Broadband

stukin

Im currently with eircom for landline and always on broadband but i think it may be a bit expensive compared to whats out there at the minute. The comparitive Imagine product is €30 pm cheaper and its better in my pocket.

Anyone have any problems with any of the alternative providers? I need the landline as I work from home, local & national calls bundled is also a must. But more importantly - which service works and which doesnt???

Thanks in advance for any replies.

loyatemu

BTs deals are quite good and we've never had any problem with the service itself. Their customer care is atrocious though.

matt-dublin

and BT's line performance isn't up to spec.

smart isn't out here yet.

If you're in a house irish broadband might be an option.
you can also get a dsl line from them which is a little cheaper than eircom.

i think digiweb also provide to charlesland but i believe their service isn't up to scratch either

NewHome

Would you think of using one of the mobile phone broadband providers? We use Vodafone 3G and it works perfectly and is so easy to set up.

We don't have a landline though, so I suppose that's why it suits us so well. I don't know whether it would be very cost effective for you if you have to have a landline as well. This post is probably of little help

loyatemu

matt-dublin wrote: »

and BT's line performance isn't up to spec.

BT are just reselling Eircom's DSL so line performance is identical

If you're in a house irish broadband might be an option.
you can also get a dsl line from them which is a little cheaper than eircom.

again, they're just reselling eircom - all DSL providers in Greystones are doing this, and the quality of the service is likely to be similar for them all so you might as well make your decision on price.

matt-dublin

Yes this is correct, but in my experience, BT use different equipment, line speed was noticeably slower.

again ur right IBB are reselling but i don't know much about their lines and i don't know anyone who has one.

They're both using Eircom's lines but their own equipment.

loyatemu

no, they're using eircom lines and eircom equipment - if they were using their own equipment in the exchanges it would be local-loop unbundling which only smart and magnet are doing (and only in the city centre). Further into the network the traffic is handed off to BT but the main contention occurs at the exchange where it is the same for all eircom lines.

matt-dublin

they use their own modems,

eircom use netopia, bt use some other make,

and as i was saying before, BT's network obviously isn't as stable as eircoms, hence slower speeds, which i have seen at plenty of my client sites and hence suggested moving.

I've seen download speeds as low as 3Kb/sec on a 4Mb uncontended parrallel line, downloading from heanet, which was only 3 hops away.

IBB are reselling eircoms routers as well afaik, but BT tail off using their own modems. Information is only being passed through the exchange until it is handed over to their own network.

This has nothign to do with contention

loyatemu

BT use Zyxel modems which Eircom also sell to business customers - can't say I've noticed them being significantly inferior to the netopia boxes but as with anything YMMV.

Anyway, this is drifting off-topic, all i can say is I'm with BT and I've never had any problems with speed, consistently getting ~200KB/s on a 2 meg line which is about right.

matt-dublin

i've an eircom business line at home and i was provided with a netopia.

don't get me wrong im not advocating eircom, i hate them, i'd go for fixed wireless preferably but i can't.

And eircom's customer support aren't much better, actually, neither is NTL's, IBB, BT etc etc.

Ha ha a no win situation!!

Ace1

I use imagine for my phone and never had a problem with them and very reasonable. My broadband is still with Eircom