Tere!

Since I moved to the current flat, I had used the Estonian internet provider called elisa at home.

In August 2022, I had to work from home due to the office change since I had a new job.

However, owing to elisa, there was a problem that I could not connect to my company’s VPN. Strictly speaking, if I connected the VPN, the internet was automatically disconnected, and if I wanted to use the internet, I couldn’t use the VPN.

Thanks to my job position, I didn’t have to use the VPN during the whole working hour, and at that time coincidentally I could work without the VPN, but it was still problematic.

I contacted elisa multiple times, and they checked, but they said there was nothing problematic on elisa’s side. Then, I asked the tech guy in my company, and he said elisa is the one who had an issue.

Then elisa asked me about the situation and detailed the problem with the company’s VPN, so I contacted elisa via the email address that they gave me.

However, they replied to me in one week.

I didn’t know when I needed to work from home, so this wasn’t pleasant.

Finally, I convinced myself that “elisa sucks”, so I started looking for some other internet provider.

When it comes to the biggest internet provider in Estonia, people would say Telia.

In my experience, after coming back from studying in Ireland and until I left Japan for Estonia, I used a pocket/mobile Wifi in my flat which did not have the internet. Utilising that experience, I looked for a similar service. However, the demand for mobile Wifis is quite low in Estonia, and there were basically few rentals.

Then, the Telia support told me about a service called “diil”.

diil is a brand in Telia, and it has only the internet compared to Telia which has more options for a phone or a TV. Since I don’t have a TV at home, I watch stuff only on Disney+, and I’m satisfied with the current SIM in my phone, diil seemed to be perfect for me.

diil has four options for the internet, and the most expensive one is 19.99 EUR. At that time, they had a campaign until the end of year 2022, so the maximum data 90 GB was unlimited.

Considering the data usage on my company laptop, my own laptop and my phone, the maximum usage seemed to be around 60 GB. However, since it’s unlimited, I almost chose that option.

The problem was a router. I decided to buy the same router at a different shop, which diil sells because routers with a SIM card are more expensive, and because I had to think about the wave or circuit in Estonia.

Given that you use a comparison website called hind.ee, you can compare the same products at different prices. I looked for the router there, and purchased it for around 50 EUR at an online shop called kaup24.ee. It was approximately 10 EUR cheaper than buying at diil.

However, the router itself is a bit old, and it requires a USB micro B. I compromised this point.

After ordering the router, I called elisa, and terminated the internet use at the end of September, 2022.

Then, on the first of October, I returned the router that I rented from elisa to the elisa shop, and then headed to Telia to buy diil’s SIM card.

Then the shop clerk asked me

“Are you sure? Telia has a better option, and it’s cheaper and unlimited.”

Just in case, I asked her how different they were, but she couldn’t answer my questions. Another clerk explained to me instead. When I looked at one of Telia’s options that she told me, I, with a bit of knowledge of the internet, thought

“But Telia’s this option, isn’t it slow?”

So I asked this male clerk, and he said

“It’s very slow. If you call online, the connection is very slow.”

I knew it.

Phew. I almost failed to choose the correct one.

It’s so bad when the clerk’s knowledge is less than the customer’s.

Eventually, as planned, I bought diil’s SIM card. The payment was the following month.

In regards to the VPN, since my company uses Telia, of course my new internet worked with VPN.

I’m so relieved.

If it’s about only the home internet, elisa is probably enough. However, these days we sometimes work from home, so if we choose Telia, you probably won’t have any issues later on. There is another provider called STV, and yet personally I don’t have a good experience with STV, so it’s out of discussion. (Of course there are people who use STV.)

Aitäh! 🙂