Broadband again...

Rozie

I'm moving up near UCC, somewhere near Pouladuff road, which is up off the end of barracks street nearest the college.

What is available here? I don't think I can afford E10 a week, I'd prefer between 5 and 8. Again, I don't need a great service just one that works and is considerably faster than ISDN.

trixter

I talked with someone last night who lives in that area and said they use novanetworks.ie for wireless and asked specfiically about rain, signal quality, etc and they said that its really good even when it rains. I dont know what their cost is, but they seem to offer a range of products. They might have something that fits in your budget.

There is always the ripwave (of which I have heard bad things but YMMV) from ibb. IIRC they are under 20EUR/mo.

dahamsta

DSL should be available up there from any provider.

If you're talking to Nova, ask for Dave.

adam

opus

Assuming they survive, Smart Telecom still have a good enough ADSL deal for €35/month including line rental. You do need an existing phone line though.

Rozie

The phone line thing will probably be problematic.

Nova Networks are horribly overpriced... I'd like to get Ripwave, essentially, those speeds would be fine, but pay a little extra for better service/reliability. I can't afford over 30 a month.

dahamsta

[Full Disclosure: Nova is a prospective customer of a business of mine and I know the owner. The opinion below is not based on this, however; it's based on years in the business and as a member of IrelandOffline.]

Rozie wrote:

Nova Networks are horribly overpriced.

Sorry, but they're really not. Wireless connectivity is generally more expensive than other routes, and Nova is actually quite inexpensive as compared to other wireless operators. In fact when you consider that their services are symmetric, the price is comparable to DSL services.

Ripwave is a piece of shít. Really, you don't want it.

adam

lostinsuperfunk

Maybe check out chorus. Broadband over the TV cable system, no phone line required.

trixter

lostinsuperfunk wrote:

Maybe check out chorus. Broadband over the TV cable system, no phone line required.

They are generally good even for voip, however they have issues at times with voip, lots of jitter (packet latency changes dramatically).

If you arent doing anything that requires realtime (voice, realtime video - not something prebuffered though, some games, etc) my experience over the last 6 weeks suggests that you will get about 80% good and 20% or so bad usage. For some reason it seems worse 3-6am, and generally good during the day (when usage should be higher, odd ...)

dahamsta

What's Chorus' customer service like since John Malone took over? They used to have the worst customer service on the planet, and of course now they have a cable monopoly in Ireland, courtesy of Mary Harney.

adam

~Rebel~

Rozie wrote:

I'd like to get Ripwave, essentially, those speeds would be fine, but pay a little extra for better service/reliability. I can't afford over 30 a month.

Ripwave, i've heard very 2 sided reports on. A major plus though, was when a friend of mine called them up, he was around the barracks st area as well, and asked about how good the signal would be, they quite honestly said it might be poor, but that he could try it and if it wasn't satisfactory, just to send it back free of charge. If you call up and find this is the case yourself, it might be worth a try, for the cheapness if it does work out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Rozie

dahamsta wrote:

[Full Disclosure: Nova is a prospective customer of a business of mine and I know the owner. The opinion below is not based on this, however; it's based on years in the business and as a member of IrelandOffline.]

Sorry, but they're really not. Wireless connectivity is generally more expensive than other routes, and Nova is actually quite inexpensive as compared to other wireless operators. In fact when you consider that their services are symmetric, the price is comparable to DSL services.

Ripwave is a piece of shít. Really, you don't want it.

adam

But I don't know where I'm going on Work Placement yet. The contract is a minimum of 12 months, I don't want to have to pay E40 a month when I can't use it! Is there any way to halt the contract if I can't cancel it?

Are Amocom any good?

dahamsta

I was just correcting your assertion on their pricing, I don't work for them. Why don't you ask them?

Skud

ibb is **** just get a laptop and use the college wireless system no point in getting bb at home for 2 - 3 months

Rozie

I emailed Nova this morning and they didn't get back to me. Amocom got back to me several times during the day but it sounds like they take a while to come around.

I'm not sure I like Nova. There is no reason why they couldn't get back to me.

legalimmigrant

Indeed, when we moved here about 18 months back Nova were extremely poor. First we had to chase them half a dozen times before someone'd pick up the phone, then their installer bloke tells us he's looking for a line of sight to someone's house in Tivoli because that's where the mast is.

That's not do-able from the island, and since we've got a north-south house he asked whoever was on the other end of the phone if he could just point us at the business customers' antenna. They refused.

Then there's some mumbling about we're on the second floor and apparently there's not a ladder in Ireland for that so we'll need to pay for them to rent a cherry picker and it'd be another 400 euro for that even if they could connect us, which they can't.

Hopeless amateurs all round, basically. Avoid.

You've got four options really:

a) Chorus (and its capped usage)
b) Find someone with IBB and persuade them to bring the kit over to see if it'll work chez vous - if you can't test this successfully ferchrissakes don't buy anything
c) You may be able to connect to UCC's own network on wifi if you're very lucky
d) "Good morning from Eircom. How can we screw you today?"

Let's face it, chances are it's gonna be D.

morgana

I'm with Amocom (for all of 3 weeks :-), although not in Cork City. So far they are good. There was one outage which was fixed in about 90 minutes otherwise consistently good speeds, they respond to mails and actually call back when they say they will (what a sad state that this is the exception rather than the norm).

olearydc

Hi
For BB in Cork....Wireless


http://www.novanetworks.ie/

http://www.amocom.com/

http://www.digiweb.ie/

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/index.php

I have heard great reports on Novanetworks....Amacom.....digiweb
Woefull reports on IBB

Digiweb is the cheapest 20 Euro/month...I have smarttelecom (great)..but also use Digiweb
A number of people I know have Digiweb or Amacom (all good reports)

Then U could use VOIP..for phone calls....
No need to pay for line rental off eircom

Padraig Mor

olearydc wrote:

Hi
For BB in Cork....Wireless


http://www.novanetworks.ie/

http://www.amocom.com/

http://www.digiweb.ie/

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/index.php

I have heard great reports on Novanetworks....Amacom.....digiweb
Woefull reports on IBB

Digiweb is the cheapest 20 Euro/month...I have smarttelecom (great)..but also use Digiweb
A number of people I know have Digiweb or Amacom (all good reports)

Then U could use VOIP..for phone calls....
No need to pay for line rental off eircom

I have Nova. They are absolutely dreadful. Unfortunately they are the only provider in my area so I'm stuck with them. The connection is down very regularly - it's just back now after being down since Friday evening....

edit: and as soon as I posted this, it went down for another 15 min......

Solair

I haven't heard any bad reports about Digiweb. However, there are reports of Chorus having serious issues with outages in various parts of the city for broadband service.

If your Chorus cable service is flakey, I wouldn't go near them for broadband as it means the local network's not in great shape.

If your cable signals are good i.e. you're not getting pixilation on digital or you're not getting snow on analogue, it should be OK.

They'd have to go a long way towards improving their reputation before I'd consider going anywhere near them though.

I've heard nothing positive about Irish Broadband either.

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

If your Chorus cable service is flakey

Isn't this a non sequitur?

parsi

Wouldn't it be more of a sequitur really ?

A phrase like "if your Chorus service is super-duper, crystal clear" would be more non sequiturish...I think...

bjd

i live in carrigaline in a new house so no landline

rang around for some wireless products, spoke to Nova and Amocom and found them expensive to be honest given that I wanted the net for general use - chorus wont supply broadband to carrigaline at the moment and digiweb sales rep said they dont do it either in carrigaline, have no plans to in the next few months and advised me to put in a land line and then they could do it. Twit.

any alternatives for carrigaline other than a landline please let me know

cheers

dahamsta

parsi wrote:

Wouldn't it be more of a sequitur really ?

Absolutely. Brain was turned off that day.