Broadband Providers Poll [Sept-Dec 06]

Moriarty

As per previous poll.

Only vote for providers you have current personal experience of using, so it gives as fair a snapshot as is possible of the current state of services.

Any I've missed, suggest them in here and they'll get added.

Zapho

I'm using a crowd called FWI (www.fwi.ie) and cover from Ballina to Killaloe to Clonlara in Co. Clare.

Its a wireless service with 1mb up and down as their standard package and no download limit. I'd recommend them if you're living in those areas.

Saruman

BT here.. grand... just stay away from their voice package which i am unable to get due to the idiots constantly loosing my application. Customer service is terrible.
The broadband package though is great.

revileandy

I've got the eircom 1mb package, I'm happy in as far as it does what it says on the tin consistently. The price though is robbery, think I might switch to BT (depending on how many votes they get here)

daffy_duc

I'm with Irish Broadband.

I used to have their 4mbit Breeze service, which was fantastic.

I've since moved, and while I'm waiting for permission to install on the building, Ripwave works great.

RangeR

I have Chorus in Naas. 6Mb:512Kb. Works brilliantly for me and I always get full speed. I would say that I am mostly happy in that the product does everything I ask of it. The only problem I have is a totally stupid 40GB cap on the 6Mb connection. The mind boggles.

nl

Im with Net1. They have been great. Absolutly no complaints for the last 4 months. Very consistent speed and the ping times are great.

gary.b

Imagine recently changed their pricing.

"Always On" package: 1024 kbit down / 128 kbit up | 20 gigs download limit - (€19.99 a month ) Can now be "Upgraded" to the same package but for €9.99 a month. Not as great as it sounds.

Catch: They want €50 for getting rid of a "1" in some input field next to my account number... - And enter a fresh 12 month contract with them.

There is no way a few clicks of the mouse can cost €50.

zilog_jones

Still with BT after nearly 2 years now (or was it 3? O_o). They're grand as long as you don't have to deal with them personally

Only problems with actual connection was when the exchange on Roches St. imploded (Eircom's fault), our phone line got damaged (crappy carpenter's fault), and I killed my router (possibly my fault - who's to say?).

Patrickof

The vodafone unlimited 3g product is not listed, I have it, am happy with it but would prefer a wired solution.

iregk

May be a good place to ask this question. I'm with Eircom for phone and broadband. Its robbery and I'm going to switch. Is BT worth a shout as it looks a lot cheaper!

Also is the eircom router (the wireless one) good to use on BT once I copy the settings?

davehey79

im with Crossan Cable Longford on 9MB download, 650k upload for 39.90 a month and very happy with it. great for downloading the big demos on xbox live for the 360

Moriarty

Net1, O2 3G and Vodafone 3G added as options.

Sponge Bob

Moriarty

How about other regional WISPs such as

Permanet
Westnet
Fastnet
Lashtmile
IceComms
Torque
PremierBB

and franchise operations such as

Hosting365BB
Amocom

to name but a selection that is by no means definitive

Vadrefjorde

I'm with NTL and despite the recent changover(downgrade) all is still well. I would consider moving to IBB for the higher upload speed if they weren't still sh*t

byte

I'm on Smart's 3mbit package. No problems since I joined up about 6 months ago. Has been very reliable so far.

1huge1

currently i have the worst thing on that list ' not being able to get broadband at all' although whether atari jaguar is better or worse...

Foxwood

iregk wrote:

May be a good place to ask this question. I'm with Eircom for phone and broadband. Its robbery and I'm going to switch. Is BT worth a shout as it looks a lot cheaper!

Yes.

Also is the eircom router (the wireless one) good to use on BT once I copy the settings?

Yes.

kmick

Was on Eircoms 2Mb Surf and Talktime package. Costing 70/month and was very happy with it. Never had any issues tbh. Moving to BT 3MB/total talk for 63/month. All calls to Local/National/UK under 1 hour long are free and I get an increase of 1Mb on speed for 7 euros less. everything has gone smoothly so far they say i will be up and running in the next two weeks. Judging by some of the comments on BT on here it may not go as smoothly as that.

Mossy Monk

using Casey Cablesurf in Dungarvan

no cap, 9 meg download for €40/month. only lost connection once

very happy with it

DonkeyStyle \o/

I'm glad you decided to run a fresh poll on this... on the previous one I'd voted "happy with BT" ... which it later turned out I was very unhappy with them.

I'm with Smart now, a few annoying teething problems and a long wait getting connected, but running along nicely now.

scsa

I feel like my opinion shold be worth 5 votes.

Got IBB ripwave at home since I'm renting, and it's ****. But I'm a home user so it doesn't really matter. Work with several business too as a networking dude though, and those that went with IBB as the cheapo broadband option have ALL had major, gob-smackingly shocking problems with their Breeze connections.

IBB: **** **** **** **** ****.

suppafly

With Eircom 3mb for about 2yrs or so. Pretty happy with it. No problems and always get goo connection. Only thing is that its mor expensive than the others so thinking of changing. Has anyone in Cork used the Chorus cablenet BB? i was thinking about 6mb on as its only €40. Also anyone got an opinion on the imagine BB and phone service?

lucernarian

It's interesting to see that NTL have the second worst satisfied/dissatisfied customer ratio so far. At 17:9. Clearwire are worst with 2:3.

SeanW

I'm on BTs package. Better value than any of that Eircom rubbish, and it does the business for me. Their website isn't very good though.

I wish I had IBB here though because those upload speeds look nice.

Buceph

I'm with Nova Networks, and I have been for about three weeks to a month. So far they have been disgraceful. Constant outages, billing errors, the connection can disappear at the drop of a hat and can last anywhere from five minutes to three days. I've experienced a dodgy connection where I have to constantly refresh pages, hoping the the connection picks up. They have no weekend support. They have been disgraceful since I got the connection.

They only thing that's keeping me going is the first hand endorsments I've had from some of their other customers.

shaptakster

I'm with icecomms and their support is woeful.
Their service was great until about 3 weeks ago and now its next to useless. Support dont even answer emails for days - if ever. I'm just glad i never had to call their support department before.
I started a thread about it.

Psychedelic

i recently switched from eircom to perlico (well, my father did, w/out consulting me :mad: ) and i'm pissed off with it so far.

we had eircom bb for the last few years, never a problem with it. got good download speeds when it was 1Mb, even better when it upgraded to a 2Mb connection. i was getting anywhere between 150 - 300Kbps download speeds depending on where i was downloading from.

now we have perlico a few weeks, download speeds were averaging 100Kbps at first, last few days 70Kbps, tonight it's 40Kbps and even went lower than 30Kbps at one stage, crap. it's supposed to be a 1Mb connection (says so on my router homepage; it says 12.0Mbps in the bottom right corner of the screen connection status area).

we were waiting a few weeks for the router to arrive, and we were w/out broadband for a week during that time.


conclusion: avoid perlico.

Stephen

I'm *very* happy with UTV nowadays. Its been solid for about a year now. They have had very serious problems in the past but ever since they finally peered with INEX they've disappeared. I'm on their 2Mb/256k deal with unlimited* use for an extra 6 quid. (I've been using UTV BB since 2003, and was on their quasi-unlimited time dial up thingy before that)

Pings to UK servers for games are great since they joined INEX - about 30ms. Used to be 70+ with frequent spikes and packet loss.

* unlimited = you get throttled if you abuse it. Haven't been throttled yet in many months and I do down/upload a lot. No idea what my actual usage is, must check it on their site.

I did get stung badly by them in the past for breaking the 8 gig cap on their old package by a very expensive gigabyte or two.

Skatedude

using eircom for phone and broadband for a while, never had any problem with it except for the rip off pricing, have been trying to move to smart but that may not be a good idea if they are going bankrupt

Bill Andrex

IBB RESULTS - (so far)

I have IrishBroadband (IBB) and am happy 19 10.11%
I have IrishBroadband (IBB) and am NOT happy 9 4.79%

Lets have a look at the REAL statistics:

32.14% of all IBB respondents are NOT happy :eek: thats well bad, steer clear... you'll be sorry you didn't!

mickoneill30

Cool. And 100% of Eircom users are happy.

Mr_Man

I'm am with Regional and I am happy with their service (2mb/1mb).

M.

BendiBus

I've just revisited this thread for the first time in ages and realised I made a voting error

I seem to have voted "Happy with Netsource"!

I'd like to make it clear that I have NTL and I'm happy.

Can a mod change my vote? Being such an influential individual it's important to me that my vote doesn't mislead anyone into making the wrong broadband choice

Mits

Eircom is expensive but the has the best support. I dont like download limits.
Bt offer better packages but the support is bad.
Vodafone 20mb / month package is a rip off, microsoft updates and antivirus update use up your allocations and coverage is poor, keeps disconnecting.
Vodafone unlimited coverage is poor, keeps disconnecting.
Imagine cheap but works and you get a static ip.

At home I'm with Eircom for 3 years and have had very little problem. I'm on the home plus package, I would like no download limits and a static ip. but apart from that it has been good. I used the gaurdian service which slows the connection a lot but does keep the kids safe.

thebman

Have SkyDSL Satellite Broadband. Reasonable solution but want proper broadband in my area. Have not tried Vodafone as it's a bit expensive for my liking.

SkyDSL is affordable and works at least 90% of the time but does not seem to work properly with fast user switching in XP.

Paulj

i have magnet broadband...speeds are really good and the download limit is large at 25gb (+50c per gig thereafter), there's no upload limit. Cost is 30e per month. It's worth noting that they won't provide a password for the equipment they provide (which is free of charge) which means you can't setup virtual servers on the router - that's my only complaint tbh.

mob

i have BT and i'm not happy i've had problems and there customer service is shocking.

thinkin of changing to digiweb metro it looks like a good package

mikedragon32

I'm with Eircom, happy with the service, relatively happy with the speed, not bothered by the limits, I don't really d/l that much.

The support is great. The only problem I've had in the 11 months was apparently caused by me, but they were of great assistance.

Pricey though. I was looking at the Magnet website and did a line check which says I can get 2meg BB. They advertise it for €15pm. Do I keep my eircom line and continue paying line rental to them or do I pay that to Magnet also? Apparently because we have eircom Phonewatch, we have to keep the eircom line. Is this true?

Paulj

The current situation (for me anyway) with magnet is that the exchange in my locality hasn't been upgraded fully yet so i can't avail of the 15e/month package. Instead i pay 30e/month for a different package, and i pay 24e/month to eircom for line rental.

Magnet said that when they upgrade the exchange (in about 5 months) i will then be able to get the 15e/month offer. At that point i can choose to pay the line rental through them also which would mean i'd be paying 15+24=39e/month to magnet and paying 0e/month to eircom.

I dont know about the phonewatch thing.

Foxwood

mikedragon32 wrote:

Apparently because we have eircom Phonewatch, we have to keep the eircom line. Is this true?

Every single copper telephone line in the country belongs to eircom. So if you have a phone line, it's an eircom phone line. under certain circumstances, eircom will "unbundle" that telephone line to a third party that has spent a boatload of money to install their own hardware in your local telephone exchange. Instead of charging you €20 plus VAT for the phone line and the use of a telephone number, eircom charges the other operator €15 plus VAT (per month) for just the bare copper. In most cases, that other operator is going to provide telephone services over that wire, and probably some other services. But the wire still belongs to eircom.

Phonewatch needs to be able to make a phone call in the event that you house is being burgled. While in theory they should be able to make that call over some other operators network on the same copper line, there a lot more that might not work that in that case. So it's quite likely that eircom Phonewatch will say that they'll only support the service if you stay with eircom.

Maybe Smart and Magnet need to bundle an alarm monitoring system into their packages. Alarm monitoring is actually one of the main uses/drivers of LLU in the US.

mikedragon32

Thanks for the info guys.

FWIW, I got an e-mail from Eircom today stating that they're reducing the cost of my BB package by €10.

chickalacka

looks like smart are winning with 100% of users happy. lower number of replies probably because users have no reason to visit this forum. the percentage for eircon is amazing. shows you can fool some of the people all of the time. no wonder smart are in trouble. for €10 per month i have 3Mb/256kb no cap and with smart there is no connection fee. as far as i'm concerned if you're not smart you're stupid.
(edit) should also like to point out that smart have their own hosted forum so advice is knowledgable and fast. also it is smart that eircon is fighting in the courts.

jonski

chickalacka wrote:

looks like smart are winning with 100% of users happy.

I wonder if that is still the case after the news story this morning , maybe they are not complaining because they can't get online .

chickalacka wrote:

as far as i'm concerned if you're not smart you're stupid.

I was tempted to go with smart but they told me I would experience downtime of around 4 to 5 weeks . I am glad now I wasn't tempted .

DonkeyStyle \o/

jonski wrote:

I wonder if that is still the case after the news story this morning , maybe they are not complaining because they can't get online.

(Apparently) Most of us are still online... for now.
Should give me some time to research the alternatives at least.
Not sure what the phone line is doing, probably not working like the rest of the country, but sure I hardly use it as it is.

Bisgrad

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

(Apparently) Most of us are still online... for now.
Should give me some time to research the alternatives at least.
Not sure what the phone line is doing, probably not working like the rest of the country, but sure I hardly use it as it is.

I was meant to be connected to Smart this week...looks like that's not going to happen now!

It looks, from the results of the survey above, that BT or Digiweb are my best options. I'm leaning towards BT at the moment...am I right?

Cheers!

Dellas

Yeah looks like BT will be your best option .

ape_doc

With Smart for over a year now, for less than €40 a month I get 6Mbps (until Christmas, 3 after that) and unlimited downloads. Also was no connection fee or line rental.

Took them a while to get my connection set up, after that its been easy sailing though

Oh_Yeah

It makes me sad how people always are just happy as long as they don't have a dial-up connection, Broad band in this country is a joke, with old technology and antiquated speeds and contention ratios on the ridicoulous side, you pay for 3Mbit/sec and if you are lucky you get 2 for a few minutes, no efforts are made to get the consumer better speeds, Eircom just sit on the monopoly back and shut down any providers who don't play ball and scam money down their pockets without doing anything to increase investment in Fibre optics and other more modern solutions, why is it that we have to be happy with a 2Mbit lines, that can just about sustain web tv on a good day, I know that it's progress that we can get broadband at all in many places, but we are still getting done over big time in comparison to the rest of Europe. Only a few lucky people can get Magnet faster 8 Mbit speeds, but their service is apparently not great either :mad:

And yes I have BT with a crappy contention ratio and yes they are ok as long as you don't need to talk to them or in any ways have problems, BT has without doubt the worst customer service in Ireland! but do they care, no, because there is no real competition and only sheep who are happy with the way things are...:cool:

DonalMcTavish

I have Icecomms or Ice broadband and would like to give them a big fat zero for help and service.

SpoonOg

IrishTLR wrote:

I have Chorus in Naas. 6Mb:512Kb. Works brilliantly for me and I always get full speed. I would say that I am mostly happy in that the product does everything I ask of it. The only problem I have is a totally stupid 40GB cap on the 6Mb connection. The mind boggles.

I too have the 6mb:512 in Naas, but of late (the last 7 or 8 weeks) the service has been growing steadily slower and having more outages (at one point down to 200kb:500kb, which is a bit silly). It seems not to be the contention rate or the signal so I'm assuming its the fact that they only use 2 gateways out of Naas, and as the best option in Naas, not to mention no phoneline required chorus have been signing people up at a tremendous rate,
that leaves the 2 said gateways totally overloaded. the rumour mill has it that a fibrering is being put in (the much used and fabled 3-4 months to launch chessnut) but having bitched to them on a regular basis for weeks, I'm now on a fairly steady 4mb:500kb (still not 6 humph). But I (from experience) know that they are really the only game in town (as far as Naas goes anyway) having had and ditched, Eircom, BT & Clearwire they are Easy to deal with, are providing an excellent (if currently overloaded) service. If they added another gateway out of town, in the intrim (till the fabled fibrering) all would be rosie in the garden. my Gaming pings dropped from 80-100 down to 20-30, my downloads come at anywhere from 300 - 500kps depending on source. The Cap is there to stop bandwidth raping. Oh and I heard the other day that Newbridge will be going live (with Fibre) within weeks (I may become jealous):D