UTV Clicksilver 3MB

Demondaze

Ahoy all.

Planning on joining the the fabulous(ly confusing) world of broadband connections this month after finally getting fed up of dial-up. I was looking around at various service providers and decided I'd like something with an unlimited/high download cap, as well as something that'd work for Xbox Live. As well as that, I'm limited only to options that don't involve bundling with Digital TV or Line rental/phone service provision, as the mother is happy with the eircom package she has and won't be talked into changing.

Smart looked like a great option, but unfortunately they're not available where I live. UPC/Chorus/NTL/whatever-we're-calling-ourselves-today had a 1mb option that looked okay but their download cap was ridiculously low. Eircom are a bit on the expensive side for what you get off of them.

So, at the moment I'm looking at UTV's 3mb Clicksilver package with the extra €5.99 per month for no download cap (well, "no" meaning fair usage and all that vagueness). It seems reasonably priced and the contention ratio is 24:1 which is better than the 48:1 on their other services. I was just wondering if, firstly, anyone using this service could tell me how reliable it is and if it's worth signing up to and secondly, if it's any good for gaming with Xbox Live. The first consideration is more important than the first, heh. I'm more interested in getting decent broadband than I am in getting into online gaming.

Any response greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

admol

For UTV to activate broadband on your line you will have to be paying your line rental with them. ie you will have to change your phone service from eircom.

All DSL products will be pretty much the same no matter who the provider is. Eircom, BT, Perlico, UTV etc.

Cable or wireless will be your only option without geting eircom broadband or switching providers.

optiplexgx270

I have it and no complaints. Their DNS went down once that i know of which was a pain for one night. Once it was back up i found out it was a bit of a common problem with UTV so i added a few backup DNS servers into my router and have not had a problem since.

Their customer service is mean to be bad if you are having problems which tough wood i've never had.

I use the €5.99 option too and do 95% of my downloading between the hours of 3:30am and 8:30am all via scheduled (rss feeds etc...) downloads on a pc that turns on @ 3:30am each night. I'm sure you saw the fair usage is along the lines of no P2P between 7pm and 11pm and outside that they dont really care. As for gaming it works grand with the PC, i dont own a xbox/ps3 yet so can't comment apart from thinking there should be no issues.

What you are getting at the end of the day is Eircom broadband resold as UTV like all the other DSL variants.

Also the 3Mb is getting upgraded by eircom from 3Mb to 7.6Mb by July so hopefully UTV will pass that onto us...

optiplexgx270

Are you sure you need a UTV line? We have it anyways as we wanted UTV talk but whats this option then?

Options taken without UTV Talk add €3.00 on monthly subscription

The 3 month promotional price is only available to new, first time sign-ups only. A €3.00 discount for UTV Talk has been included across all prices. UTV Talk includes free evening and weekend calls to standard landlines in RoI and UK. Eircom Line required. Clicksilver Broadband is subject to a line test. Minimum computer specification applies.

Demondaze

admol - I'm pretty sure optiplex is correct; UTV have both a bundled and unbundled option, albeit with a €3 penatly if you go unbundled.

opti - thanks for the feedback! (even if I'm clueless as to what DNS means, heh)

DECEiFER

Demondaze wrote: »

admol - I'm pretty sure optiplex is correct; UTV have both a bundled and unbundled option, albeit with a €3 penatly if you go unbundled.

opti - thanks for the feedback! (even if I'm clueless as to what DNS means, heh)

DNS = Domain Name System

In short, if your ISP's DNS servers go down, and you have no backups specified, web addresses won't be able to translate from the domain name to the IP behind that domain name. Your DNS servers basically take any domain name, and change it to the correct IP of the website you're visiting (in the background, of course - you don't actually see this happening). Without those DNS servers running, you will not be able to browse the WWW. However, you should still be able to use Skype, and online gaming too.

I have UTV 3Mb on order since Friday, without transferring the line over and without taking UTV Talk. I'll let y'all know how it works once it's operational.