Moving to Ireland: Who to sign up with?

Saracen

I'm coming to Ireland from the UK in under a month. One of the first things I always get set up is broadband. Just wondering what the market's like and what comes recommended.

I'm not a heavy user, but am technically minded. I expect to use around 2-4GB bandwidth per month, no more. I'm currently on an 8MB package with 2GB bandwidth and not exceeded it, paying £14.99.

Should I go with Eircom, or NTL, or what? Might want a bit of P2P, but I'm by no means a heavy downloader. Would prefer something that allows me to ssh/VNC in, after setting up my router accordingly.

A friend is on something called Blueface for VOIP, is that recommended? I'll be making plenty calls to the UK.

Thanks.

watty

You may not actually have any choice of supplier.
It depends EXACTLY on the location. Even Cable TV and Phone line is not a Guarentee of DSL or Cable Broadband.

30% of households don't have a phoneline. Of those, 82% of exhanges may be enabled, but the line may not pass.

I'm not sure what percentage of cable has broadband, maybe was 45%. 410,000 UPC (Chorus/NTL) subscribers are on MMDS which has no broadband.

There are many other options. It's hard to find out availability without a phone number for ADSL or address for anything else. Wireless systems you may not know till they come to install. A tiny number of places have LLU or Fibre.

Wireless systems are VERY unequal in performance varying from basically ISDN speed for IBB Ripwave to DSL/Cable performance for Digiweb Metro with good Line Of Site.

Some companies have many different systems. www.callcosts.ie

_CyRuSS_

where abouts in Ireland are you moving to? Dublin? if so which area of Dublin... i'm on ntl myself, they've been solid for years but are going downhill lately ever since UPC bought them out.. which is funny considering UPC/Chello is a huge ISP throughout Europe, you'd think they'd know what they're doing..

anyway for your requirements it shouldn't be too bad finding something, since you're not a heavy downloader and don't mind a datacap. I think most people would say Smart or NTL, i'd stay clear of Wireless personally

Hal1

Well here are the latest pityfull offerings from, Eircom & NTL. Irish Broadband (they also do a phone package) and Clearwire do a wireless package, but will only work if your in the coverage area. Blueface is an option if you want VOIP although there are other providers with different rates so shop around. Just to add, there is nothing wrong with IBB there was a time when I would have agreed with the above, but they have greatly improved their service in the last 12 months.

dogpile

8meg for £14.99! boy are you in for a culture shock :cool:

Urban Weigl

Here are a couple of options:

Fixed Wireless: Digiweb (www.digiweb.ie), Last Mile (www.lastmile.ie) and Irish Broadband (www.irishbroadband.ie)
DSL: BT Ireland (www.btireland.ie)
Mobile Broadband: 3 (www.three.ie)

Saracen

Thanks for all the tips. I'm likely to be in the Dundrum/Clonskeagh/Churchtown of Dublin, so I'd imagine well served.

I think I'd prefer some sort of self-controlled service as opposed to wireless. But keep your suggestions coming. Most of my downloading is done at work

Saracen

The BT Total Talk + Broadnbad package looks good as it includes unlimited calls to Ireland and the UK which would suit me well. Any comments on the service?

byte

BT Ireland have been notorious for their dire billing system.

Dunno if problems have been ironed out yet though.

Solair

If you're in an urban area there's quite a wide range of DSL providers, most of them re-selling eircom's wholesale services.
These generally don't take all that long to set up. However, there are horror stories.

Unbundled providers like Smart and Magnet can take quite a while to get you connected as the current LLU change over system is unbelievably slow.
However, if you bear with them, you'll get a decent service when they do eventually get your line.

UPC (NTL & Chorus) are rolling out cable internet. You have to realise that cable in Ireland has been around for much longer than in the UK going back to the 1960s in some cases. Major network upgrades are underway, but they'll take a good while to complete. The cable cos have, for decades, had a virtual monopoly on access to UK terrestrial tv services. So, provision of broadband and telephony wasn't really a big deal for them. This has all changed since Sky Digital (Ireland) now has access to BBC1/2, C4 etc.
If you can get internet access over cable, it's usually pretty good.

Finally, there is a whole range of wireless providers:
These come in 2 flavours:
"Broadband in a box" i.e. you've a small wireless router that connects to their network.
or, systems that require a small antenna installed on your roof. These can be totally unsuitable for apartments as you may not have anywhere to mount the antenna / you may need permission from the management company / landlord.

I'd suggest you have a look at :
http://broadband.gov.ie/
They give you a long list of providers, prices and availability.

thebman

Avoid IBB Ripwave (Have Breeze from IBB and its good), Clearwire (block everything and its slow and expensive), Ice Broadband, Last Mile, BT, Perlico, talk talk (don't think they even offer broadband but they've been promising its coming to customers).

I've seen plenty of bad reports about the above operators and would not advise anyone go with them. I'd advise against mobile broadband because it is limited in what it can do. 3 offer a pretty decent service in some areas (where not over subscribed) which is good enough for some people like my parents.

I'd recommend IBB Breeze 2Mb package which 4 of us share in Maynooth and never have any problems. Comes with unlimited downloads and no port blocking. I can also play on Xbox Live and use my headset to talk to people with no problems so I'm guessing you could use VOIP/Blueface with it too.

Breeze requires an attachment on your house though.

gmailer

hi, i was with ntl and they are pretty quick but you dont need a phoneline with them, if you want to get a telephone package then utvip is pretty good and they give free calls to the uk

http://www.u.tv/utvipxlx/index.asp?loc=ie

tak

Depends on how many minutes call time you need per day to UK.

If > 60 mins per day => BT TT & BB
If < 60 mins per day => Digiweb's Metro Lite BB plus Blueface VoIP is better.

Above balance based on calls to UK landlines.
UK Mobile calls would be cheaper on Blueface.

Metro Lite : €19.95 /month (free install if you pay full year)
Blueface Freedom Basic: €9.99 /month for 300 mins. Excess at ~ 1.4c/min.
VoIP modem for Blueface: €50.

Do sums on typical call demand.

watty

Indeed Metro's builtin phone system has cheaper calls than eircom and "talk" package too.
See http://www.digiweb.ie/broadband_metro_index.asp?i=80&i2=81&i6=90&zzz=hm

cjohnson

If I were you I would go with Eircom because they own your phone line. So if you have DSL, any problems with the connection Must go through Eircom. So if you're with say Irish Broadband and something goes wrong, they have to "escalate" the problem to Eircom and you have to wait.

Urban Weigl

I'd go with BT since they give you unlimited calls to any landline number in Ireland and the UK for an extra ten quid. So to recap, for for €45, you will get: a phone line, 1Mb broadband with a 10GB cap (seems like that will be more than enough for you, and besides they don't enforce it), unlimited calls to Ireland and the UK already included. For a few quid more you can also get 2 and 3Mb with a bigger cap as well.

There's a 6-month contract AFAIK.

If you don't need the free calls to the UK, go with Metro. It's only €19.99 and includes a phone line. Can't beat it on price, and Digiweb are a good company.

Liam Byrne

If it's in your area, I'd go with Smart - 3 meg download speed, 1:1 contention, ADSL2+ technology (so better signals further from the exchange) no caps/limits, and all for under €16 (unfortunately €40 including the phone line rental)......you'd save over €390 per year and get a better service than the equivalent eircom package!

Similar to BT, Smart also has the option of paying an extra tenner for the calls package.

As for the comments re your chosen ISP needing to escalate any problems to eircom, I wouldn't let that stop me getting a better deal.......once you're up and running, problems are relatively rare, so it's hardly worth €390 per year extra.

Plus you can always report eircom if they're too slow fixing anything to do with the line.....you would be, after all, paying them €24 every month for the privilege of renting their line, so you're entitled to get them to fix it.

True, there have been problems in the past with this, but the regulatory body - ComReg - has recently been given more teeth in order to tackle eircom when it is too slow to resolve things like that.

Other than Smart, Digiweb's offerings look tempting (because you don't need the line rental) but make sure you can get a decent signal.

mrplop

Welcome to the World of yesterday!

Urban Weigl

Digiweb's "no line rental" offer is great, if you can get it (my sister in Athlone couldn't due to a coverage issue). For €19.99 a month, you literally get a phone line and broadband. Unbeatable.

jor el

Saracen wrote:

The BT Total Talk + Broadnbad package looks good as it includes unlimited calls to Ireland and the UK which would suit me well. Any comments on the service?

The service itself can't be faulted and their prices (for DSL including line rental) are only beaten by Smart Telecom (but Smart's availability is very sparse). The max speed you'll get though is 3MBps down and 384kbps up, a fair way off the 8M you have in the UK. That comes with a 30G cap, which they don't enforce as of yet, but you're not a heavy downloader so that's not a problem. There's no problem with running VOIP or P2P services on BT broadband either, gaming works well too. For P2P I'd change the default port numbers to something different as I've found it to be quite slow, I think they do traffic shape on the common P2P ports.

Having said all that, you won't find a more incompetent billing and accounts department than the one in BT Ireland, and their customer support can be fairly lacking basic aptitude too. If BT make a mistake (likely) and you ring up about it, you can expect them to treat you like it's all your fault.


Oh and mrplop, Ireland isn't the world of yesterday, you're giving Saracen a false impression. It's more like three or four years ago. If I weren't crying I'd be laughing.

Saracen

Both Digiweb and Smart look interesting. In both cases, it seems the whole phoneline is transferred away from Eircom, is this correct? If so, how have people found the phone services? Is Smart the best idea if coverage available, given the Fiber network? I can't seem to find their call costs on their website though.

Liam Byrne

Saracen wrote:

Both Digiweb and Smart look interesting. In both cases, it seems the whole phoneline is transferred away from Eircom, is this correct?

If only! Unfortunately not......eircom still "owns" the phoneline and you/Smart just rent it from them, with both ends plugged into Smart equipment (a standard router) at your house and at the exchange instead of eircom's equipment.

The phone calls and BB are via Smart though (think someone said Smart use some sort of VOIP, although I'm open to correction) but I've never had a problem with calls.....apart from a sneaky stunt that eircom pulled last November when they blocked all of Smart's customers incoming calls without telling anyone!

Dunno about relative call costs, coz I've the "pay €10 up-front for all landline calls" option.....

tak

The "extra €10" only gives free landline calls inside Ireland and Saracen wants low UK call costs. Smart are charging 15.4 c/min to UK !

It has to be either BT TT & BB or Digiweb + Blueface VoIP, according to your likely UK call demand.

Digiweb has intrinsic phone and fax too (if your PC has a small V90 modem).
But the minimum charge on Digiweb calls is 6c (versus 2c by Blueface) and higher rates per min than Blueface also.
Read through them yourself -
http://www.digiweb.ie/pdf/voice_rates_metro_06.pdf
http://www.blueface.ie/rates/rates.aspx

I've no personal experience of BT in Ireland but I and other associates have Digiweb Metro Lite and it's a solid enough b/band service for that money layout in this poorly telecommed state . . .
Look at what our French brothers are getting to choose from -
http://guide.journaldunet.com/categorie/247/index.shtml

KevinPowell

You can make free call to UK using a local number for dublin when you subscribe to this site.http://www.uni-voipfone.com. You can even make calls using your o2 moblie phone to UK for 1 cent a minute in the evening and weekends.