Moving to Magnet

kin9pin

I'm hoping someone has an easy answer to this and please move if it's in the wrong forum.
I currently have NTL Broadband Max, but no longer have any need for their TV package as I now have Sky+ multiroom. Seems a waste to pay fot NTL TV merely to get broadband.
My phone is currently with UTVTalk.

I applied for the Magnet 4Mb package and entered my UTV account number in the "current phone provider" box. Got a phone call from a nice lady at Magnet who informed me that I would have to go back to Eircom before my number can be ported to Magnet.
Is this right? I phoned Eircom today, who asked me for my universal account number, whatever that is. The Eircom guy tried to put me through to ComReg as apparently "you are entitled to know your universal account number". Obviously I got cut off so haven't managed to speak to ComReg yet.

I've gone round the houses a bit, but my question is this. Is it necessary to go back to Eircom or can I give Magnet this "universal" account number (isn't the UTV account still essentially on an Eircom line?). I was going to leave this until the new year, but my NTL has been down for the last day (D18) and I've just lost all faith in chello or whoever now attempts to run NTL.

Thanks....and sorry again for the loooooong post.

Sponge Bob

kin9pin wrote:

Got a phone call from a nice lady at Magnet who informed me that I would have to go back to Eircom before my number can be ported to Magnet.

Yep, you must cancel UTV and become an eircom customer so that Magnet can put the orders through.

Do Magnet not offer shared LLU where they do the BB but the phone rental and number remain with UTV ?? . If you pport your number its full LLU

I've gone round the houses a bit, but my question is this. Is it necessary to go back to Eircom or can I give Magnet this "universal" account number (isn't the UTV account still essentially on an Eircom line?).

Its an 8 digit account number you must giver any prospective supplier and is printed on yoru old eircom bills and =yoru UTV bill , you are sorta right of course but Comreg have made a complete mess of everything to do with provider switching and it changes all the time as Comreg have another idea which breaks something else.

Abolishing the dysfunctional and muppetish Comreg and putting Daft Dave in charge of telecoms in Ireland would be a great idea.

ro2

I think you will need to go back to Eircom, but in your case that's not too big a deal - it's only your phone service. UTV will be able to give you your UAN number, you can see it through their online billing system.

When you change to Magnet you should ask for the Line Sharing unbundling. They put in a splitter on your line and your voice traffic goes through the usual Eircom switches and your broadband goes through Magnets equipment. If they fully unbundle your line you'll be moved over to a VOIP system which won't work with your Sky Multiroom so Sky will start to bill you the full price for each Sky box you have.

Don't cancel your NTL broadband until your Magnet broadband is in and working, it can take a long time. Also if you want to keep your old phone number make sure you spell this out to them on the phone. If they don't move your number across and you want it back you have to cancel the line and return to Eircom - 25 working days - then return to Magnet again.

kin9pin

Thanks for the replies.
I was looking at the full LLU as I thought the line sharing option would only give me 2Mb/256k as opposed to 4Mb/512k and 100GB allowance. I didn't realise the phone is VOIP, won't this affect pings when someone is on the phone?
The sky issue is a bit of a problem as well.

ro2

Line sharing is still LLU, it just means the DSL frequencies are used by Magnet and the voice frequencies by Eircom. You should be able to get any of the packages with line sharing.

VOIP won't effect your pings.

kin9pin

ro2 wrote:

Line sharing is still LLU, it just means the DSL frequencies are used by Magnet and the voice frequencies by Eircom. You should be able to get any of the packages with line sharing.

VOIP won't effect your pings.

Unfortunately, their website give the impression that 4Mb is only available if I switch the phone to them. Looks like I'll have to keep looking around as I don't want to take a chance on upsetting Sky.

kin9pin

ro2 wrote:

When you change to Magnet you should ask for the Line Sharing unbundling. They put in a splitter on your line and your voice traffic goes through the usual Eircom switches and your broadband goes through Magnets equipment. If they fully unbundle your line you'll be moved over to a VOIP system which won't work with your Sky Multiroom so Sky will start to bill you the full price for each Sky box you have.

Thanks, not really sure I understand this though. From what I've read/been told my existing phone sockets will still be used with Magnet even though it's VOIP.
Sky check the phone connection by sending a signal to the box which tells it to dial Sky. If my phones will still work connected to existing sockets why will I have a problem with Sky (connected to the same sockets)?
Do Magnet offer line sharing unbundling and if so does anyone currently have this service in place with their 4Mb product?

Thanks again.

JNive

the sky box uses a 56k modem, as a result its 'audio' is far less tolerant to jitter and compression than just speech. basically, if you need to have sky boxes connected to a telephon line, you will need them to be connected via a standard Voice line and not put over VoIP, jhence getting magnet to split your line into voice+data instead of what it is by default which is data-only. Once split, the voice channel is passed to Eircom,a nd the Data line to Magnet, hence the term Shared-LLU