The Internet in Greece

Maybe the Greeks care more about enjoying the life, the nature, the sun, the beach, the sea, their small villages, their food, in person interactions with other human beings than being always connected and worrying which Netflix series should they consume next. Maybe they enjoying the real life too much than the virtual one.

That's the impression I've got when I traveled to Greece and I've seen far less Greeks with their noses stuck in their mobile phones than tourists.

It's a shameless plug, but on topic, so I'll go for it... :)

Cloudflare Radar has a section on Internet quality that can show graphs per country and also at the ASN level. Here's what it shows for Greece:

https://radar.cloudflare.com/quality/gr

Yes, the internet speeds in Greece are terrible and pricing looks inversely proportional. It's as if people don't really care about technology at all.

I get all the island life and stuff, but really, trying to do real remote work from there in interactive terminals... not fun at all.

Every summer without failure Vodafone's network drops the ball, right around the time we need it the most. They'll offer like unlimited data on you phone till it gets fixed or something like that. Last summer they took close to 40 days to get it fixed in our area.

This summer, the first day we noticed the connection getting spotty we bit the bullet and got a Starlink. Smooth sailing ever since, like holy shit what an upgrade. Chatting a little more with a client that does various installations in tourist places, hotels and stuff, he told he's been basically setting up Starlinks everywhere for the past 6 months or so.

As with everything in the greek economy the problem is lack of competition. There's too much coordination in price increases, and too little investment from those companies. They all share the basic infrastructure that is set by OTE SA (the old state-owned telecommunications company)

Same goes for banking, which is exorbitantly expensive and anticompetitive (aided by state laws that make banking services mandatory for businesses).

Unless the economy opens up to foreign compeition which will drive prices down and services up, it will remain a soviet-like small state

When I finally got to Lyon at a random Airbnb my iCloud backups started catching up with gusto.

It reminded me of all the restaurant toilets in Athens that instructed you to throw your used toilet paper in the trash and not down the antiquated drainpipes. No blame no shame. It is what it is in one of the oldest cities.

Tokyo used to be like this too in 2014.

Starlink must be making a killing in places like this.

It's pretty decent, actually... if you use Starlink. At least in Chalkidiki, it's terrible! There's no 5G anywhere, not even 4G in most places. Wired internet is a complete joke.

Meanwhile, it's good, because you can really rest and enjoy Greece! Yeah, if you forgot, you can post the photos and videos later!

Looks like the average connection is somewhere between 10 and 30 Mbps?

Seems enough for browsing the internet, online banking, emails, some social media, and watching videos in standard definition.

That sounds like enough for the average person. :)

%salesquota.starlink.select(c=> c.country.name =="greece" )%

Starlink terminals are a great indicator for low trust societies

I am married to a Greek and spend part of my year working from a very rural Greek village in the mountains (more goats than people). I also have travelled a fair bit around Greece, e.g. North South, East and west, from Crete to Thessaloniki, and from Corfu to Skiathos.

My experience is pretty positive overall. Internet speeds are fairly fast, not exceptional and not cheap, but widely available. The interesting thing with the internet is how there can be a certain envy when it comes to internet speed, both with individuals and between countries. But even as someone who has a >1Gb internet connection in the UK, I don't have a big problem changing to slower speeds in Greece. Ultimately, when you have good broadband coverage, there's a certain law of diminishing returns to increasing the speed. I totally don't need 1Gbps speeds, I do fine with Pappous' ~45Mbps VDSL and actually the house we use when we visit has only a 15Mbps link to my father in law's house. My wife and I work from there, and when the internet works, it's just enough. It's too easy for me to say "ah, but you don't need gigabit" but lets also be pragmatic and ask if Greeks all need superfast broadband? Probably not.

I do have problems with the broadband reliability in the mountains of Greece, or rather my father in law does, we know there's a bad line-card but getting OTE to permanently sort it out and not just reboot the line-card when we complain is annoying. One day they'll actually fix the line card and we'll get reliable VDSL, again, in a village with more goats than people.

One thing that annoys me more than anything is that the 5G tariffs could definitely be more competitive. Instead of borrowing my FIL's broadband using a questionable WiFi link, I'd like broadband. Getting a VDSL connection for a holiday home is relatively expensive and for some ridiculous reason, OTE don't want to run the cable anyway. So, 5G? Except I want continuous connectivity through the year, but when we're there I want a lot of data just for a month at a time. Nope, all or nothing. And the PAYG tariffs don't accumulate allowances each month, so I can't get a 5GB tariff, save up the GB allowance to use at Easter/Summer/Christmas/etc). The PAYG tariffs are weirdly now just subscriptions without an annual commitment and flexible payment options.

We looked at Starlink, but again, as this is a holiday home but one which is connected, I don't want to pay full-rate all the time, but there's not a way of turning the connection down, to say 4Mbps, when you don't want full service. Same as the incumbent broadband providers, they need to recognise that a holiday home is now an IoT home and provide something more than on/off provisions.

One day I might like to work on infrastructure in Greece, perhaps I'll get a job there one day or start a business there one day.

I am going to write it from my regulated italian 10gbit/s ftth for 25 euros p/m.

Or from my 5G unlimited data for 9 euros p/m plan.

The market will balance itself and leaving it free is always better, go neoliberalism!

As a regular tourist visiting Greece the slow internet in tourist areas is "a feature, not a bug" for me. It allows me to stay connected, download during the night some podcast shows and stream music. Video is painfully slow which motivates me to hang out with people or read books. Lovely.