Which ISP should I go for?

Pauleeeeeeee

Yep, I've somehow managed to be able to find a way to afford broadband on my measily student budget but who do I go for?

IOL has a better deal going because of its larger cap BUT by the looks of the opinions around this site it seems like Eircoms service is more stable.

Or maybe I should go for a different ISP altogether?

Opinions?

Oh yeh, I'm in Dublin.

BKtje

what do you want to use it for?
if its just surfing/ dloading iol or UTV id guess. (UTV a little cheaper)

If you play games and light surfing then maybe eircom and if u do a mixture of all 3 id guess IOL BB. I dont use any of the above.

Could also try Irish Broadband.

Xcellor

Although IOL BB is admittedly on the blink at the moment. When it it works it works well... Gives the best out of the three companies offering nation wide BB IMHO.

1) Fast Pings - 17ms - >50 Irish/UK Server
2) Consistent Downloads: 50+ kB
3) Cap is good. 16 gb gives you breathing space...
4) No need to change telephone provider unlike UTV where you MUST change to their CPS.

Of course, tech support with IOL is brutal, their poor communication too...

But if you are willing to take a bit of crap I'd recommend them over Eircom or UTV (and Irish BB I don't know because I live in Longford)

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rymus

If you dont mind hours of downtime per week and neverending technical problems, go with UTV... Otherwise stay clear.

joePC

I find IOL to be good, ping times are up and down depends on time of day, but you get solid download 50 -> 55K.

Thanks joePC

Pauleeeeeeee

Cheers everyone.

Reckon I might go with Iol then (but if they're crap I blaming every single one of you )

Lenny

Yea can't beat ntl, for price wise, no d/l cap, and they have a 1 meg service availbe(still cheap than eircom AFAIK!)
some people say their call service is crap.. but what isp has good call service.. don't think any of them
I've only ever had ot ring one and wasn't even on hold 10 mins..

Mutant_Fruit

i could have sworn NTL had a 1 gig a day cap...

Pauleeeeeeee

Trust me, if I could get NTL where I am I would. But unfortunality I cant

Gonzo

NTL do have a 1gig a day cap but it aint enforced, many ntl users still downloading over 2 and 3 gigs a day and nothing is ever said to them.

RobertFoster

Originally posted by Pauleeeeeeee
Trust me, if I could get NTL where I am I would. But unfortunality I cant

Anyone know if NTL planning to roll-out further?

mag

The eternal question..........

Eurorunner

Do yourself a favour and stay clear of €ircon. Choose between iol/utv/netsource but for the love of God, dont sign up with the devil itself.

Woden

man eircom are fine apart from the cap thingy and the fact that they are somewhat more expensive (which doesn't affect me as i pay €40 towards the connection anyway), the service is solid and the pings are great.

plus if you sign up with 3g you can get an ipod for 200 euro and they waive the installtion fee also saving 99 i think.

data

RobertFoster

Originally posted by Dataisgod
an ipod for 200 euro

Which iPod? Does that mean they've stopped the Xbox for €99 deal...?

Woden

hmm the original deals finished on xmas eve. not sure if they have a new xbox deal. deal now is a 15gb ipod for 200 if ya sign up with em.

i got the 10gb one when i signed up before xmas for 150

Xcellor

heh.. Eircom use gimmicks to get their customers to sign up, like Xbox and iPod. They hope that these offerings will balance out their far from competitive Broadband offerings...

Well done Eircom it certainly does seem to be working...

"Who needs 16 gb download at a cheaper price when you can get an iPod or Xbox for cheap!!!Wohoooooooooooooo!!!!!!"

But what dataisgod is saying is true. Over all they appear to be the most reliable but well... isn't it Eircoms bad networks that have caused problems for IOL and UTV in the past *ahem*

Eircom have no excuse for offering a service that is more expensive and less spec'd than it's resellers... I find it rather insulting actually... but I guess they are hoping people don't shop around before choosing a BB service provider. Sure glad I did.

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Woden

i shopped well around but due to esats ridiculous policy about not letting someone else pay for the broadband via a credit card for example other then the account holder i had to take my custom elsewhere. the ipod sweetened the deal as its something i wanted.

Xcellor

True enough Esat do have some strange policies alright... but well if you can deal with them then it's grand. I hate IOL and Eircom but I hate Eircom more because although they could easily charge a lower price boost speeds and increase download limits they refuse to, either because they are scared their networks can't handle it (most likely) or they want Ireland apparently the "hub" of Europe to remain 5 years behind the rest of Europe. The former seems more plausable... Although I bet they think to themselves that most people wouldn't have a use for a fast connection with static IP.

Personally i'd like to have a connection that could sustain a multiplayer server 24 hours a day... I don't even think the business packages currently available can provide that.

My mate in norway has just got an equivelent of a T2 installed... going about 2 megabytes a second up and down... Sure he is paying around e1500 a year but we pay around e480 a year for a connection that isn't even 1/30th the speed.

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Eurorunner

man eircom are fine apart from the cap thingy

Fair enough but many of the issues that customers of iol/utv have encountered can be traced back to €ircon anti-competitive practice - search the boards, the info is there.
We need to be a little bit more progressive in our thinking here...that is to say, that to reward the likes of €ircon by giving them your hard earned €€€ is just like asking for more bad service in the long run.


Just my thoughts...

ando

u get what you pay for. Eircom are more expensive but are the most reliable & stable. There is a somewhat large hostile feeling towards eircom on these boards, just dont let it blind the facts

Xcellor

I personally believe a percentage of all money taken for BB services regardless of the service provider should be reinvested into the network to get it up to European standards.

I wouldn't mind paying an extra 2 euros or whatever a month if I knew it was going to be spent on improving the infrastructure to sustain future net communications... Coz lets face it, software is only going to get bigger and in a few years I would suspect paid music/movie subscriptions to be very large.

To us at the moment 512k connections is like lightening... but to most Europeans it's bog standard and anyone with a phone line can avail of it whereas here only a select few with fault free lines can. That is just a joke, it's discrimination if you ask me, why should someone paying the same line rental to Eircom not be afforded the same services than that of another person down the road? Ok there is an argument about rural locations and the difficulty in getting BB out there but I'm talking about newly built houses in relatively built up areas.

Does anyone know if our neighbours in the UK have as much trouble as us with failing phone lines and then a "Sorry can't help..." attitude from BT? I think it's pathetic and if they continue on with that crap Ireland will start going backwards again.

Websites aren't going to get smaller they are going to get bigger and bigger and more complex, to the stage where 56k connections are just presented with, "Sorry you have insufficient bandwidth to view this site..." And the ones that don't will take a week to download.

Come on Eircom get your heads out of your arses, your hands in your pockets and start putting some real money into the development of our networks. It's bloody cheeky to increase line rental when for the extra money what have we got? Improved network infrastructure? DSL is subject to availability.... Such is DSL that it should be available *almost* everywhere especially with RADSL...

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Eurorunner

Eircom are more expensive but are the most reliable & stable. There is a somewhat large hostile feeling towards eircom on these boards, just dont let it blind the facts

That seems to be the feedback in recent weeks on the boards so i am not disputing it. As regards the somewhat large hostile feelings towards eircom on boards, we also have consensus here too - cos yes there is
But theres no smoke without fire. To hand over your money to them now is shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. Consider taking the time out to read this and this. Surely there is enough info here for you to see that the best thing for us all is to select the best service provider you can find leaving eircom out of the equation.
Remember, you are not going to be satisfied with the speed of your existing connection sometime soon and you are placing your cash and faith in these guys to deliver?...i think not.

I wouldn't mind paying an extra 2 euros or whatever a month if I knew it was going to be spent on improving the infrastructure to sustain future net communications...

A commendable suggestion. However, the extra 2 euros that you pay under the existing telecoms system would probably have to find its way to eircom. You should know that eircom would have no intention of investing it back into the network - it would go on their big fat dividend payouts. Thats been the form to date with eircom raping the network infrastructure.

Xcellor

Oh indeed I have no doubt that Eircom would waste the money on stupid advertising gimmicks like flying mouses or buying the rights to use Queen songs for their advertisements... *ahem* Yeah... that flying mouse really made me want to choose Eircom, I mean it was just soooo cute and furry...

We should all form a band and march up to Eircom offices and take them over and run the networks ourselves... But I aint climbing up poles I'm scared of heights... ;P

But seriously isn't this Comreg's job? Or doesn't it fall under their domain... I really haven't the time to read up everything to do with the subject but I believe Eircom should be removed from looking after the network. A consortium of companies should get involved because Eircom clearly cannot maintain the networks correctly. I put that down to mismanagement and poor spending of funds. The outrageous dividents paid to shareholders was a joke. I mean I'm no financial guru but a company that is giving away dividents instead of investing internally into a crumbling infrastructure is just shooting itself in the foot. Without that infrastructure running efficiently how will they make profit? Patch up jobs will end up costing more and more and they will become more frequent...

Eircoms lack of vision and innovation is unforgivable. But what can we as consumers do? We have no choice, we must use Eircom. That is the very reason why IMHO the infrastructure should be taken off Eircom and given to a group of companies willing to invest in it. There is a huge demand for low cost, high speed Internet.

For the wireless end of things, there is clearly a huge market out there for that side of things. We already have wireless mobile phones why cant the technology be adapted to cater for wireless broadband? They can send rockets to the moon... surely that isn't an impossible feat and mobile networks combined have 100% coverage of Ireland... Im sure there are some technical issues concering this idea but nothing that a few techies locked in a room for a few days couldn't resolve.

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