Dialup options?

wiredup

It's been a while since I looked at the Dial Up products available in Ireland so I though I'd ask here.

Been on UTV for the last 18 months or so.

For 24.99 Euro a month I get:

180 hours internet anytime.
Free evening & weekend phone calls to Ireland & the UK
Fairly good service.

I also have my line rental swithed to UTV because I refuse to have anything to do with Eircom.

So are there any better deals to be had. I cannot believe there is no unmetered dialup. More hours would be good.

uncle_sam_ie

There actually is. I'm using vodafone. http://www.vodafone.ie/sme/price/dataroaming/3ggprsplans/index.jsp I'm not in a 3G area so, I'm only getting dial-up speeds but at least I'm connected 24/7.

Sponge Bob

Vodafone 3g data is the same price as eircom line rental + 180 hours aty €50 a month

Its a lot faster in a 3g area and in some 2g areas where the lines are crap but the signal is good (maxes at 43-57k in a 2g area) and if you have a laptop you will be able to connect anywhere.

No time restriction and cap of 5gb

You can chuck the landline then

cgarvey

Vodafone will give you a reasonable consistent good dialup speed .. and you should enjoy a much more reliable experiece than on dialup. You don't have to worry about time spent on line (flat fee), and the 5GB cap will only be an issue if you're a fairly heavy net user.

However, you don't get calls included in that, and nor can you use any VoIP software (against there T&C and some VoIP apps, like Skype, are blocked). So if you value your landline calls more than your net access, then this might not be the option for you. Don't forget to factor in line rental in your comparisons.

Dundalk Daily

Have a look at these guys, the irish farmers association, saw it advertised in the indo farming section last week. Not sure of the pricing structures but they are offering much faster dial-up. Hope it helps:

http://www.ifatelecom.ie/

netwhizkid

For what Dial-up would cost you and the fact it is now comparable to driving a donkey on the M50 if you could get away without it you would be much better off as would your mental health :mad: It is a waste of money and whatever Internet work needs doing could be done in a Internet Café. Astra2Connect is holding potential as a cheaper 2-way satellite system if it launches sometime next year.

I had to send on 18 photos to a person and it took me 4 and a half hours on Wednesday and the file size was only 7MB, as he said to me on the phone afterwards it would me quicker for you to drive the 100+miles up to Waterford than go through it, albeit more expensive with petrol costs as they are. If you do go with dial-up for gods sake don't go with Eircom, them f****rs deserve nothing. See my sig also.

Laguna

Dundalk Daily wrote:

Have a look at these guys, the irish farmers association, saw it advertised in the indo farming section last week. Not sure of the pricing structures but they are offering much faster dial-up. Hope it helps:

http://www.ifatelecom.ie/

Ack, they're using that godawful software OnSpeed to do it, which compresses all the pictures on a website to make them unrecognisable which marginally increases browsing time, but makes for a far uglier Internet experience... it won't speed up downloads either.

thebman

Yeah we had OnSpeed for a while. A far better option I find is to setup a local proxy server with a lot of cache for the common sites you go to. All the images end up in cache so you don't have to download them. If the new version of a site doesn't load, just click refresh in your web browser and the proxy will update the cached version although this will be slower.

Large local caches are a must on broadband. Most people don't have their web browser cache set to max size even.

Another good option is in Opera web browser which allows you the choice to disable or only use cached images as this will allow you to only request the data from the website, saving you the download time for the images when all you really want is the data in most cases.

The downside is that some websites don't have alt tags for their images so there are certain images you need however you can request the images you need by right clicking on an image and selecting reload image so you only download the images you need.



These options are a life saver if you use 56K or have a low bandwidth limitation.

Sponge Bob

Frankly the IFA should do a deal with a Mobile Operator like Voda or O2 who could provide a good package including 3G data in many cases or GPRS failing that and could maybe do free tractor to tractor calls during the silage season as well

In order to complete 3G coverage in Ireland the mobile operators and the farmers will need to 'converge' as the farmers own the hilltops on which the masts need to go ..eh!

eircom , OTOH, deliver a rubbish service in rural areas where the data speeds do not match GPRS, never mind 3G:(