I’ve had enough of this; PSTN is so not for this age. Especially when one has gotten used to the speed normal European people expect. For a year and a half now I’ve been using 2mb or 4mb aDSL lines. With the exception of very large files (over 512MB) internet usage is smooth and in tune with today’s trends of web publishing, communication and comfort. Flash files are being used more and more as speeds are being slowly but steadily increased, friends send larger and larger files through the email (last night I got a 6MB video in the email but the 2-3MB ppt file is not uncommon), and all that feels OK when I’m in UK.

Humans are creatures of habit, so when I first logged on the internet from Greece with my measly 56k USRobotics modem (the term measly is meant for the 56k, not for the USRobotics firm) and I try to see if my favourite web pages have any updates I was shocked! Appalled! Cold sweat started forming on the mere thought that I had to work at 4k/sec. How? I’m downloading the Java SDK 1.4.2 right now to do some work for the university. The only thing I’m going to say is that it is 54.7MB. And I need to get Textpad. And I need to log in CISCO net academy and read for my CCNA. And I have to take their online tests (here come the sweats again)!

Suddenly I start to appreciate the speed I have been provided by the Brits. But of course there is the price difference. For 4mb line I pay £29.99 per month. I stay on as long as I like and I don’t pay anything more. So how much should I pay for a 56k connection that is using my phone line and charging me in the process?

Never mind that question, right now in Greece people can get a 512 or 384 aDSL line. How much should people pay for those connections? Unless you are Greek you will not even imagine the answer: 384 aDSL no limits is at £21.65. So, after a little math, 384Kb by £21.65, Greeks get 17,73Kb per British Pound, while people in the UK get 133,38Kb per British Pound. In other words, Brits get 7.5 times more speed for the same money than Greeks do.

Of course, those that know understand that lower speed packages cost more per Kb of speed. But that is only as far as monthly fees go. Because all the rest are ISDN and PSTN (yes, in Greece we only have PSTN, ISDN and aDSL – excluding satellite) and those come with phone call charges. So what you pay depends on how much you use it.

Some years ago some nice men decided to initiate the EPAK number (Joined Panhellenic Calling Number). That was a special number starting with prefix 8962 that every ISP had. After the prefix each ISP had his own number to form the 10-digit number that dial-up user would call. The reason for that was to have special pricing for that class of numbers, since only ISP modems would be assigned to those numbers, thus lowering the costs of staying online. The reduction with EPAK was substantial.

And here is the real kick-in-the-gut! Recently, our national telephony carrier called OTE (the equivalent of British Telecom for Greece) which is solely responsible for pricing for ALL phone calls since he is leasing the lines to every other telephony company (with a regulatory organ called EETT pretty much doing the least it can) decided to INCREASE the costs of EPAK and also to CANCEL the night-time zone. Those increases come as high as 70% for the daytime period 08:00 – 22:00 and 240% for the night. The reasons OTE gave for this move were varied, including the need to update the service since EPAK was always provided at cost, that they only did this after other means of internet access were provided and that “it supports the spread of broadband internet” since “85% of internet users would benefit from switching to some other form of internet access” (namely aDSL as everything else uses EPAK).

After everyone stopped laughing at this bad joke, the screaming started. The government declared unable to interfere as OTE has a private company status, and EETT tried to talk about it. Finally after every magazine and newspaper and all the emails and telephones, OTE conceded to not go through with this YET! OTE stated that the plan is solid, justified and reasonable and instead of launching it right away and in full effect it will examine means of implementing steps that will lead to this plan eventually. So nothing changed really…

The figures for this plan are these:
56k users pay the same as a 384 aDSL user if they stay online for 1h and 7m every day.
56k users staying online for only 1h and 7m can download 588,867 MB in a month if they download all the time at 5k/sec.
386 aDSL users can download 98,87 GB in a month at full speed of 40k/sec staying online 30 days continuously. Both pay the same money!

Pricing is crazy, OTE is crazy and this move is nothing but a financial blackmail.