Fibertel is the largest high-speed Internet provider in Buenos Aires. It's one of the most dependable. There are newer upstart companies that have entered the market the past few years but Fibertel is the largest. Fibertel is owned by Cablevision which is the main Cable TV provider in Buenos Aires. That's the reason why you see both bundled together on this bill below which is from an apartment I own in Recoleta.
Even if you can't read Spanish you can clearly see the bill is 193.20 PESOS (US$ 48.86). This utility is billed and payable each month. High speed internet is one of the utility bill expenses that is actually about the same price as the USA. You can see from the bill that the internet service speed is 3 MB which is the fastest residential speed you can get as of November 2010. It is normally 155 pesos (U$S 39.24) per month but they give you a discount of 25 pesos (US $ 6.33) because you have both services bundled together. So the total for just the 3 MB high-speed internet is 130 PESOS (US $ 33) per month.
So if you subtracted the total bill from the Internet service you would come up with a total of 63.20 PESOS (US $ 16) for the cable TV service. And you can see from my bill that I have the digital cable package which is a little bit more expensive. I also am paying an additional fee as I have 2 TV connections in this loft apartment. One downstairs and one upstairs in the bedroom. I also pay additional to upgrade to get HBO and Cinemax. You can see that fee is 39 PESOS more (U$S 10) per month.
I find that it's worth it if you are going to rent out your apartment on a luxury apartment rental to upgrade to the digital cable package. The normal cable package does not include English CNN or BBC. The digital cable package includes several English speaking channels including English CNN, BBC, Fox, Sony, Bloomberg, Hallmark Channel, E! and several other channels. So it's worth it to upgrade to digital cable even though it's more expensive.
For Cable TV you can also go with the option of getting a satellite dish from DirecTV but from my experiences it's not a good option as the signal goes out from time to time. Cablevision is dependable and I've used them for 7 years. Fibertel is the best of a poor lot. Service can go down from time to time but generally it's good with the 3 MB speed.
* The current exchange rate as of this posting is 3.95 pesos to $1 US dollar.
CLICK ON THE BILL BELOW TO SEE AN EXPANDED AND BIGGER PHOTO OF THE BILL
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