broadband for the hills

emmemm

Last year this was heralded as the solution to internet users who wanted a faster service but couldn't receive broadband via their telephone line.
How far have North West Elecronics come in rolling out their wireless system?
Which areas are covered and are speeds much improved over dial-up?
Still waiting for installation here in Churchill area.

nanook

emmemm

i dont know what the deal is with the rollout but i know smashey or byte are usually up to date with this.

But i do know that if you cant get a date, digiweb provide a good service for satellite broadband

emmemm

I heard that with satellite broadband you still need a dial-up connection.If I get wireless I intend dicnnecting the landline to save on line rental costs.
One thing annoying me is the special deals offered by phone companies for discounted and free calls seems to be at the expense of internet users.

smashey

nanook wrote:

emmemm

i dont know what the deal is with the rollout but i know smashey or byte are usually up to date with this.

But i do know that if you cant get a date, digiweb provide a good service for satellite broadband

I will have to bow to byte's superior knowledge on this one. Strangely, I googled North West Electronics, and found nothing. I thought a company in their line of business would at least have a web presence.

DonegalMan

smashey wrote:

I googled North West Electronics, and found nothing. I thought a company in their line of business would at least have a web presence.

http://www.nwewireless.com/

(Found on Yahoo but not Google, I'm noticing that a lot these days)

nanook

emm

i know with satelite it does not matter about dial up. maybe its just a gimmick but we didnt have to do anything with dial up

byte

"Satellite broadband" comes in two flavours.

THere is one-way, which uses a standard satellite dish and LNB, which uses dialup connection for uploading, and the satellite connection for downloading.

Then there is 2-way, which basically does up and down from the dish and as such doesn't use dialup. Of course, this setup uses a special LNB to allow for uplinking.

Setup costs for 1way is much cheaper for 2way, though monthly costs woudl vary as you're paying for the 1way fee's and of course the dialup costs but neither shoudl be referred to as broadband IMHO, due to the amount of lag associated with the services.

Really satellite broadband is a last resort, and should only be considered if you can avail of nothing else, like FWA (wireless) or ADSL (broadband via phoneline).

nanook

see i was right, byte would know

emmemm

Wouldn't want any lag so will continue the long wait.
Did NWE receive a subsidy to roll out this service?
If so maybe DB knows the progress made so far.
Thanks all.

byte

You'd probably be best ringing NWEWN as their website is not updated at all...

http://www.nwewn.com/contact.html

jimmycrackcorm

Bad sign if they don't even bother with their site.....

it'll be a long time before churchhill joins the modern world! Aren't ehy connected to the letterkenny exchange?

pdebarra

And I am far from impressed.

First off, the guy they sent out to install us made a complete mess of it:
He punched down the wires into the faceplate in the wrong order, he gave us the wrong IP addresses, and he installed a non-functional modem. He didn't hang about to see if it worked, just took off.

So when we got someone out to fix it, it worked beautifully for a while. Until one day I came home and found.... nothing. Not the faintest glimmer of a connection. Throughout that evening, the connection gradually crept back up, peaking at a speed of "very slow". The next several days were exactly the same. So they decided that a tree was blocking the signal from the transmitter. I thought that it was rather odd that a tree should so suddenly start to cause issues, but they were adamant.

So once again someone came out to fix us up. This time, they moved the antenna to a location where there is abolutely nothing between it and the transmitter. It was slow then, but not as bad as it could be - not as bad as it had been. Since then, the connection speed and throughput have dropped considerably. We are now once more in the same state as we were when that tree was supposedly blocking the signal. I use the speed tester on http://www.nwewn.com , which usually reports throughputs of around 20 kbps - not so good on a 2 mbps connection.

To deal with, they are very frustrating - it's very hard to get them to call you back or to send someone out to fix you up.

We are seriously regretting getting rid of our ISDN line - it was considerably faster and a lot more stable than our "always-on" broadband connection.

You have been warned.

Oh, I should mention, I live in Rathmullan and the transmitter is in Fahan, just across the water. It is visible from my house with the naked eye.