Ice Broadband steadily becoming even more terrible

Asok

I'm sticking this for a while ala the IBB thread

Sponge Bob

It worked with IBB and IBB have behaved since !!!!

TCollins

Excellent. Now their sins are here for all to see. about time.
i think i'll email them this link.

bushy...

Since its been stickied to achieve the goal of getting a response from them , should really split off the posts #15 to #29 to a new topic.

mrplop

JohnnieM wrote:

Out of interest.... What area are you in?

I'm in Hazelhatch, Celbridge.

inky1

I have been trying to get ICE since last october, I have been told lies after lies after lies about the service being available in my area in 3 weeks. This perpetual 3 weeks still have not arrived.

each time I phone I get promised that some one will phone me back tomorrow which coincidently has not arrived either. If this is their sales attitude I shudder to think what their service will be like.

Unfortunately Like so many others here ICE may be our only option to move away from DIAL-UP Internet. Yes I can hear you laugh, but its true.

mrplop

You're almost better off with dial up to be honest...

TCollins

Called earlier to complain and they told me if i got their voip service then my speeds would improve. So basically if i give them more money they will give me the service i already pay for.

Gillo

Is anyone using them in Balbriggan, I was going to sign up to them tomorrow as they seem to have pretty good pricing, but after reading this thread, well...

Could some do a speed test for me please??

Cabaal

TCollins wrote:

Called earlier to complain and they told me if i got their voip service then my speeds would improve. So basically if i give them more money they will give me the service i already pay for.

So they are forcing you to buy their VoIP product so that your speeds will improve and thus they are ensuring that no other company's can have a workable VoIP service on their network.

Certainly interesting and something I'm sure company's like blueface would be very unhappy to hear

mrplop

gillo wrote:

Is anyone using them in Balbriggan, I was going to sign up to them tomorrow as they seem to have pretty good pricing, but after reading this thread, well...

Could some do a speed test for me please??

Seriously - Don't do it.

I was one of those guys that decided to give it a go despite the warnings.
I did it out of desperation after moving from a house that had solid 3mb cable broadband.

It's been a pain in the ass from start to finish and certainly don't do it if you've got a ready to go phone, I estimate it's cost me about €60 in calls to support alone - that's when they bother answering.
About 85% of the time it goes to voicemail and they NEVER call you back if you leave a message.
Another interesting fact is that after six and on the weekends their support service consists of ONE guy.
During the day it's TWO.
I'm amazed they've got away with this sh!t for as long as they have.

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote:

It worked with IBB and IBB have behaved since !!!!

Thats debatable. As soon as that thread disappeared my connection went to pot

inky1

I had IBB previously to moving house and suffered their appaling service. but the 6 or 8 months prior to moving I was getting what it said on the tin. I put it down to them finally getting their act together and investing into their network infrastructure. Also the familar 30 minutes that you were on hold waiting for support were also gone. In a nutshell IBB got their act together together.

ICE seem to be almost a mirror image of the poor service & support that we knew all too well from IBB. Unfortunately we are powerless to do anything about it. Comreg currently have little to no control over Broadband providers.

Sponge Bob

4 years ago the rules changed. Licence became "Authorisations"

Comreg have a standard authorisation and ICE applied for an got it . The conditions ICE accepted are here

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0381.pdf

section 18 states (paraphrase) "the applicant shall comply with all directions given on end user rights by comreg"

so ice (and other carriers like clearwire for example ) applied for and accepted section 18 . Lets move to end user rights .

these are outlined here

http://www.comreg.ie/consumer_initiatives/consumer_contracts.492.563.html

The last one in the list on that page is important . An authorised ( means same as licenced used to) carrier such as ICE should tell you what their complaint procedure is .

The method of initiating procedures for settlement of disputes in accordance with Regulation 28.

Not having a complaints procedure is a breach of your end user rights and a breach of their Authorisation , go straight to Comreg . So you start by lodging a formal complaint ...if possible.

If there IS a complaint procedure they usually have about 10 days to fix it from date of formal complaint . After that you can go to Comreg .

The specific detail is here

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg03129.pdf

ComReg would also like to draw attention to the requirements of existing
Community consumer protection legislation relating to contracts, including but not
limited to European Communities(Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts)
Regulations, 1995 S.I. No. 27 of 1995 and European Communities (Unfair Terms in
Consumer Contracts) (Amendment) Regulations, 2000 S. I. No. 307 of 2000. In
addition attention is drawn to S.I. No. 207 of 2001, European Communities
(Protection of Consumers in Respect of Contracts made by means of Distance
Communications) Regulations, 2001. In addition undertakings should be mindful of
relevant data protection legislation and conditions relating to the use of personal
information.

ironingbored

From the ICE website the 3Mb package has a contention ratio of 36:1 so your 1/2 Mb is well within that. Your pings are slightly long though. I'd give their tech support a call and see it this could be tweaked.

mrplop

ironingbored wrote:

From the ICE website the 3Mb package has a contention ratio of 36:1 so your 1/2 Mb is well within that. Your pings are slightly long though. I'd give their tech support a call and see it this could be tweaked.

Did you actually read the rest of the thread?
Calling tech support is a long expensive, arduous process that invariably results in nothing whatsoever.

As far as the contention is concerned are you suggesting that the majority of Ice's customers are online and downloading 24/7?

The connection is ALWAYS bad.

Here are some speedtest results for 3mb packages from other providers and remember the contention for some of these is 48:1.

Digiweb Metro 3mb
2796 download
465 upload

BT 3mb
2503 download
317 upload

Metro 3mb
2815 download
482 upload

Irish Broadband 3mb
2912 download
7779 upload(?)

Eircom 3mb
2634 download
314 upload

UTV 3mb
2664 download
328 upload

chorus 3mb
2891 download
365 upload

nobodythere

You sure it's not a 3 mega BIT line?

The figures kinda matchup!

dd02

While the Download and Upload rates on Speedtest seem valid, the ping times to the Dublin server are consistently bad. You will get better ping times to the London server. This would suggest that the server is not peered at Inex.

Quality Voip service is latency dependant rather than throughput based.

DD

delakota

I've been with this setup since last February, and up until last Thursday had no great problems. 3Mb package, and it performed reasonably well for my needs, with the occassional short-lived drop in speed and a few bouts of off-the-charts latency. Voip quality was a bit hit-and-miss, but nothing too major though. Last Thursday I noticed the speed had dropped off big-time. 200k max. It's been the same ever since, regardless of the time of day, so I can't see it as being contention related in any way.

Rang their 'support' line and eventually got through to somebody(after about an hour of trying). The guy informed me that there was work being done on part of their backhaul infrastrucuture in Stradbally, and this was having a knock-on effect on my bandwidth allocation in Maynooth ...... Apparently this was all being carried out by a mysterious individual known only as "he", so when I asked who this was, he explained to me it was a lone Cisco engineer working round-the-clock to rectify it. ETA? Tomorrow.

It's now 5 days later and the problem has only worsened. I can't get anybody on the telephone, and they NEVER respond to voicemail. I want out of this crock. I'll be lodging a formal complaint, and if this is not enough to resolve the problem, I will be taking it up with Comreg and cancelling the contract.

Digiweb Metro is now available in Maynooth, and if my research serves me correctly, they piggyback on the same ESB Telecom antenna at Taghadoe as do ICE, which means I already have LOS. Can anyone confirm that?

JohnnieM

delakota wrote:

if my research serves me correctly, they piggyback on the same ESB Telecom antenna at Taghadoe as do ICE, which means I already have LOS. Can anyone confirm that?

Dont know bout Digiweb But I do know ..Ice dont use the Esb tower in tagadoe..

delakota

JohnnieM wrote:

Dont know bout Digiweb But I do know ..Ice dont use the Esb tower in tagadoe..

Really? My bad, that being the case. The only other possibility that comes to mind is the mast at Moneycooley. Is that where you're referring to?

mrplop

Today I've got good latency and an almost reasonable upload speed but as for everything else...





This is so frustrating.

JohnnieM

delakota wrote:

Really? My bad, that being the case. The only other possibility that comes to mind is the mast at Moneycooley. Is that where you're referring to?

It's at BallyGoran (Beside the water resovoir)

delakota

It seems to be back to normal now:



Have had a stable connection at roughly that speed for 4 or 5 days now. I had sent them an email asking what the problem was and to shed some light on their complaints procedure, which wasn't evident from their website. Also mentioned the Comreg word. No response to the email, but the connection was back to the right speed the following day, which may or may not have been a coincidence, I can't be sure. Is anybody else in the Maynooth area still suffering from low speed with them?

dodohert

Ha!
I was just about to go for ICE when a little voice told me to look up boards.ie and Lo & behold I've changed my mind!

I got a call back from ICE today (sales guy) and told him about the post I'd read here, he seem surprised! (Yeah right).
Anyways I'm in Limerick & got a leaflet thru the door last week about there service I'm currently with eircom and was thinking of way to save money on my BB 7 tel service I guess after reading these post, It puts ICE out of the picture.

They really need to come on here & reply to ppl concerns, heavens know their customer support leaves a lot to be desired!

Thanks to all for warning me off ICE!

pyxxel

Funny that, I also had a little voice when I read with interest the ICE brochure they dropped in my letterbox twice. I immediately thought of their similarities with IBB who I dealt with briefly a few years ago, and hadn't been impressed. Call me old-fashioned but I simply trust cables more - inside and outside the house.

I'm in Dublin West, Blanchardstown/Mulhuddart, just moved to an estate where NTL offer TV but no BB. Didn't like any of the other BB options like eircom or Perlico. Instead, I went with SMART who just started servicing my area with a top package of 7Mb/640Kb. After a wait for 5 weeks (they had promised 10 days) and a few initial hiccups and about 8 tech support calls, I eventually got a signal. Here's the latest speed check from this morning:



(oddly enough, the UK d/l results are better than the Dublin ones while uploads are quicker to Dublin...)

I can live with that! :cool:

LadyJane

pyxxel wrote:

Funny that, I also had a little voice when I read with interest the ICE brochure they dropped in my letterbox twice. I immediately thought of their similarities with IBB who I dealt with briefly a few years ago, and hadn't been impressed. Call me old-fashioned but I simply trust cables more - inside and outside the house.

I'm in Dublin West, Blanchardstown/Mulhuddart, just moved to an estate where NTL offer TV but no BB. Didn't like any of the other BB options like eircom or Perlico. Instead, I went with SMART who just started servicing my area with a top package of 7Mb/640Kb. After a wait for 5 weeks (they had promised 10 days) and a few initial hiccups and about 8 tech support calls, I eventually got a signal. Here's the latest speed check from this morning:

>>>>>>>

02.ie New 3.6 Wireless 3G Broadband Anyone Tried it? its 15 Euro first 3 months then 30 Euro Inc Vat per month

Anyone tried it? available Dublin Dundalk Drogeda,Naas etc see www.o2.ie

Just want too know is this the Real Mc Coy
If your in Contract with UTV Internet first 3 months is it possible to get out of their 12month contract without MASSIVE PENALTIES?

Any Suggestions

Also Technical Support with O2 BB is it a normal landline number to call?

They have a 10GB Cap per month then its 5 eurocents per minute.
Does Smart Telecom offer a Wireless Service Now?
Digiweb and Irish BB are a disaster for the LiffeyValley Shopping Area Dublin

LadyJane

TCollins

ICE speed today is 71K down 178Kup and pings of anything from 30ms to 450ms with 5% packet loss.

Tested with speedtest.net and pinplotter pinging various sites at intervals of 1
second.

VOIP still useless and i'm definitely not buying ICEs voip.
Its expensive and if they cant manage a proper bb service i dont expect them to manage VOIP either

Charles Augustu

Golly, am I glad I entered "ICE broadband problems" into Google the other day. They have recently opened for business in my area, and I was very interested, Eircom being tear-inducingly bad, but am sceptical about the promises.
Does anyone have any reports from this neighbourhood on how they perform? I live near Murroe, Co Limerick.

mrplop

Well I've got to say the service was okay for a while but now it's back to the way it was - I really hate these tossers...