Why? Because Part of Alta de Lisboa has forever been plugged into one of Portugal Telecom's remote exchanges in a weak attempt to keep us from using the competition.

The competition has tried to fight back in the form of ARTelecom (which was pretty shoddy for me as it didn't work most of the time) and Netcabo and various mobile operators. They are all too expensive or not reliable enough.

Now we are promised something new...

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="456" caption="CLIX FIBRA"][/caption]
I could not believe it when a couple of weeks ago I asked some workers what they were doing and they said they were installing Fibre Optics.....

Well folks it's here (or will be in about two weeks

It's a shame the clix website still doesn't work (though it will surely work one day so you can check it out here: Clix Fibra )
I have signed up and am ready for download speeds something like this:

 
Alta looks once more (in more ways than one - but more on that later) to be pioneering. There are three areas in Portugal with this service at the outset (or so the salesman told me ... do we believe telecommunications salespeople???)... Somewhere in Porto, Expo and Alta :-)

The situation is scandalous.

The excuse is that Alta de Lisboa is connected to a remote exchange.

The only way to get Internet and TV is through TV Cabo (one of PT's subsidiaries) as they say we are too far from the local exchange.

(I should give a brief mention of Artelecom which also provides services but I have had VERY bad experiences with this company - see end of post)

Fortunately we are able to access the phones of Mobile operators who offer very competitive deals (they undercut prices by almost 90%). However there is no way to access the Internet.

View Map

On this map, one is able to see how ridiculous this situation is... we are only 5km from Portugal Telecom's Headquarters in the heart of the country. There are small villages all over the remote countryside that have better connection options than us.
Now I believe this may have been a real problem when Alta was a brand new urbanization, however there are areas in Alta which are nearing 10 years old.

Here is a brief run down of services on offer ( for the sort of thing I want):
Portugal Telecom - Telephone only (Approx 16€ monthly) + phone calls Total = €16 (no tv or internet)
TV Cabo TV, Internet and Telephone : (40 Channels TV, 8Mbs and free phone calls to landlines) 22€ + 35€ + € 10 = €67 (currently on promotion for limited time at €45 and 12mbs)
Artelcom TV, Internet and Telephone (approx 40 channels, 5Mbs and expensive phone calls) = €46 (note new technology not proven to be very stable)
Vodafone casa phone only (free calls to landlines and cheap mobile calls) €10
Optimus Home phone only (expensive phone calls)

Now if the area was open to more operators we would also have the following options:
Clix TV Internet and telephone (21 channels, 12 Mbs and free phone calls to landlines at night ) = €30
Clix TV Internet and telephone (21 channels, 24MbS and free phone calls to landlines Europe (all day) = €40
Vodafone Adsl Telphone and Internet (24Mbs and free landine calls (all day) = €40 (currently on promotion for €10)

So as you can see, Residents of Alta de Lisboa are being cheated into paying the higher PT tax.
What is alittle frightening is the websites will tell you that can install any of these services, however on application you are told it is not possible.
Let's hope Anacom are aware of this situation and haven't been bought by PT to keep quiet about it.
My next move is to launch an official complaint to PT and Anacom.
I'll keep you posted with the outcome.

My Artelcom Nightmare
I will keep this brief but any resident reading about this situation and thinking about new phones should know some of what is going on out there:
We asked for the service being glad to be free of the PT tax.
Sadly it never worked properly: the speeds were well below those advertised, The channels offered by the salesman never came (remember this if a salesman tells you "oh yes we are getting that channel soon" or for that matter if you receive a letter with your bill mentioning a new tv channel.) and the connection fell whenever it rained.
So I complained and complained and complained... no solution was offered.
On day an Artelcom sales person said I ought to threaten to switch off the service and then they would fix it.
So I tried out this method... sure enough, they got straight back in contact with me and sent their technician round to my house at 7pm the next day or was it 8 or 9 or 10...no, I remember now it was at midnight when the technician decided to finally fix our situation.
So the speed was fixed, they lent me a new modem and said I should have received it much earlier (it's amazing how much technicians and sales people say to you, to the detriment of their comany, when they are trying to make things better).
Unfortunately the stability was never fixed.
During all this time I was in contact with my account manager, who convinced me that they would solve the problem, otherwise I could quit without paying any extra fee.
Well the situation was not resolved and I quit.
The following month I received a bill for the services I would never use due to the company's incompetence.
This was a while ago.
I still get phone calls asking for the money.
You can bet your socks I am not going to pay.