When will we get better broadband?

Subc

I used to live in the states and i had dsl. I usually downloaded at 90kb/sec and no cap cause cap doesn't exist over there.
I have UTV dsl here and i'm downloading at 30-53kb/sec.
I also had ntl cable before and had 73kb/sec but my friend in the states gets 150kb/sec.
When are we gonna be able to download at 90kb/sec at least and with no Cap? 1 year? 5 years? 8years? never?
Things do seem to be progressing rather well but its still needs major improvements and fast
thanx

Ancient1

Dont hold your breath - remember Luas.

jonhate

man never.
WE ARE ****IN SCREWED!!!!

ssh

uh, when you pay for a 1mbit ADSL line?

A better question would be "When are we going to get *cheap* downloads at 93KB/sec" :-)

RasTa

Jaysus yous are never happy !
I have to say im chuffed with my utv broadband

Dustaz

www.boards.ie/irelandoffline

Get involved with Ioffl. They are one of the main reasons we have the crappy BB we have atm.

Mark

Originally posted by Dustaz
They are one of the main reasons we have the crappy BB we have atm.

That could sooooo easily be read the wrong way

PrecariousNuts

Originally posted by Subc
I used to live in the states and i had dsl.

Why oh why oh why did you move to Ireland? I seriously plan to get out of this country as soon as I can.

tomk

Originally posted by RasTa
Jaysus yous are never happy !
I have to say im chuffed with my utv broadband

I'm with Rasta. Sure, it's more expensive, it's not as good, it's mediocre, compared with USA/Europe/Japan/etc/etc, but nobody forced me to buy it, and I like living in Ireland. I'm having a ball with BB, the performance is way better, and the cost way less, than my previous ISDN setup.

Mutant_Fruit

IBB have a nice offering with 512/512 UNCAPPED lines being offered at a mere 30eur a month. I'm sure a 1meg offering could be got for under 60 eur off em now, with could be 1024/1024...

koneko

I look forward to the day that I can get broadband... any broadband at all.

Subc

Um i'm here cause i have no choice
Broadband at 1mb to get 93kb? NoNo we need 512kb at 93kb/sec no cap
I arrived 1 year ago so dunno bout luas but i think that a long time ago they shoulda made a subway mabey? lol like in england
I mean you'll barely be able to walk now on the side of the streets cause of the Luas specially in town.
Eircom ripped all you irish people lol. They had absolutley no competitors but since Esat BT came along with there BB the prices went from 107euros to like 54euros. If i had the choice between eircom, esat and utv i would pick esat or utv cause 1gb extra on your cap cheaper and same speed, and i don't want to touch anything that eircom does
Keep your hope up cause everything happened pretty fast i think when Esat and UTV came on the BB market.
Mabey NTL will expand also but its not really cable but hey better then nothing and people who do have adsl should be happy cause most who do want it have a hard time getting it.
o and dsl shouldnt have contention rate should be 1:1

andrew163

Originally posted by Subc
Broadband at 1mb to get 93kb? NoNo we need 512kb at 93kb/sec no cap

thats physically impossible....... 93KB/sec = 744kb/sec

Eircom ripped all you irish people lol.

OH GOD ITS HORRIBLE *cries uncontrollably and runs away screaming*

dsl shouldnt have contention rate should be 1:1

where did you get THAT figure from? even japanese DSL is contended, isnt it?

MrPinK

where did you get THAT figure from? even japanese DSL is contended, isnt it?

Yup, all dsl is afaik. Only a leased line has a 1:1 ratio.

ssh

1:1 just won't happen.

Part of the problem is eircom. This is true. The other part of it is that bandwidth out of this country isn't unlimited and is therefore expensive. Assuming I had the correct termination equipment, I could sell you and 20 others an 8mbit ADSL line.

I still have to pay to have my traffic routed onto whoever's network. That could still be Eircom, I'm not sure. Given that only 4 people might be using the full 8 mbit at any one time, should I really have to buy a 160mbit connection? I don't think so anyway.

Really, I'd suspect a lot of it is up to someone to lower the cost of entry network access to England or wherever for ISPs.

Does anyone know where I could get details about international network connectivity from Ireland?

eth0_

Originally posted by Subc
I used to live in the states and i had dsl. I usually downloaded at 90kb/sec and no cap cause cap doesn't exist over there.

Crap. I looked into this before and most of the residential adsl services i looked at in n america HAD a cap. Albeit a lot bigger than the cap we have in Ireland but it was still capped.

bk

1:1 would be a complete waste of money.

There is no reason why a properly designed system with a resonable contention ratio and Quality of service won't give you the full advertised bandwidth.

Contention is just a more efficient way of using resources, it is the same reason why we are moving away from switch based telephone network, to IP based telephony. It uses the network resources more effeciently and therefore it is cheaper.

Mutant_Fruit

Broadband at 1mb to get 93kb?

Firstly, lets get your terms right....

a one meg line is 1024kbps (kilobits a second), which translates to a max download speed of 126kb's (kilobytes a second). Now, for a mere 60 eur, that would be as good as, a few offerings in Britain.

NoNo we need 512kb at 93kb/sec no cap

Firstly, i presume you mean we need a connection that will supply us with a download speed of 512kb's. And that when you wrote 93kb/sec you were still thinking about the 1 meg line. You would need a 4 megabit line to get those download speeds, which is not available for residential customers as of yet.

Now, Irish Broadband are offering a 20-1 contention, 512/512kbps sevice for a mere 30 eur. That is cheaper than getting broadband off British Telecom (BT) in Britain! Think about it, IBB are cheaper than other foreign countries. So i think we're doing quite well.

Currently IBB are investigating a non line of sight package, which will increase the customer base by a lot, meaning more and more people will be able to get broadband. basically, anyone within 5 km (or so) from a tower can get it at good speeds.

Broadband has only recently become affordable in ireland, with eircoms 50% reduction to 50eur a month only a few months ago, and yet we still have cheaper broadband than other countries. Give it a bit of time and it can but get better.

EDIT: I should also mention most places are on 48-1 contention

bizmark

Canada 512kbs adsl = 40 or 50 CDollors and has a 2 GIG cap per month For both up and down tranferes combined

http://www.bell.sympatico.ca/mainNavigation.do?currentPath=dslBasicPath

Unless you want to get 1meg for like 70 CDollors and no cap

So please where not the worst just not the best by a long shot

PrecariousNuts

70 canadian dollars = 46 euro
40 = 26 euro

bizmark

crap i forgot CDollors arent worth the paper their printed on

SouperComputer

im not aware of any xDSL capped packages in the US. Used SBC Ameritech for 3 months, DL about 50 r 60GB per month with no ill effects.

not much chance of that here soon ;(

bk

Originally posted by bizmark
crap i forgot CDollors arent worth the paper their printed on

Yes, I think you totally blew your argument there.

I think I could live with 1 meg, no cap for e46 per month

Actually I just checked the site, they seem to be offering the following:

SympaticoTM High Speed
- 1.5mbps downstream, 320kbps upstream
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 10 hours of Dial-up access per month to browse the Internet while away from home ($1.00/extra hour)
- Free anti-spam email filtering
- Free technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- 3 months free AV definitions

c$24.95/month (17 euro) for first 3 months, c$39.95 (27 euro) after with 12 month contract

or

c$24.95/month for first 3 months, c$44.95 (30 euro) without contract

Self Install $25 (17 euro)

Prices include modem rental, but exclude taxes.

Or even better how about:

Sympatico High Speed Ultra
- 3mbps downstream, 640kbps upstream
- Unlimited bandwidth usage
- the rest as above

c$44.95/month (30 euro) for first 2 months, $69.95 (47 euro) after that.

Now While these prices don't include taxes, it couldn't add that much extra,
47 euro for a 3m/640k no cap connection completely blows away e54 per month for 512k/128k, 4 gig cap.

Richard Dower

Amazing deals available in the US and Europe...why can't we have that here?

Prices in Ireland just seem to go UP!...i thought the Euro was gonna bring prices in line with the rest of Europe?

:mad:

Dustaz

Originally posted by Richard Dower

Prices in Ireland just seem to go UP!...i thought the Euro was gonna bring prices in line with the rest of Europe?

Er, quote me a single example of an increase in Broadband prices in Ireland please?

halenger

Just for the hell of it I tried looking up DSL.com...

What I found:

1.5mb/608 uncapped for $29.99 for the first 3 months and $49.99 from then on.

Nice of them to say:
"Can I connect more than one computer with DSL?
Yes, you can share your DSL connection among computers in a small home network using any of several DSL router products. ..."

Very interesting indeed. Static IP. You can run as many servers of whatever you want off of it etc etc etc.

How many years does the US have DSL so we can try and figure out how long it'll be before OUR service is like this?!

Richard Dower

Originally posted by Dustaz
Er, quote me a single example of an increase in Broadband prices in Ireland please?

Er. i was talking about harmonisation of pricing with the rest of Europe. As in...prices coming into line with what European DSL customers enjoy.

Woden

Just checked out those IBB new price, they seem great to me, the installation price is gone down loads, and €35 a month for a 20:1 contention ratio seem reasonable to me. Would it be worth the extra €13 for the 8:1 ratio?

Richard Dower

Yes, the lower the contention ratio the better.

Woden

sure, just wondering though will that contention ratio be noticeably different, will i get the bang for my buck so to speak

Mutant_Fruit

ideally, even with a contention of 20-1, you;d still be able to reach max speeds, but who knows. It all depends on what internal bandwidth IBB have. If they have plenty, then we won;t suffer when contention increases, and more users join, if they just about have enough, things will go downhill FAST. I;m gonna stick with the eur50 option til i get some pings/downloa speeds from people who use the 30eur option.

Subc

iight mabey i was wrong about contention ratio but ill look into it.
And no when i say i had 93kb/sec i had a 512kb dsl line and not 1mb lol.
In states with 1mb you dload at like 150
and my friend had normal 512kb cable and dloads at 150kb YES a 150kb and gets 20 ping in games
And no known of the services that were offered to me in the states had a dload cap

andrew163

are you sure they werent BURST speeds that only lasted a few seconds (caused by compression.......... i can get 20kBYTE/s for a minute or 2 on 56k ), because its impossible for a 512k line to transfer that much raw data....

Unless your ISP were secretly giving you more bandwidth out of the goodness of their hearts........ which would NEVER happen in Ireland thanks to our malevolent evil powermad money-hungry telco. :rolleyes:

FirA_Fascio

Originally posted by Subc
Um i'm here cause i have no choice
Broadband at 1mb to get 93kb? NoNo we need 512kb at 93kb/sec no cap

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, BOTH PHYSICALLY AND THEORETICALLY, FOR A 512 KILOBIT PER SECOND LINE TO GO AT 93 KILOBYTES PER SECOND!

If you knew how to do simple maths, you would know that 512 divided by 8 = 64

There are 8 bits in a byte.

512 kilobits/sec divided by 8 = 64 kilobytes/sec

What's that? "No cap" you say? If you want no cap, do what the rest of us have done and moan to Eircom about it!

What you just said makes about as much sense as why George Bush would invite Saddam to dinner!

tomk

Originally posted by andrew163
.....thanks to our benevolent evil powermad money-hungry telco.......

May I suggest "malevolent"?

Mutant_Fruit

Bitch e-mails won't help, just don;t buy a capped service. Just send one e-mail saying that you bought your new broadband connection from a company that doesn't cap downloads. That will have a lot more effect than buying their service and then bitching to them about how its capped. If people buy it, they won't change it.

BTW: tell your friend who can download at over twice the physical limit on his 512k line to thank the lord for his magical connection. And for the generousity of his ISP in giving him free bandwidth.

bk

Originally posted by Subc
iight mabey i was wrong about contention ratio but ill look into it.
And no when i say i had 93kb/sec i had a 512kb dsl line and not 1mb lol.
In states with 1mb you dload at like 150
and my friend had normal 512kb cable and dloads at 150kb YES a 150kb and gets 20 ping in games
And no known of the services that were offered to me in the states had a dload cap

Ok, your friend in the US either really does have 150kb, as in kilo bits, which isn't great (compared to 512kb on DSL) and which is actually what you can get from NTL here in Ireland on cable for about e30 per month.

Or more likely you meant 150KB as in kilo Bytes, which would mean:

150KB x 8 = 1,200 kb (or 1.2 mb line)

So it would seem your friend has a 1.5mb line (as in 1,500 kb, you rarely get the full whack, hence him getting 1,200 kb), he could not have 512kb.

1.5mb seems to be the standard in the US for about $40 - 50 per month.

BTW for you computer science people out there (yes me too), I do know that 150KB is actually equivalent to 1228800 bits, I'm just rounding for simplicity sake.

andrew163

Originally posted by tomk
May I suggest "malevolent"?

ehhh....hmmm.........woops........

cmdrpaddy

whats weird is that the prices that have been quoted here for American xDSl are still dearer than prices of companies in other European countries. The standard connnection that i can find for ADSL in belgium , for instance, is 3Mbs/s, and i have seen and used it personally and have gotten d-load speeds of <200Kb/s consistently and thats for about €29/month (thats a special offer its normally €39), and thats from Belgiums equivalent of our Malevolent Eircom, Belgacom. You can also get Cable internet like you can get here from NTL but it is generally slower. Why cant Ireland be like that? (http://www.turboline.be/ a list of ISPs that deliver ADSL in Belgium:(

PaulMagrath

Originally posted by ssh
The other part of it is that bandwidth out of this country isn't unlimited and is therefore expensive.

Anyone who says that there isn't enough bandwidth going in/out of this country doesn't know what they are talking about.

There are TERRABITS of unused and completely idle Global Crossing fibre optic cable going from Dublin to the far side of the Atlantic and the world.

Problem is Global Crossing has gone bankrupt.

tomk

Originally posted by andrew163
ehhh....hmmm.........woops........

andrew - no flaming intended - I just had a problem associating the word "benevolent" with our "€vil pow€rmad mon€y-hungry t€lco"!

unkel

Originally posted by SouperComputer
im not aware of any xDSL capped packages in the US. Used SBC Ameritech for 3 months, DL about 50 r 60GB per month with no ill effects.

not much chance of that here soon ;(

My DL in first 5 weeks of NTL cable was 100GB :cool:
Theoretically you could get 200GB per month on this 600kbps service, just a little less on RADSL - not to bad now is it? Stop whinging and vote with your feet: buy uncapped only

FirA_Fascio

I want NTL cable

I hate being stuck on dial-up :mad: