Cutting Edge Technology: BPL in RO
Exciting stirii for the digirati. Now, nod your head a few times and follow along nice as you please.
The adoption rate for internet services in Romania has been booming for a couple years now. I remember in May of 2004, I had the distinct impression the IT market was just passing out of the lukewarm stage and headed into a simmer. Internet cafes were everywhere, with young people slapdashedly hammering away on Pentium II boxes running Windows 95 in the dark and smokefilled chambers. If I recall correctly, of the several friends I made on that trip, I believe only one of them actually owned his own computer. And, by golly, he had himself a dial-up connection, too!
Not terribly impressive, I’m afraid, but it felt like the pot was simmering. I returned to Romania in October of 2004 to find my crystal ball was not so cloudy. Sure, the ubiquitous net cafes were still billowing smoke signals and propping up the tobacco industry, but I noticed that now a couple of friends had computers. And they were going to get RDS broadband. I even noticed a couple new computer stores popping up.
Fastforward to September 2005, I found nearly all my friends now had a computer at home with some sort of internet connection. Those who were still on dial-up were migrating to an RDS cable network. The simmer was rising and a couple large bubbles were forming.
Yessir, the heat has certainly been on.
Let’s take a brief moment to qualify this RDS thing. You see, to the typical Romanian internet service buyer, RDS is teh h0tness. It zooms, it zings, and it even has more cowbell. But for my American friends, let’s get realistic. Saying the local cable network is fast is a pretty relative thing. Remember the 56K modem wars? Yeah, everyone was picking sides between US Robotics and Lucent… but no matter which you chose, you really felt like you were flying right off the planet compared to your neighbor’s measily 28K modem. And, lordy, if you were lucky enough to have money falling out of your pocket, you might even be able to afford a 64K ISDN line. 128K dual-line ISDN was out of the reach of all but millionaires, it seemed.
Am I reaching you? Good, I didn’t want to slap you across the face.
That’s what we’re talking about here. The Romanian typical computer has upgraded to a Pentium III running Windows XP. Well, heh, we shouldn’t call that running. It’s much more like crawling. Through molasses. In winter. Still, it beats the ol’ II & 95 combo. And they’re upgrading from the roller-blade speeds of dial-up connections to windblown look of whizzing past the bladers on a teeth-shattering, dizzying moped called RDS cable. I tell ya, those crazy kids!
So, what is it? Well, you know how even the poorest of trailer trash has to have their DirectTV sat dish superglued to the mobile homes of semi-rural America? Yeah, you guessed it. No matter how poor a Romanian might be, she still wants her telenovelas. So, they’ll happily starve themselves in order to get a cable TV connection in the house. They can watch cheap B movies from America and cruddy also-ran shows from other countries with inaccurate subtitles. They also get the local yokel version of Lawrence Welk: some dweeb stands on stage wearing a costume from 300 years ago lipsyncing to a worn out record playing some ancient folk song while the 15 elderly viewers probably stare at the idiot box in a comatose state.
The same miracle of modern technology that puts grandma to sleep or helps tati forget his long-day breathing in fumes at the local chemical factory also brings a little magic to the spinning propeller on junior’s beanie cap. Yessir, you get yourself a little cable internet connection. And since junior has a job selling cigarettes at a curbside shanty, but doesn’t pay any rent at his parents’ 2 room apartment, he can buy himself a machine from the local depozit de calculatoare.
Now, he’s done got himself on teh intarweb a-using that there mah-sheen. I know what you’re thinking. It’s a moped at 128K and it costs…. mmm, I think 25 or 30 euro per month. The speed to the internet is sufficient for web browsing and email, but is fairly anemic for games and absolutely impotent for any kind of music or movies. Interestingly, the RDSlink system has an interesting feature where the local loop speeds are around 3Mbps. That means you can swap movies with your buddy across town in just a few hours. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that RDS is severely restricting access outside the local network in order to save their own upstream broadband costs while extracting every possible nickel from subscribers.
But, what other options have you got? That’s the mentality of many Romanian internet service buyers, following one another around like a flock of sheep.
The national telephone monopoly offers an alternative service where you get a standard DSL connection with 1Mbps download speed for about 45 euro. The fastest you can get is a new service which has only been on the market around six months or so. It’s 2Mbps for about 100 euro per month. It’s a bit pricey but that starts to approach the American style broadband so you can access the latest and greatest interactive content of the vast web, without being caged into a local pirate feed. I’m a sucker for good internet radio stations, so I’ll let you decide whether or not I have dial-up.
Enter: Competition and Innovation!
Boy howdy, it’s bursting into a full on boil now, kids. The pace of change must be disorienting for the natives, but from my vantage point Romania is just playing catch up. And they’re just about to do exactly that. It won’t be more than a year or two and DSL speeds should surpass the laggardly United States and become more similar to the rest of Europe, where you can get 8Mbps for 18 euro in Portugal or 12Mbps for 40 euro in Sweden. Cable should pop up to an open 3-6Mbps just like folks in backwater Alabama get. The only possible barrier would be if the corrupt SRI commies managed to get PSD back into power and kill competition and innovation.
Let’s ignore FUD and focus on the reality on the ground. PNL and PD continue to operate a largely successful governing alliance that brings new freedom and prosperity to Romania. Together they are fostering an environment for change.
Even now, while America has talked about Broadband over PowerLines for years without doing much of anything, Romania has caught up. In the US, a few energy companies are running small trials of delivering internet over the actual electrical wiring in your house. Contrasted with years of suppression under Iliescu and Nastase, Romania is in lockstep on the progress train this time around.
Three years ago, the BPL hype machine was spewing false promises of vaporware in Wired.
“We’re going to have an absolute stampede to move on this. This is a natural,” said Alan Shark, president of the Power Line Communications Association, which includes Internet providers such as Earthlink as well as utility companies. “It’ll change the way we do business on the Internet.”
Stampede? I’d say the milk machines are chewing their collective cud, Sharkboy.
Meanwhile, in a rural town of Romania, the local electrical company has started testing delivery of their power line communication service. For only 12 euro, the low-income families in the village of Band get both telephone service and 64K internet access. That’s an incredible improvement for the people living there who had no telephones just a couple years ago. The innovation provided by broadband over powerlines has proven to work well in Romania and already the electrical companies are gearing up plans for a national roll out. You can bet that prices and speeds are likely to be highly competitive with cable internet and DSL solutions.
It is the twins of competition and innovation which are causal to Romania’s advancement. With BPL, or PLC, services already existing infrastructure of electrical power cables running to every house and building throughout the country, Romanians should soon have an inexpensive option for broadband access that will force the RDS guys to stop being so stingy and even push the slumbering giant Romtelecom toward some sort of reaction.
The younger people of Romania tend to speak very good English from watching every American movie they get their hands on. They tend to have excellent skills in IT fields like graphical design and programming (or, at least, they aren’t afraid of it). Can you imagine the boom that is coming when decent broadband speeds become affordable to most everyone? I sense we’re right on the cusp of boiling over the pot.
“Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”
March 5th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
The national telephone monopoly is not really a monopoly nowadays. I have both internet and phone at Astral.
In case you’re wondering, I pay 29$ for 1.5 Mbps and it works quite well with downloading both from inside and outside Romania.
Also, at least in here in Bucharest, the “reţele de cartier” are quite popular, so you can get internet for 500.000 lei, just good to download films and manele from your neighbours. :-P
March 6th, 2006 at 12:53 am
I’m also with astral, 26 euros per month, 1536 kbps, no traffic limit on cable (in Bucharest). Over here, I had to choose between RDS (the huge scam - if you don’t know them, listen to the erdeesh RDS-parody commercials at bynetics.net), Astral (quite nice), Romtelecom (the nasty ex-monopoly, now boasting a nice offer) and the local neighbourhood micro-isp “retea oDC/manele” net (which had a nice offer for 360.000 lei - 100 Mbps with your neighbours, 2Mbps local loop, 512 kbps external, except for the occasional NIC burning during a thunderstorm from poor wiring or for the mob guys pounding on your door for being one day late paying your bill). In most of urban Romania you get nowadays at least three choices for broadband internet access (except for Targu Jiu and Brasov), and speeds have increased ten times since 2004, making many smoked out, keylogger infested, counterstrike ridden internet cafes go out of business. Oh, and you only know the situation as of 2003-2004, imagine 1998-1999 when all we had were 28.8 connections at 0.5-1 US$/h plus connection fees (another 0.5-1 US$/h)… Those where the days :D. And we had 486’s to go with the speeds. (Nowadays however, I’ve seen more Semprons and Celerons rather than PIII’s, though I admit I have somewhat of a god-like level for my Athlon 64 with 1.5 gigs of RAM).
Re. the powerline internet access in Band was apparently a project made only because of the local mayor, who is apparantly a well known folk music singer, and is not going to be extended unless other mayors will provide the bribes, pardon, incentives to the beautiful state-owned power company.
March 6th, 2006 at 1:55 am
Anony, you are correct about Astral and I simply forgot they offered phone service. I wonder how that works because surely the infrastructure must belong to Romtelecom and Astral must be reselling access… perhaps the way most US phone companies were required by legislation to open up the switches.
$29? Is that for DSL? It certainly looks like that is what you mean. But I don’t see how you could be right.
Astral’s website talks only about cable solutions like the ones RDS has. The fastest speed they offer is 384kbps which is pretty lousy. Sure, it’s better than an RDS internet speed, but certainly not close to 1.5mbps!
http://www.astral.ro/en/index.php?id=94
Ah, just before I posted this, I found the information in Romaneste is quite different and now I see your 1.5mbps for 26.5 euro.
http://www.astral.ro/index.php?id=94
I wonder why their information is dramatically different depending on the language chosen. Very strange. I also see they limit you to 24GB of traffic which really stinks. To be honest, I’d probably chew that up in just one week.
March 6th, 2006 at 2:12 am
jc, how can you have no limit? Or did you mean that you have no limit on local Bucuresti traffic? Their site says 24GB limit. I’m not sure exactly how they would go about setting up a system to differentiate between local and general internet data flow.
Yes, I understand it could conceivably be hacked together, but I doubt they’d go through the trouble.
Let me know!
A buddy of mine just stopped by Brasov on his way to Zalau to visit his family. He lives in Seattle where I met him while I was living there. He tried to teach me some Romaneste, but I didn’t learn fast enough.
Anywho, to get back on the point, he told me there was (if I recall correctly) some RDS commercials where the staff are swearing right on camera. If you know where I could find those, it might be funny to watch. I tried to watch the parodies at Bynetics but their website is currently down, so I’ll have to check back on that later.
You really have a local ISP called Manele Net? Hahaha… that’s classic. =] 2Mbps on a local loop combined with 521k direct which you mentioned is a great bargain for only 10 euros.
I’m starting to feel like a sucker for signing up with Romtelecom DSL. But I like high speed to the full internet and it seems like the only place to get it.
Choices are pretty limted in Brasov. You get Romtelecom (aka ClickNet) or RDS. Or dial-up.
Interesting to see you note the demise of net cafes. I figure that’s going to be an ongoing process. I doubt they’ll die out entirely, but I expect some of them to go out of business. Of course, they’ll last longer if they can keep the 14 year old kids happy with illegal cigarettes and porn access. You know the type I’m talking about…
$1 per hours for 28k in 1999? Jeez, I certainly don’t believe I could have survived in that environment. I guess I have been online entirely too long.
Wow! You’ve got me beat. My AMD64 box only has 1 gig of RAM at the moment. But then, I have another desktop, a PC laptop, and an Apple laptop… plus my WiFi home network. So maybe I have you beat afterall. But, who’s really counting? ;]
I had no idea the mayor of band was a folk singer! He must be one of the TV goons I happened to mention earlier in the post. Talk of… er, incentives, does not necessarily surprise me, however. Where is that DNA anti-corruption outfit when you need them? (Well, they seem to be doing a relatively decent job, actually.)
Now, I get my power from Electrica, but I am aware of Termoelectrica and Hydroelectrica as other energy providers here. Do I misunderstand how it works? It seems to me there were also a couple other small players, so I was pretty sure Electrica was not a monopoly (even if it was spawned from de-nationalizing the National Electricity Authority.) Or are you telling me that all those little companies are just wholly owned subsidiaries of Electrica? That would be strange but plausible.
March 6th, 2006 at 5:55 am
astral works like this - if you exceed 24 Gigs they may cut your speed down to 256 kbps (including on the local loop), if they cannot provide “satisfactory service” (that’s in the contract) to their other users. My current traffic meter (on my server) asserts that I have downloaded/uploaded 92 GB in the past month, and I still have 1.5 Mbps bandwidth (insider info told me that no traffic metering is currently being done in Bucharest, as there is enough available bandwidth for everybody, and this situation will remain for at least 1 or 2 years). I am on cable not DSL (DSL is very limited in Bucharest because of the archaic wiring), and I have net, phone and cable TV (tri-play) from Astral. The lack of updates on Astral’s sie is because they are planning a new brand identity (with they being taken over by UPC and all) that will occur in March.
The local “neighborhood network” is really called Manele Net, they have around 100 users, and the local servers (a counter-strike server and a file-sharing server, probably for the latest “music” and porn) - I really do hate manele.
Those RDS commercials were made by disgruntled and annoyed RDS users with the collaboration of some RDS employees. They were never the product of the company but they got airplay on many radio stations as “pranks of the week” etc. They are quite accurate in regards with the speeds offered (at a friend’s house, who had a 512 kbps RDS contract I had a download speed of 4 KB/s and he told me this was how it normally worked). Check here for the “commercials”: http://www.erdeesh.com/
For Brasov, you’ve done the best choice possible - there are no other alternatives - thank RDS for that - they took over the cable market in Brasov early on in the “Cable wars” of the mid-1990s and established a nice warm natural monopoly that nobody could break (not that anybody ever wanted or tried to).
Regarding Electrica, this is a nice example of free market, Romanian monopolistic style - This is how it works. You have 3 energy producers - Termoelectrica, Nuclearoelectrica and Hidroelectrica. All state owned, of course. They do not sell the power to you, but to four (or five) distribution companies (Electrica Muntenia Sud, Electrica Nord etc.). Each covers a part of Romania and is, at least for standard users, a monopoly for their part of the country, charging a single (highly inflated, government set) price. And guess what - with one exception they too are state owned (to be privatized some times in the future - read never). Oh, and all of them form somewhat of a cartel, known as Electrica, with a nice headquarter in Bucharest (not as nice, however, as the two headquarters of Romtelecom). So if you don’t like your current supplier, you have no other choice but to buy your own generator.
March 6th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Now, that’s very informative.
So, lei for lei, Astral clearly sounds like the best deal IF you can get it in your area. They seem to be offering a value which is roughly on par with the rest of Europe.
Multumesc for the RDS reclama link. That’s hilarious! I have a buddy in Cluj on RDS cable and his connection is incredibly flakey just like what you describe. Of course, he adapted a little by running a little program to analyze throughput per hour. It wasn’t long before he saw clear patterns about which hours worked best and he started scheduling his online time for those hours. I think he’s nuts to wake up at 4am to play WOW though.
I am beginning to suspect that Electrica is octopus of PSD creation. I’ll have to try and research it more in the future. However, be that as it may, the leadership of Electrica would be fools if they don’t see a clear advantage in immediately expanding their availability to provide BPL/PLC services throughout larger and larger segments of Romania. Perhaps mistakenly, I was under the impression they saw the HUGE reveneue opportunity in front of them. By jumping into the fray with Romtelecom, Astral, RDS, et al., Electricatopus could really change itself from a tepid acquisition target for foreign investors (Austria, eh?) into a real powerhouse capable of controlling its own destiny (buyouts of Slovakia, Slovenia, and Serbia anyone?).
Want to know my brilliant plan for localized power generation? Okay, it’s a bit like hydroelectric in concept, but it has the added bonus of being extremely popular with the Romanian citizenry as well. First, I drive around Brasov in a Trabant wagon armed with a long pole and retractable wire loop just like the Animal Control professionals use. I wave bacon out the window to attract the right attention and then clean up the streets by dognapping my hapless victims (except Boschito, who I will turn loose, of course). As the throngs of onlookers cheer my vigilante good deeds, I whisk the booty back to my pirate lair and one-by-one attach each caine to the leather harness until I have several sled-dog teams worth. You’ll have to imagine I’ve already constructed the necessary mousecage exercise wheels (sized to scale, obviously). So, I place a stray female in heat in front of the wheels and let the males run for her… the wheels keep turning… and like Dr. Frankenstein, I marvel at the genius of my creation.
Hmm.. think I could get a patentn on that?
Listen, I plan on keeping an eye out on the BPL development in RO. It’s hard to imagine it will go any slower than America where it’s nothing more than a whispered rumor, really. Even the most corrupt of communist benefactors has a small chance to eventually realize they need to diversify their revenue base if they intend to survive the evolution of competition. Da, da.
March 6th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
I found your RDS comments a bit inaccurate.
Take a look at the current “abonamente”:
http://www.rdslink.ro/cablelink/cable_abonamente.htm
The speed is between 512kbps and 1 Mbps and there is no local 3 Mbps speed that I am aware of.
I am in Bucharest and pay 15USD for the 768kbps version. I am quite happy with their service - I’m downloading at the maximum speed most of the time - both from Romania and from outside Romania.
March 6th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Also I forgot to mention, they gave me a free telephone subscription (including 100 free minutes to Romtelecom lines per month, 1000 free minutes in their network per month) plus a free phone. The phone service didn’t work so well about a year ago, but now is almost as stable as my Romtelecom line (also it’s always cheaper to call using my RDS phone no matter what the destination is).
March 6th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Andrei, I may be slightly off then and I appreciate your insight. I wizzed around the RDS site, but never found the link you pointed out (until now).
My Romaneste is far from perfect. Indeed, it barely exists. So, I found navigating a non-English version a bit cumbersome and relied on my discussions with friends to understand how RDS works. Perhaps they have different service agreements (or old ones!).
What I think is funny is how the ISPs all claim “nelimitat” and then immediately contradict that by announcing a limitation on data transfers.
I know the argument is that “nelimitat” refers to time. We had this same bullplop in the US several years ago when companies claimed “unlimited service” and then set limitations. It took a year or two to work itself out, but eventually the providers stopped lying to customers.
Limited data quotas are not “nelimitat.” Period. End of story.
I’m sorry to learn that RDS is playing the mobile phone network game by differentiating calls on and off the network. I know this is very much an American bias for me, but these are strictly a shell game for telecoms to try and lock in customers through viral marketing (i.e., no cost).
I’m sure the first reaction is “well, hey, it’s cheaper!” Unfortunately, that is a misperception based on marketing propaganda. You see, if they did The Right Thing(tm) and open up networks to peer providers then you could call anyone on any network for the low prices instead of being artificially limited to calling ONLY people on the same network.
It’s a joke and will probably require legislation to change it. If that happens. Zapp seems to be ahead of the others on pricing and close to a more open network type structure.
I plan on talking about cellular service in Romania another time in a different post.
Thanks for your information on RDS, I appreciate it. The price for your service is pretty good!
March 6th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
The “nelimitat” part is not completely untrue (the traffic is unlimited): after the 4, 8 or 16 GB limit they say they will limit your speed down from 512, 768 or 1024 kbps to 192 or 256 kbps. In practice this never happens as they haven’t metered the traffic at all during the last year.
In December 2002 when I first started on Rdslink the only available speed was 128 kbps and the subscriptions varied in terms of allowed traffic.
March 6th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
I see, Andrei. So they write up some limitations to protect themselves legally (in the same way they say the advertised upload and download speeds are burst, not Committed Information Rate) and in practice you pretty much get away with murder. Nice!
I still have a quibble with the use of nelimitat, but I suppose it’s not a debate worth having. That’s good news!
March 7th, 2006 at 1:18 am
Just as follow up on the Electrica thread: it turns out my suspicions were right.
http://www.daily-news.ro/article_detail.php?idarticle=23550
The government is selling off the various Electricatopus branches and making a bundle. So, competition will indeed arrive and BPL should become a factor… to the benefit of us all.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
… sooo, at the end of the day, what’s the best offer for a (serious) bandwidth addict (and I mean this!) moving to Romania? Romtelecom’s ADSL express?
August 15th, 2006 at 1:06 am
As you read through the site, you’ll see I’ve had *some* troubles with Romtelecom. They seem to come and go, moreso than the United States and western Europe.
With that disclaimer out of the way, if money is no object and bandwidth is the primary concern, then you cannot do better than Romtelecom ADSL2… at this time (2006).
I am beginning to think the best *value* is probably one of the higher-speed cable accounts, if you’re looking for the best bang for your buck.
October 16th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
[…] That couldn’t possibly be right. I remember last year’s discussion about the exciting BPL developments in Romania that a number of kindly folks tried to explained to me that Astral was offering 1.5Mbps for 23€. In fact, back then Astral used to actually list their prices. Maybe not on the English portion of their website, but at least in the romaneşte. […]