lower speeds, the web experience is satisfactory and comparable to ADSL. Despite being a part of the OTE group, to its credit Cosmote offers 7.2Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload at €30/month, at the moment the best speed and price offer. Wind offers 3.6Mbps at €50/month. Both have a data volume limit of 30GB per month, despite being -ironically- advertised as no-limits “On the Go” & “Non-stop” packages respectively.
2. WiMax, not here yet: no firm news about widespread deployment. Given that new technology deployment in Greece lags the rest of the EU by 3 years in the best case, WiMax will for the near future stay an option despite interest by ISPs. Or there is a chance via 4G, but this also needs time…

Notice that both 3G and WiMax are wireless options. This is no coincidence, as the reliability of landline connections is patchy even in city centers. What is also no coincidence is that mobile telephony took off in Greece at phenomenal rates simply because there is no last mile arrangements and no problems with old lines.

Although up to a year ago I had great hopes for WiMax, it now seems that 3G -or 3.5G if you like- is having its big chance to get into data services -as originally planned- in a big way. This and next year the road is going to be paved by new mobile Internet surfing devices, a fact that is going to create great demand for data plans. Have in mind that WiFi access in Greece is extremely limited, so things are becoming even easier for mobile providers.

If I had to write this post using my home connection I would probably run into problems with ADSL disconnections. So you know that my hopes for wireless are not tech greediness but a genuine need for better and more reliable access…