Eircom BB Carrigaline

corkandproud

Just heard from Eircom Broadband Support that our local exchance is t full capacity, service levels are below norm and they have no date for expanding the capacity.

Is this the normal service from Eircom?

douglasman

corkandproud wrote:

Just heard from Eircom Broadband Support that our local exchance is t full capacity, service levels are below norm and they have no date for expanding the capacity.

Is this the normal service from Eircom?

Yep! The Douglas exchange had the same problem in 2005 and it took ages to get it sorted, so if you were applying for Eircom Broadband or any of the resellers (BT, UTV etc.), you could not get a connection on the DSLAM as all ports were taken. It looks like your exchange now has the same problem and as usual Eircom will take plenty of time to sort it out as this keeps more people on dialup and generates more profit for Eircom.

corkandproud

just rang BT and even thought they are going through the eircom exchange, their first level sales team were able to tell me that the exchange is due for upgrade in two weeks - Eircom BB support couldn't tell me that.

In fairness to the BT guy, he said it would take three weeks to move to BT, and that they were using the Eircom line through the exchange, but he did say he could save me money.

Almost certain I'll move based on those two calls. at least BT know whats going on.

Raskolnikov

Surely Eircom were aware that the capacity was gonig to be reached on the exchange and could have made the upgrade before the shít hit the fan? Two days ago my BT connection started dropping packets, yesterday, I couldn't even connect at all.

gordonnet

it took eircom nearly 9 months to get the douglas exchange sorted. perhaps it will take this long for carrigaline

azezil

douglasman wrote:

and as usual Eircom will take plenty of time to sort it out as this keeps more people on dialup and generates more profit for Eircom.

Not true, infact ISP's make a loss on dialup customers.

MunsterCycling

azezil wrote:

Not true, infact ISP's make a loss on dialup customers.

Explain?

azezil

I would but then I'd have to kill ya

MunsterCycling

Its just how can €ircon lose money when they have you restricted to using dial-up and online for hours at an hourly rate?

douglasman

azezil wrote:

Not true, infact ISP's make a loss on dialup customers.

azezil, I never said ISP's (like EircomNet) make money on dialup, they don't of course as pretty much all the money goes to Eircom plc, on the phone side, which is what I stated.

corkandproud

rang eircom tonight and asked not to be charged for BB until the issue was resolved.

They advised I should contact customer service....

lets wait and see...

Molly

Your download speed is 1.72MBps
Your upload speed is 4.12 kbps

Been like this since friday morning. Tech support were pretty useless when i was on the phone to them and insisted I had no problem despite having 40% packet loss, between 0.5 and 2 kB/s upload speeds and frequent disconnects.

Raskolnikov

I gave BT a call, the technical support person said that a line reset would fix everything. I was told to unplug all devices that connect to the phone line and wait 15 minutes. Did that, I still can't get a connection :mad: Into my 4th day of downtime now.

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Had started another thread on this matter via the Ireland Offline site forum:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054918054

Cheers
Aidan

dimerocks

I have called Eircom so many times since last Friday and they refused to acknowledge the problem until tuesday. They claimed it was my Router. I honestly don't think it's fair to have to pay for this service. Thank **** I work chartbusters or i wouldn't be able to use the net at all. Eircom would do well to use a bit of foresight and see these things coming.

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Day 11 - [ for me ] - with slow OR without effective use of Broadband.

Lotto machines all over town on a slowdown also. Buddies of mine talking to Churchfield Engineers - they are not aware of problems in this area. One wonders then - if anything is being done to the Carrigaline Exchange to fix these problems. As far as I know all goes through Churchfield then onto Dublin

The one fear I have is that with this Babcock and Brown takeover thing - that Eircom right now will not invest further in infrastructure. That is - nothing will be done until the deal goes through. God knows how long this will take. To be honest - this dependance on the Eircom underlying Copper Cable system - the LLU [ the last mile ] - is crazy. The folly of this can now be seen here in Carrigaline. Unfortunately all the alternatives ALSO rely on this cable system - so competition, well I would not call it that, unless maybe slight price differences.


Cheers
Aidan

douglasman

Hi Aidan,
If you go to http://broadbandsupport.eircom.net and click on "Click here to go to the eircom broadband announcements page", you will see the following

Possible disruption to your broadband service
To enhance the quality of the eircom broadband service, we will be carrying out essential network maintenance from Wednesday, 19th April 2006 to Tuesday, 25th April 2006 between 00:01 and 07:00.


The above is country wide maintenance, people from all over are having problems, whatever they are doing will be finished by Tuesday.

Also


Possible disruption to your broadband service
To enhance the quality of the eircom broadband service, we will be carrying out essential network maintenance on Thursday, 28th April 2006 between 00:01 and 06:01.

If you are an eircom broadband customer in one of the areas listed below, you may experience a 2 hours disruption to your broadband service.

Churchfield
Dungarvan

This one is likely to affect the whole of Cork as the BAS (Broadband Access Server) for all of Cork is located in Churchfield, this handles all the authentication, allocation of IP addresses and routing, so if they take this down, all of Cork is down, but if it fixes the problems, then fair enough, but unfortunately you may have to wait until Thursday and then see how your connection is after that, certainly not an ideal way to run a business

ozt9vdujny3srf

azezil wrote:

Not true, infact ISP's make a loss on dialup customers.

Pff, what would you know about eircom support?

aidanodr

Hi Douglasman,

Yip I had already seen that, but forgot to pop it up here. Thanks for that.

- Regardless, I think this is still no excuse to have an area the size of Carrigaline without Internet for effectively two weeks solid by the time that date expires. It is having a real effect on local businesses. How can this be ok?

- As I said earlier - Buddies of mine talking to Churchfield Engineers - they are not aware of problems in the Carrigaline area. Surely if this were routine maintenance - straight away they would have mentioned so.

- Why is it that when you ring Eircom Tech Support [ from a Carrigaline phone num for example ] that they still insist on trying to blame you and your PC as the fault. Does Tech Support have any central logging system? Why not even say - these interuptions will persist until this essential maintenance is finished. We apologise AND do not expect it to go further than Tuesday 25th.

Hopefully this is all correct though [ those maintenance notices you posted ] and that we all can get back to normal. BUT I will say it again - for any area to be without service that long is just not on - maintenance or not. If I went to a customer and took their accounts PC away to fix and did not furnish them with an alternative system in the meantime - OR if that system crashed and I told them sorry cannot get to you for two weeks - Well you know what would happen there ... would you accept this? Anyway - you get my gist ... I hope!

Cheers
Aidan

aidanodr

AND those maint notes from Eircom state "essential network maintenance from Wednesday, 19th April 2006 to Tuesday, 25th April 2006 between 00:01 and 07:00". The part here of interest - between 00:01 and 07:00. The problems in Carrigaline are 24/7

Solair

On a positive note at least there's a healthy level of demand in Corks suburbs if they're maxing out eircom's DSLAMs

douglasman

Solair, Yes there is huge demand for broadband in Cork suburbs, the douglas exchange was maxed out last year, and Carrigaline at present is maxed out as far as I know.

Aidan, Yes I appreciate your frustration. I've never got a straight answer from eircom about anything, and treating their customers the way they do is wholly unacceptable. To give you an simple example, I recently wanted to get an address correction on my eircom bill, easy you would think, so I emailed customer service to correct it as they had it wrong. Not possible to be corrected, no can do, addresses are got from Cork County Council, when I then asked who in Cork County Council should I contact to get my address corrected on my eircom bill, well no reply, they just couldn't care a less, and would rather have wrong information on their computers then bother to fix it. Very few companies would survive with that level of customer service but due to poor regulation, p*ss poor politicans, they can get away with it here.

Raskolnikov

As of Monday morning, I'm still not connected. It's gotten to the stage now where 'Joe Soap' on the street is complaining about the situation. I heard some biddy infront of me in the local Super-Valu checkout even mention it.

Rippy

I think I set a new speed record today- 155kb down 1.86 kb up. Thats right less than 2 kbps upload. (BT BB through Carrigaline exchange).

Not trying to sell any body anything , but I am currently doing wireless installs around Carrigaline for VOIP Ireland. Reliable 1mb down, 512kb up, 2 voip phone lines, free calls anywhere in Ireland, all in for €49.

I think I am going to get very busy unless Eircon sort it pretty dammed quick!

Installing my own one tomorrow.:D

corklike

[QOUTE]Possible disruption to your broadband service
To enhance the quality of the eircom broadband service, we will be carrying out essential network maintenance on Thursday, 28th April 2006 between 00:01 and 06:01.

If you are an eircom broadband customer in one of the areas listed below, you may experience a 2 hours disruption to your broadband service.

Churchfield
Dungarvan [/QOUTE]
Hi all,

Been lurking for a while reading about your eircon pain

This notice from theirs just goes to show what they know. As if Churchfield only affects people living in the Churchfield area! All eircon DSLAMs in the various exchanges around Cork are backhauled over Layer 2 tunnels to the BAS in Churchfield (that's why you see Churchfield as the first hop if you do a traceroute, you only see layer3 or IP hops).

I'm not on DSL myself - are all exchanges in the 021 area suffering? Speak up non-Carrigaline people also!!!

I know that some people in Carrigaline were doing ping-plotter and seeing a lot of loss on the first hop....

I'm on wireless - working great...

corklike

aidanodr

I do believe we may be coming out of the Dark Period we were in It is now Day 13, but after 12 Midnight. I can now FTP and everything seems faster.

Fingers crossed - have we been delivered?

Aidan

aidanodr

MMMM - just tried a few streaming radio stations. Not as solid as before, its dropping and restarting. Seems to tally with the packet loss which still appears to be there,

Trying:

www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive [ one of my fav stations, talk radio ] using WMP

Anyone else?

Aidan

Raskolnikov

Day 6: No connectivity.

zen63

Crazy problems in Carrigaline still - last night it took 25 attempts to send a 400kb email This morning is no better.

As of this morning the same problems are affecting my business line in Douglas also.

What can be done, when no one in Eircom has any ability to fix these problems - RANT RANT RANT RANT

aidanodr

Hi Zen63, Raskolnikov,

It ia now 10.08am - 25th April. I have now got full service back. The packet loss seems to have sorted itself- 0% at the moment. I would suggest one thing. RESTART your Router. Turn it off, leave it off for about 30 seconds, turn it back on, after about 2 minutes re logon to the Broadband again and see how ye are getting on.

I am with EIRCOM Broadband direct - are ye? Maybe this is taken care of first, not sure. Are ye with BT, UTV?

Hope this helps,

Oh Yes, my broadband bill just dropped in the door - now the battle begins with Eircom Accounts

Keep us posted, I will pop up any other observations,

Cheers
Aidan
www.netactivesolutions.net

Raskolnikov

I'm with BT. When I get home from work I'll give it a blast.

Heads will roll though if I don't get that little yellow light on my router.

dimerocks

seems to be working better for me today too. I will be calling the billing dept soon though.

douglasman

corklike wrote:

Possible disruption to your broadband service
To enhance the quality of the eircom broadband service, we will be carrying out essential network maintenance on Thursday, 28th April 2006 between 00:01 and 06:01.

If you are an eircom broadband customer in one of the areas listed below, you may experience a 2 hours disruption to your broadband service.

Churchfield
Dungarvan

Hi corklike, To even further demonstrate how incompetent Eircom are, Thursday is the 27th April, so we can't even be sure whether they mean Thursday 27th or Friday 28th!

aidanodr

Hi Lads,

Interesting one this - I was talking to a business friend in Douglas / Rochestown area earlier. He told me - as of today that his broadband is now gone slow, not as slow as we were in Carrigaline though. He ran pingplotter and guess what - hugh red areas on the graph and about 20-30% loss on each hop. Have the deckchairs been moved? Is a new thread about to appear - Eircom BB Douglas??

Uh ohh and Cheers
Aidan

zen63

Glorious it now works in Carrigaline and I'm happy at home!

Shame that Douglas now doesnt work, where my office is

I know that BT run over the eircom system, but i have just moved 1000 euro per month of business away from eircom becuase of this problem and the sheer useless support and accounts staff. Just had enough of idiots.

Raskolnikov

You're speaking too soon guys, it's still down for me here in Carrigaline. Called support again, completely clueless, they don't know what the problem is let alone know a resolution date.

I'm with BT by the way.

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

This is interesting - now Im confused. Have they only moved some of the deck chairs? Or is the problem still with non Eircom B/Bnad customers only. That they are going to "look after" their own base first. OR will it shift from one customer to another based on Router reboots and who is in first.

Did you guys try a complete reboot - off / on - then disconnect / reconnect -username / password?

Wouldnt surprise me if I tried again tomorrow and found it slow again

Lets see what others say ...

Cheers
Aidan

Molly

Mine works \o/

aidanodr

For all those on BT and for all of us really not lookin good:

BT withdraws from broadband negotiations with Eircom:

http://www.electricnews.net/frontpage/news-9682300.html

According to Danny McLaughlin, CEO BT Ireland "It is with great reluctance that we withdraw from this industry forum. However, eircom continues to frustrate the progress of LLU and we do not see positive indications that a future change of ownership at the monopoly provider will bring a more progressive approach.

The working group established by ComReg, which our members joined in good faith, has failed to make any impact. Eircom continues to abuse its dominant position in the market and has failed to make any real effort to progress local loop unbundling”, said Tom Hickey, Chairman of ALTO. “In the meantime consumers and businesses suffer.

Arggg
Aidan

aidanodr

AND:

http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0425/telecoms.html

Rippy

My BT is now flying, 1.61 mb down, 194kb up. Thanks for the deckchairs Douglas!

radiospan

My UTV BB on the Douglas exchange is just back after being down since about 6. It had been on and off all day.

Necronomicon

Seems to be completely back to normal for me today!

parsi

douglasman wrote:

Not possible to be corrected, no can do, addresses are got from Cork County Council, when I then asked who in Cork County Council should I contact to get my address corrected on my eircom bill, well no reply, they just couldn't care a less, and would rather have wrong information on their computers then bother to fix it. Very few companies would survive with that level of customer service but due to poor regulation, p*ss poor politicans, they can get away with it here.

Did you try and contact Cork Co. Co. directly and see what the issue was ? I can see their point in some ways - the actual street names/road names/ additional names do emanate from the council or are at least managed by them.

douglasman

douglasman wrote:

Hi corklike, To even further demonstrate how incompetent Eircom are, Thursday is the 27th April, so we can't even be sure whether they mean Thursday 27th or Friday 28th!

Seems like Eircom must read these boards (Hi Guys!!), official message on eircom.net now reads..


Possible disruption to your broadband service
To enhance the quality of the eircom broadband service, we will be carrying out essential network maintenance on Friday 28th April 2006 between 00:01 and 06:01.

If you are an eircom broadband customer in one of the areas listed below, you may experience a 2 hours disruption to your broadband service.

Churchfield
Dungarvan

douglasman

parsi wrote:

Did you try and contact Cork Co. Co. directly and see what the issue was ? I can see their point in some ways - the actual street names/road names/ additional names do emanate from the council or are at least managed by them.

hi parsi, no I didn't contact Cork Co. Co. in the end, I agree that they decide street names etc. but my prob was the official Cork Co. Co. street name was the name I wanted Eircom to use, they had the wrong street, so it really had nothing to do with Cork Co. Co., it was a database on a computer system within Eircom that needed updating but it cannot be done. Luckily the postman knows anyway, so it's not a major drama. If you ever need the "Installation at:" address changed on your Eircom bill, it's impossible, whatever goes in first day cannot and will not be changed, but that's Eircom for you. If I was to change over to Smart (I cannot, they are not coming to Douglas) but if they were, I would have to continue to use the wrong street address in my application as it has to be exactly what is on your Eircom bill or Eircom will reject it, it's madness but anyway...

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Things are moving at pace it seems ... All good news for us:

Local Loop Unbundling could be one wire closer after Communications Minister Noel Dempsey pledged to beef up ComReg's regulatory powers and put a time limit on current industry negotiations.

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9682727.html

This is all good ... and about time ... and should have been the case years ago - ie give comreg more teeth.

Cheers
Aidan

Raskolnikov

Nearly one month later, my broadband is at last finally working.

:rolleyes: