BT or Magnet or Smart??

flybynight

So we've finally reached the last week of our 12 month contract with Clearwire...Thank God!

I'm now looking around for the best BB option and hoping for a bit of advice from the knowledgeable crew here! After dismissing the idea for so long I've pretty much decided to go for a fixed line option even though it kills me to pay line rental to Eircom when I've no need for a landline. I live in an appartment block in Ringsend, Dublin which means the more reliable fixed wireless options like Breeze & Digiweb are not possible and Ripwave and mobile broadband options sound just or nearly as bad as Clearwire from what I read here!

I've kind of narrowed it down to the 3 options in the title (although I'm open to other suggestions). Basically if anyone has any thoughts on which they think is the best please let me know. Or if you have good or bad reports about any of these I'd love to hear them. BT seems to be the most expensive so I'm leaning towards either Magnet or Smart at the moment. I'm prepared to have my mind changed though!

Bulmers

been with BT for 3 yrs now, 3mb package, never any problems. I think once IOL went down and was intermittent for 2/3 days but other than that, no complaints. Modem is just a big ball of dust now in the hall, never been touched!

BSC

I'd say BT, even tho i am not with BT myself, but this is the only good operator in this list. I'd say when you choosing internet service provider you also have to think about customer service and provision.

cheerio!

byte

I'm using Smart and think it's a very good package for 40eur. Also no cap (though like many/all ISP's has an "acceptable usage policy").

Plus I don't think it's expensive to upgrade to higher speed, depending on line quality.

dub45

BSC wrote:

I'd say BT, even tho i am not with BT myself, but this is the only good operator in this list. I'd say when you choosing internet service provider you also have to think about customer service and provision.

cheerio!

How can you seriously recommend an ISP that you are not with yourself particularly one like BT who has a long history of wreaking havoc with customers with their billing system? Not to mention their consistency in mysteriously losing customer applications? Their refusal to give people terms and conditions for the inconsistently applied deposit etc etc?

And on what basis do you dismiss Magnet and Smart as not being good operators?

bk

BSC wrote:

I'd say BT, even tho i am not with BT myself, but this is the only good operator in this list. I'd say when you choosing internet service provider you also have to think about customer service and provision.

Smart and Magnet are probably two of the best ISP's on the market, with some of the cheapest prices and superb sales and customer support *.

BT has the best prices amongst the bitstream operators (Eircom resellers) and the service works very solidly, however their billing department are complete thieves.

Both my sister and parents signed up for them, and the service itself is good, but they completed f**ked the billing, stealing about €200 from my parents account and about €150 from my sister and it took months to sort it.

* Recently signed up to Smart Vision myself, I keep getting caught off guard when I call them and it is immediately answered by a person, no waiting half an hour listening to hold music. And when I asked some difficult questions that they didn't have the answer to, they asked their technical staff in the network operations centre and rang me back in half an hour with an answer to all my questions!!!

Liam Byrne

If you can get Smart, do!

ST

Another Happy Smart Customer here.

Onur

I would Say MAGNET 100%, i am ariganaly from the Netherlands, and when i moved here i had one fear ! that was bad internet...afther reading about 3/4/8 meg lines i started crying, believe me you would also if you are used to 20-40 meg, anyway i found out that magnet offerd a package that had about 8 meg max...i took it and to my suprise i got 24 Meg, very fast about 2000kb's a sec so that means a movie with in 7 minutes (700mb's) also never had any problems with connection or what ever, i am paying about 90 euros for tv (80 channels) free teephone (landline with in Irelan) and the fast broadband / adsl 2 connection.

i would say magnet 100%

psicic

Availability is an issue. I was so delighted when I moved to my current apartment and found I could get SMART. It's fast, reliable, cheap and no download cap. It's forty times better then Eircom every was for me.

Spear

Notch another happy Smart customer here as well.

sioda

Add another Happy Smart customer

spurious

Is this a trick question...?

No contest - Smart if you can get them.

zeusnero

another very very happy Smart customer here

manster

eircom for me. More expensive but you get what you pay for,

People seem to have short memories with what happened with Smart last August.

ST

manster wrote:

eircom for me. More expensive but you get what you pay for,

People seem to have short memories with what happened with Smart last August.

The only problem I experienced "last August" was loss of incoming calls. There was no loss of Broadband and I could still make outgoing calls.

I'm sure the original poster has taken all that into account in selecting the possible options.

It will be interesting to see how Eircom holds up if Babcock & Brown sell off the Retail side of the business

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/owners-of-eircom-to-net-euro18bn-in-breakup-1040455.html

Spear

manster wrote:

eircom for me. More expensive but you get what you pay for,

People seem to have short memories with what happened with Smart last August.

Nothing happened to me last August. I did gain an extra 3 megs on my connection for free though. Maybe it's the people with short memories that have forgotten what Eircom tried to do and still keep giving them their business.

Skatedude

definatly smart, i get an 8meg line including line rental for 51euro and no cap where eircom was nearley 90 for a 3meg line with rental

McSandwich

Is NTL broadband available in Ringsend?

Sponge Bob

Have Magnet not pulled completely out of residential now???

Liam Byrne

manster wrote:

People seem to have short memories with what happened with Smart last August.

Not really - it's just that we have better memories of everything before last August and everything since.....like (in my case) a €46 phone bill last month that included line rental, 3MB uncontended, uncapped BB, all local & national calls plus a few calls to mobiles.......

If you had only one hiccup in an otherwise great relationship (and indeed, if that one hiccup was caused by a bitchy third party who was stirring **** because they wanted you for themselves) would you dump her ?

Tiesto

Smart all the way.
Flawless victory!!

Sid71

Can you keep your own telephone number now or do you still have to change it?

flybynight

McSandwich wrote:

Is NTL broadband available in Ringsend?

Not sure. It might be available to Ringsend but definitely not to my appartment block which is wired for Sky only.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Have Magnet not pulled completely out of residential now???

Yeah, I wondered that too. Although they're still listed on getbroadband.ie as providing residential broadband only packages they've taken all reference to it off their website - they now only list residential packages including TV. However, when I called them they still do residential broadband only to certain areas (including Ringsend)


Anyway, thanks for all the replies. We've pretty much decided to go for Smart due to all the positive results here and that fact that its working out cheaper than all the other options. Gonna start with the 5MB package with unlimited download which works out at €44 per month including line rental - and always have the option to upgrade to 6 or 7MB for an additional €5 or €10 respectively. I was tempted to go for Magnet but their basic package was working out at €75 including line rental (just for broadband)

wasim21k

i think bt have download limit so it mean its not cheap and then limit and smart i m thinking in next few comming days.
and i heard from lots of people complaning about bt customer service even one of my friends had this experience and seen him hours on the phone with bt to sort out things :mad:

dub45

flybynight wrote:

Not sure. It might be available to Ringsend but definitely not to my appartment block which is wired for Sky only.

............................................................................

Anyway, thanks for all the replies. We've pretty much decided to go for Smart due to all the positive results here and that fact that its working out cheaper than all the other options. Gonna start with the 5MB package with unlimited download which works out at €44 per month including line rental - and always have the option to upgrade to 6 or 7MB for an additional €5 or €10 respectively. I was tempted to go for Magnet but their basic package was working out at €75 including line rental (just for broadband)

Keep in mind that all these speeds are subject to the suitability of your line. But the tech guys in Smart will help you get the best speed of your line.

flybynight

dub45 wrote:

Keep in mind that all these speeds are subject to the suitability of your line. But the tech guys in Smart will help you get the best speed of your line.

Thanks for the tip. I'm a bit of a dunce when it comes to such things. So what should I be looking to do once we get connected? Check the speed and then what?

spurious

If your speeds are showing as bad on this page,
Smart speedtest
you can post your attenuation figures here:
Smart forums
and the guys will try help you.

You will get the figures on attentuation etc from your modem/router's 'Status' page They will look something like this (these are mine):
DSL Status: UP
DSL Modulation Mode: G.dmt.bisplus
DSL Path Mode: INTERLEAVED
Downstream Rate: 9214 K bps
Upstream Rate: 608 K bps
Downstream Margin: 12 db
Upstream Margin: 17 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 31
Upstream Line Attenuation: 16

To get into your modem type 192.168.1.1 in the address line of your browser. Default password for access to the supplied Smart modem is admin/admin
If you are having a problem, those figures will tell the Smart people a lot. Leave your modem always connected to Smart as they run testy things during the night to check it's all OK.

Liam Byrne

Sid71 wrote:

Can you keep your own telephone number now or do you still have to change it?

Officially (Government and eircom spin :rolleyes: ) you can keep it since last August....

Unofficially, it's a pain in the arse, although I was talking to a Smart rep today and apparently they're finally in a position to test the eircom setup that should allow them to keep the number.....she said they'd know more about how feasible that is in about 3 weeks' time.

edanto

Default password for access to the supplied Smart modem is admin/admin

Great advice from spurios above, I'd just have one comment - change the default router password as soon as you get set up. Here's why - http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9658/1103/

As far as the company choice goes, I'd vote for Smart, I've been a customer of theirs in Ringsend for 2 years + and never had a problem. The eircom con of last August didn't affect customers that had Smart lines, only those that were buying Smart services over eircom lines, so I had no service interruption. It was a gangster move by a company crippled by their own debt and somewhat ironic.

The quality of service is amazing, no trouble with voip/streaming and a teething problem during the install (don't use a telephone line extender before the ASDL microfilter) was quickly sorted out by knowledgable staff.

matrim

I was (am) with BT for the last 2 years and have never had a problem with them . I'm moving house soon to an area with smart and will be getting that. With BT I was on the 3MB package for 50 euro, with Smart I'm going to be on MB for the same price.

About the BT billing, once I was overcharged and they sent me a check for 25 euro without me even having noticed, so it might be getting better.

Liam Byrne

matrim wrote:

With BT I was on the 3MB package for 50 euro, with Smart I'm going to be on MB for the same price.

Are you going to keep us guessing, matrim ? I'd guess it's 6MB ?

matrim

Liam Byrne wrote:

Are you going to keep us guessing, matrim ? I'd guess it's 6MB ?

Yeah 6MB down 512kb up.

flybynight

wasim21k wrote:

i think bt have download limit so it mean its not cheap and then limit and smart i m thinking in next few comming days.
and i heard from lots of people complaning about bt customer service even one of my friends had this experience and seen him hours on the phone with bt to sort out things :mad:

Where did you hear that Smart would be introducing a BB cap?? Has anyone else heard this? With the tecchies on their forums making jokes like this I'd be surprised if they introduced it anytime soon! (and I'd be fairly miffed since this is one of the main reason I went for Smart):
http://support.smarttelecom.ie/forums/showthread.php?t=48

spurious wrote:

If your speeds are showing as bad on this page,
Smart speedtest
you can post your attenuation figures here:
Smart forums
and the guys will try help you.

You will get the figures on attentuation etc from your modem/router's 'Status' page They will look something like this (these are mine):
DSL Status: UP
DSL Modulation Mode: G.dmt.bisplus
DSL Path Mode: INTERLEAVED
Downstream Rate: 9214 K bps
Upstream Rate: 608 K bps
Downstream Margin: 12 db
Upstream Margin: 17 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 31
Upstream Line Attenuation: 16

To get into your modem type 192.168.1.1 in the address line of your browser. Default password for access to the supplied Smart modem is admin/admin
If you are having a problem, those figures will tell the Smart people a lot. Leave your modem always connected to Smart as they run testy things during the night to check it's all OK.

Many thanks for the tip. Just waiting to get conntected now. They're saying it usually takes 2/3 weeks to set up. Do people signed up to Smart find that they got it done within this time-frame?

spurious

I've heard nothing about Smart introducing a cap.

It wasn't true about them going bust, it wasn't true about them going out of business, it's not true about any 'cap'.

They are STILL the best BB supplier in Ireland, despite the best efforts of others.

Your handover time depends on the co-operation of eircom. The slightest sign of any messing from them get onto ComReg.