Irish Speeds not as bad as sugested

Whatsthisabout

There has been allot of coverage in recent times about how bad Irish speeds are in comparison to our European counterparts.

I was looking at the average speeds on speedtest.net and Ireland doesn't fair out as bad as some people make out.

For instance allot of the talk has been about users in France getting 20Mb and 30Mb connections, these connections do exist in Ireland however not very widespread (yet).

Looking at the averages this is what I came up with.

Based on the top 10 countries in Europe the average speed is
6369Kbps

Based on the top 10 counties in Ireland the average speed is
2748Kbps

This means that unfair comparisons are been drawn when you base our average speed on that of the highest packages available in other countries.
As the above shows although we are still considerable below the average we are not miles of. What do the rest of you think about this are people being a bit harsh on the speeds available in Ireland

tolosenc

Still a lot slower.

You work for eircom or something?

Cabaal

even compared to the UK Ireland does very bad, pretty much every BT telephone exhange in the UK is enabled for ADSL Max (8MB), Ireland is far behind no matter what way you look at it.

As for the comments on 20MB in Ireland, Dungarven, Co Waterford has had 9MB since 2001 and I think its faster now, yet only now are exchanges and the majority of cable being upgraded to these types of speeds.

paulm17781

Cabaal wrote: »

As for the comments on 20MB in Ireland, Dungarven, Co Waterford has had 9MB since 2001 and I think its faster now, yet only now are exchanges and the majority of cable being upgraded to these types of speeds.

I think that is 20Mbps now.

Whatsthisabout

Most exchanges are enabled for 8Mb but very few receive anywhere near that due to the condition of the last mile.

England's average is 5764.7 so again we are not miles behind them either.

I know its still lower but on average we don't fair out to bad. Especially given that Irelands population are still not as technically inclined as others in Europe. this will have an effect too as people who only know how to check an email or to and look up the odd webpage are only going to subscribe to 1Mb packs meaning out average is going to look lower.

hideous ape

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

Especially given that Irelands population are still not as technically inclined as others in Europe.

Not sure what country you've been living in for the last five years but even the most backward farmers now use computers and technology. Games consoles and mobile phones continually outsell other countries per head of population.

The people can only avail of the technology available to them...our government has acted poorly over the last ten years.

We always take the negative view "we're a small country, therefore a small financial base for broadband companies to operate in".

How about "we're a small country, therefore it requires less resources to put in place the best broadband network in the world"

We've missed the the financial boat on this one...with companies declaring we have hit rocket speeds of 8mb...give me a break. We had the chance to put in place something that would have pushed the country forward, instead we're now staring at the construction industry....praying things don't go pop!

Went on a bit of a rant there...apologies;)

Gonzo

our speeds may not be quite as gloomy as suggested, there still not great but I think the worst thing about Irish broadband in general is its lack of availability in widespread parts of the country outside of towns and the price of the broadband itself. We have to be one of the most expensive broadband countries by far.

rav1410

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

Especially given that Irelands population are still not as technically inclined as others in Europe.

Can open, Worms everywhere

Whatsthisabout

I still stand by my technically inclined statement but before it gets way out of hand let me explain a little bit more what I mean.

If you take the amount of population into account and that it has only been very recently that things have really shot forward for Ireland it is far more likely that somewhere like the UK per head of population are more broadband friendly.

This should mean it wont affect an average value but I would still believe in the fact that if you look at London alone which is a far bigger metropolises then most cities with a huge population of young go getters that these people are far more likely to both have access to high speed connections and be aware of the benefits of having a 10Mb connection versus a 2Mb.

On top of this you have the likes of BBC and Sky and other media organisation putting pressure on both people and ISPs to improve availability and speed in order to access the endless services now being offered on the internet like TV recaps streaming shows on the websites.
This has not really happened in Ireland yet.

PogMoThoin

What those stats don't show is that a large percentage of the rural population can't get broadband at all and have to rely on mobile internet or stay on dial up if all else fails

everdead.ie

What you have to realise is that most people on 8mb broadband in the uk struggle to get 2mb because their are so many people on each line. With ntl offering 12mb/s on their home broadband and eircom going up to 7.6mb/s for home users it's not going to be that hard for ireland to catch up to the european average but what we need to do is stop putting copper into new houses and future proof them by putting fibre in them. Hopefully this will make it cheaper to roll out fibre. BT are even putting off using fibre and that makes this our chance to leap frog the brits and jump up to the top ten(lets be serious we cant hope to beat the japanese or koreans). If you look at America they are using fibre just to get 20mb/s again cause the population is so dense in area's they can't give those speeds on dsl lines. sorry i guess i went off point :mad:

Whatsthisabout

Another thing to take into account is that every dsl provider in the UK shape torrents this means that more people get what they are suppose to.

I am not saying this is a good solution it would be nice to have fast speeds and to do what you want with it, but lets face it P2P generates huge amounts of traffic if not restricted and our infrastructure and most countries infrastructures don’t allow for that at the moment

paulm17781

Not technically inclined?

We have more hi-tech jobs per capita than anywhere else in Europe. Most of the biggest tech companies in the world have European head quarters here. Not technically inclined? :rolleyes:

AlmightyCushion

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

Another thing to take into account is that every dsl provider in the UK shape torrents this means that more people get what they are suppose to.

I am not saying this is a good solution it would be nice to have fast speeds and to do what you want with it, but lets face it P2P generates huge amounts of traffic if not restricted and our infrastructure and most countries infrastructures don’t allow for that at the moment

So does youtube or itunes (probably not as much traffic as torrents though). Should they be blocked?

everdead.ie

paulm17781 wrote: »

Not technically inclined?

We have more hi-tech jobs per capita than anywhere else in Europe. Most of the biggest tech companies in the world have European head quarters here. Not technically inclined? :rolleyes:

The big companies with the european headquaters pay esb networks for dedicated 150mb+ lines. Well i'm studying in nuig and you have to realise that the net was created to transfer scientific documents it wasn't created to handle video thats why if they can connect to it the 'grid' that cern have created will make this much easier improving speeds for everyone and in the future(a very distant future albeit) you will be able to get dedicated lines at speeds of 50mb/s which is a hell of a lot better then an undedicated line at 100mb/s.
youtube and itunes use servers not p2p The problem is the likes of the bbc iplayer and c4 online

Whatsthisabout

paulm17781 wrote: »

Not technically inclined?

We have more hi-tech jobs per capita than anywhere else in Europe. Most of the biggest tech companies in the world have European head quarters here. Not technically inclined? :rolleyes:

I didnt say we are not technically inclined or that those who are technical are somwhat not as good as people else where but in other contries boradband is deffinatly more of a way of life then here.

paulm17781

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

I didnt say we are not technically inclined

Erm... You said

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

Especially given that Irelands population are still not as technically inclined as others in Europe.

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

in other contries boradband is deffinatly more of a way of life then here.

That because it is more widely available, better promoted and often better priced. We got DSL about 5 years after the UK. This solely comes down to operators / government. This "lower PC penetration" or "Not technically inclined" lark is what the government / operators / Comreg feed us as excuses for their under performance.

flyswatter

No, Ireland are one of the slowest in terms of broadband. Look at even the UK where you can get 8mb broadband for the same price as 1mb here and the UK is only middling in the average of broadband speeds.

everdead.ie

flyswatter wrote: »

No, Ireland are one of the slowest in terms of broadband. Look at even the UK where you can get 8mb broadband for the same price as 1mb here and the UK is only middling in the average of broadband speeds.

Um like's been said ya we agree the uk has faster broadband but due to p2p traffic and heavy saturation they rarely ever get anything near those speeds. which is why recent upgrades make irelands broadband a lot more competitive.
read this http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2199219/brits-less-half-advertised

DingDong

I don't think speed is the main issue with BB in Ireland its more availability. Most people would just need BB for general browsing so a meg or two would be grand.
Say we had 50 or even a 100megs in the morning do we really need it?

paulm17781

DingDong wrote: »

I don't think speed is the main issue with BB in Ireland its more availability. Most people would just need BB for general browsing so a meg or two would be grand.
Say we had 50 or evening a 100meg in the morning do we really need it?

Definitely not. I don't even need my 6. None the less, Broadband is the big "thing" at the moment. Companies need good infrastructure. Investment will fall behind if companies can easily get 20Mb in cheaper (labour cost) countries they are more likely to look there. We need good infrastructure and for business yes, I do think higher speeds are necessary.

JohnC.

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

Looking at the averages this is what I came up with.

Based on the top 10 countries in Europe the average speed is
6369Kbps

Based on the top 10 counties in Ireland the average speed is
2748Kbps

I don't understand how being less than half the average is considered "not bad."

everdead.ie

DingDong wrote: »

I don't think speed is the main issue with BB in Ireland its more availability. Most people would just need BB for general browsing so a meg or two would be grand.
Say we had 50 or evening a 100meg in the morning do we really need it?

Intresting point but if you have 50 or 100meg youd probably find something to do with it for instance an office might split it between their 50 computers giving them 1meg internet each. I know their are still huge tracts of country not served but it's not an issue for most people cause we are selfish people.

godskitchen

I split my time between here and the UK, I lived in the UK for 16 years.

I have a 20Mb line in the UK and all my friends have BB.

What I would point out is a lot of people in the UK are happy with 1Mb (not that 1Mb is really available any more). I know a lot of families who only have the basic package with people like TalkTalk. They dont see the need for higher speeds.

Saying that Irelands speeds are not that far behind is a joke! All BT's lines have to be able to carry 24Mb by 2012 and they have been forced to outline when each area is getting upgraded.

Virgin will have 50Mb by the end of the year............and wait for it, for the same price I pay for 1Mb here.

BT are now forced to lay fibre to all new buildings.


We are so far behind here its not funny, not just in terms of speeds/availability but also cost.

DingDong

paulm17781 wrote: »

Definitely not. I don't even need my 6. None the less, Broadband is the big "thing" at the moment. Companies need good infrastructure. Investment will fall behind if companies can easily get 20Mb in cheaper (labour cost) countries they are more likely to look there. We need good infrastructure and for business yes, I do think higher speeds are necessary.

I understand that Paul for business, but I'm talking about the general public. Most companies can get the higher speed especially if their in a new business park. Fibre is naturally brought into the park. Others will have big civils cost to get the fibre to them.

Another question for everyone who or what do you feel is holding the country back from having BB for all, cheaper and faster

paulm17781

DingDong wrote: »

I understand that Paul for business, but I'm talking about the general public. Most companies can get the higher speed especially if their in a new business park. Fibre is naturally brought into the park. Others will have big civils cost to get the fibre to them.

Not everyone has that. My company is in a newly developed area. There was nothing other than leased lines and the usual broadband available. We have a high need to send large volumes of data around the world and the lack of speedy connections is a serious problem.

DingDong wrote: »

Another question for everyone who or what do you feel is holding the country back from having BB for all, cheaper and faster

Part of it is infrastructure. The other is the companies have no need to offer anything great. Though they could have provided us up to 8Mbps several years ago, why bother when it seems like a great speed down the line. I also think the problems with LLU are a major factor. For that I blame the government.

everdead.ie

I agree that 1mb is enough for a lot of people but 62% of britons get less then half their maximum speed and 25% get a quater or less it's because isp use terms like 'up to' and in the small print you get depending on the qualty of your line and distance from the exchange it is something however that all dsl lines experience. It will become very apparent as the top packages hit the higher thresholds of 12mb/s. Virgin is using fibre to the home as their cable which makes it possible to offer speeds of 50mb/s. preety sweet.Another major issue in ireland is their is a 24 to 1 contention rate on eircom lines and whats holding back development is eircoms bottom line they're waiting untill the government subsidise them to provide a service to the last 15% of the country. It's a joke that eircom was ever sold off by the government. And it's a joke that a fine gael councillor is trying to push through a bill for only 5mb broadband.

DingDong

It was very short sighted of who ever constructed the business park your currently in Paul. If your company is willing to pay the price they could always have fibre brought to your office although its might not be cheap

I didn't want to say it but I agree eircom do have alot to answer for. Are they putting any money back into the network or just beating a dead horse?.
I also agree Eircom should of never been sold off. They have the best duct system nation wide and could easily upgrade their network to mega bandwidth.

paulm17781

DingDong wrote: »

It was very short sighted of who ever constructed the business park your currently in.

Perhaps, none the less, this is a reality in this country and one that isn't being properly addressed

godskitchen

everdead.ie wrote: »

Virgin is using fibre to the home as their cable which makes it possible to offer speeds of 50mb/s. preety sweet.

Its only fibre to the curb and in most cases its only fibre to the transmittion box at the top of your road and coax the rest of the distance.

They will be getting 50Mb by using DOCSIS 3.0, which effectively bonds two lines together.

BT will be offering 100Mb up and down to anyone who can get fibre for the sum of £55 a month.......................no caps either, not even talk of fair use in the contract I saw.

paulm17781

Do UPC do fibre to the kerb / junction or is it mainly Co-ax?

DingDong

Kerb so to speak but they do run fibre on houses. I think this is most suit for old over head networks.

Whatsthisabout

paulm17781 wrote: »

That because it is more widely available, better promoted and often better priced. We got DSL about 5 years after the UK. This solely comes down to operators / government. This "lower PC penetration" or "Not technically inclined" lark is what the government / operators / Comreg feed us as excuses for their under performance.

That might be the reason but it is still true that people have not touched on what the internet has to offer in Ireland like they have in other countries.
Also IT education is schools is almost non existent, this shocks me giving almost everyone will need to use a computer at some stage in the future

Running fibre will improve however not fix the problem. A major overhaul of allot of the exchanges would be required to giving most of the equipment was only designed to handle voice traffic at its time of install. So there is no point running lots of information quickly if it is going to bottleneck at the exchange.

Allot more of UPCs network is fibre then others but their entire equivalent last mile is still coax. This is still potentially better then copper except for the fact that it was installed overhead which means it’s going screw up.

At the people who are asking how half is “not bad” my original point was that allot of the recent press has claimed we are much farther behind then it would appear.

Allot of the time in Ireland the “up to” remarks still mean most people expect to get close to the speed in the UK the up to 8Mb max packages almost never provide anywhere near that its more like 5Mb or less.

paulm17781

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

That might be the reason but it is still true that people have not touched on what the internet has to offer in Ireland like they have in other countries.

Hold on, you just said that we're not big into broadband because it's not more widely available, better promoted or better priced because we aren't aware of what broadband can offer because it isn't being offered. I think that's my point.

Whatsthisabout

I was agreeing more with the fact that more could have been done to facilitate people in becoming more internet friendly. Be it the ISPs or the government.

Essentially for whatever reason Irish people still don’t use internet services as much as they do in other countries. An example would be the lack of live chat services which other Broadband and service providers use in other countries. Another would be how difficult it is to get in contact with any hardware or software providers on the phone in Ireland. If you where in England you would have contact numbers for Router Providers, McAfee, Norton, Microsoft etc.. in Ireland that is very difficult.

I agree that the underlying reason for this is the lack of availability however if every house in Ireland had a PC and the internet in the morning there are a lot of people who wouldn’t know what to do because it would be so new, more so then in other countries where availability has been better for a longer time, that is what I mean when I say Ireland is not as technically inclined

DingDong

paulm17781 wrote: »

Do UPC do fibre to the kerb / junction or is it mainly Co-ax?

If your talking about business in your question they run fibre direct into the building, no coax

paulm17781

DingDong wrote: »

If your talking about business in your question they run fibre direct into the building, no coax

No I meant typical user. I'm more trying to find out what the network is capable of.

Shinto

pardon my ignorance here,

But i've a 2MB connection in Korea and in Ireland, and i'd like to know what i'm missing out on with such a "slow" connection?

Sure i see the benefits for Irish business to have super fast connections...but for ordinary Joe Soaps...what am i missing out on with my measly 2MB connection? I genuinely would like someone to tell me.

Wcool

Well:

- streaming TV, including better slingbox
no more VCR/DVD recordings for television, just download when you want to see something
- possibility to host your own website (depends on upload speed as well)
- home office would have the same speed as your company network, thus making working from home more viable. Video conferencing would be of high quality as well, no more webcam type conferences

And of course the possibility to do all those things at once, without clogging the pipe.

Somehow I think that we will see lot's of new ways of using the net as well, stuff we haven't imagined yet.

PS if you live in Korea, can't you get 20Mb connections for peanuts? Maybe you could try it out?

zilog_jones

Someone really needs to sort out the LLU problem in this country, be it ComReg or whoever - it is really inhibiting development and competition in the ADSL market. They really need to make the part of Eircom that deals with the exchanges and lines completely separate to the rest of the company - that's what they did with BT in the UK, and they don't have arseways/non-existant LLU, lack of choice, etc.

There's also the problem that ADSL can never be as good here as the UK and other countries, due to our low population and low population density (60.3 per sq. km here compared to 246 in the UK). There will always be people too far away from the exchanges, etc. I think development of fibre-optic and wireless networks would be much more worthwhile here.

Hopefully UPC Ireland will get their act together in the next few years, so we'll at least start to get real speeds in the cities.

everdead.ie

Well with a 2 meg line here it normally comes with a pitiful cap that doesn't allow for a lot of streaming tv and downloading but i suppose thats a different issue isnt it

Nehaxak

everdead.ie wrote: »

Well with a 2 meg line here it normally comes with a pitiful cap that doesn't allow for a lot of streaming tv and downloading but i suppose thats a different issue isnt it

Not really as the caps imposed by ISPs are NOTHING more than another method for them to earn more money by selling and doing less on their part, another rip off which I'm sure many ISPs or those working for them will explain away with blah blah blah piracy blah blah torrents, blah blah. Whatever... Their excuses may wash with the retarded media but the only reason people will stick with an ISP that has a cap imposed is due to either having relativley light usage themselves to not be worried too much or just the age old classical Irish thinking of "ah sure it's grand, sure let me bend over and grab my ankles for you to make it easier".

The fact that still many ISPs run off the back of Eircon with just reselling Eircon's product, just shows the greed, ineptitude and lack of any interest in improving the Irish broadband market from them and Eircon.

I'm still stumped as to why multi-nationals choose Ireland as their Euro HQ, some of them are probably lucky to get dialup.

JohnC.

Nehaxak wrote: »

I'm still stumped as to why multi-nationals choose Ireland as their Euro HQ, some of them are probably lucky to get dialup.

Multinationals won't be using the kind of connections that the public would be using. It's a totally different market.

zilog_jones

Nehaxak wrote: »

Not really as the caps imposed by ISPs are NOTHING more than another method for them to earn more money by selling and doing less on their part, another rip off...

I think you'll find it's so they can actually make a profit. It is not feasible to supply all residential customers with totally unrestricted, uncontended net connections. You'll find restrictions everywhere else in the world, in the form of caps (granted many ISPs elsewhere have much higher caps but they enforce them strictly, unlike here), "up to" advertised speeds, and ye olde fair usage policy.

We are quite lucky that a few ISPs here have been very lenient WRT enforcing caps, but as we've seen with BT's introduction of throttling heavy users recently, as traffic is increasing this is not going to last.

I'm still stumped as to why multi-nationals choose Ireland as their Euro HQ, some of them are probably lucky to get dialup.

And there's the proof that you haven't a clue how ISPs work.

Nehaxak

Again, excuses explaining away yet another rip off of the Irish consumer.
Sorry, not buying it. You can make them up and explain the caps away until the cows come home but it's all bull and people will cop on sooner or later.

As for my comment on multinationals and them using dialups, I was being sarcastic but it's not that far from the truth either but then again it's a hard thing to say as, oh no, god forbid people might find out and decide not to open business here. Rather than, alright lads, we're kinda in the proverbial poo here with this broadband business and have been for the last ten years, think it's about time we got the finger out so we continue to make it actually attractive and worthwhile for business to come here and lets stop all these charlatans and rip off merchants fleecing the customers while we're at it.

The Irish market for broadband is an absolute total and utter joke. Those ISPs that impose no caps are the few that are trying to change things. The rest of you can rot in hell and the sooner your business goes belly up and you're run out of the market, the better for it the Irish customer will be.

To be honest, all advertisements to do with broadband with caps imposed should be changed and all open with "Would ye like to buy a carpet love ? or a bit of nice lino for the floor ? How about a nice sofa ?"

zilog_jones

Nehaxak wrote: »

As for my comment on multinationals and them using dialups, I was being sarcastic but it's not that far from the truth either but then again it's a hard thing to say as, oh no, god forbid people might find out and decide not to open business here. Rather than, alright lads, we're kinda in the proverbial poo here with this broadband business and have been for the last ten years, think it's about time we got the finger out so we continue to make it actually attractive and worthwhile for business to come here and lets stop all these charlatans and rip off merchants fleecing the customers while we're at it.

Your sarcasm was quite obvious, but you clearly continue to fail at knowing what is available to businesses in this country. Big multinationals ARE here because they CAN get decent net connections (100Mbps+). You cannot compare the situation of residential broadband.

Those ISPs that impose no caps are the few that are trying to change things.

They're not trying to change anything, they're just being lazy right now because bandwidth is not yet a problem for them. I bet you a million internets that this current situation is not going to last! The more households get broadband, the worse it's going to get. And I'm not talking about "unlimited" packages - they always have some limits, no matter where you are.

The rest of you can rot in hell and the sooner your business goes belly up and you're run out of the market, the better for it the Irish customer will be.

Contrary to what you may think, the current caps are not a problem for 90%+ of the population. You are the minority here, and spouting uninformed gibberish and moaning on a message board isn't going to change things.

I'm not trying to excuse the ISPs for their current slow speeds and high prices, I'm trying to show how you are talking out your árse. Caps are there for a reason, people will always have to pay a premium for any "unlimited" broadband because of this, and there just doesn't seem to be enough of a market right now for such unlimited services to seem worthwhile to most ISPs.

Solair

The reason for low speeds here are complex.

1) eircom was very keen on drip feeding the market. There was nothing driving them to increase speeds or to decrease price. The majority of other ISPs simply use eircom's DSL equipment to provide their service. The only exceptions to this are Smart, Magnet and BT (to a limited degree). These are only recently making big inroads.

2) Despite big plans by Chorus and by NTL Ireland neither of these organisations managed to get cable broadband rolled out to anything more than a test market. There were a whole load of reasons for this:

i) Irish cable was in a weird position where it's main purpose was to provide access to BBC/ITV/C4 and it had a unique advantage in that regard. So, the cable companies didn't really have to do much to sell the service and failed to innovate.
ii) Irish cable networks are much older and longer established than others in Europe. They were established in the 1960s, in the UK they were mostly established in the late 80s and 90s! The upgrade costs here were huge.
iii) Chorus nearly went bust, and never managed to roll out any of the products they'd planned. NTL Ireland was also very cash strapped.

iv) Sky Digital's launch and the fact that they can now basically compete fully with the cable companies with access to BBC and ITV as well as having RTE 1,2,TV3, TG4 etc in the line line up has forced the cable companies to wake up.

UPC, which now owns pretty much all of Ireland's cable networks, is genuinely taking the broadband and phone market seriously. They have to compete with Sky and they can't just assume people will stay connected for the sake of BBC access. Their investment in the infrastructure since they've taken the two cable operators over has been pretty substantial.

Cable can really drive speed as it has huge bandwidth available and it has driven speed in most other European markets and in the US. DSL tends to follow.

4) Finally, the wireless providers have been making big in roads. This has also driven competition. The likes of Digiweb etc are having considerable impact.

In general, the Irish broadband market's only starting to reach a level where there is decent competition in the last 12 to 24 months. So, fingers crossed things will improve!!

We're finally seeing decent speeds on offer!

smellslikeshoes

I agree that we are not actually as far behind in terms as speed as some people make out(though we are well behind). But you really need to put it into context, everyone goes on about our technology based economy and how we are the tech hub of Europe. When in reality we are below the EU average in broadband. We should be leading the way and could be leading the way if the was any amount of forward thinking on the governments part.

Nehaxak

Your sarcasm was quite obvious, but you clearly continue to fail at knowing what is available to businesses in this country. Big multinationals ARE here because they CAN get decent net connections (100Mbps+).

I'd like to see proof of that and compared with the cost of getting same in any other EU country. I'd also like to see proof that their connections come from Irish providers.

You cannot compare the situation of residential broadband.

Of course, because we all know residential customers get shafted and will continue to be shafted, that's a a given.

Contrary to what you may think, the current caps are not a problem for 90%+ of the population.

They said exactly the same years ago when most people could only get dialup.

You are the minority here, and spouting uninformed gibberish and moaning on a message board isn't going to change things.

No I'm not the minority but yes I am moaning and complaining because unlike most other people in this country, I care for the economy, I care for the business accumen of this country and I care for the ordinary customer.
I'm not a typical paddy who bends over and accepts his fate, hoping for the best and saying things *might* improve. Pfft...

I'm not trying to excuse the ISPs for their current slow speeds and high prices, I'm trying to show how you are talking out your árse.

So why defend them then ? Why defend caps ? why defend ISPs who are clearly crap, do nothing for the customer or this country and look like they never will ? ISPs in this country are an absolute joke, always where and always will be.
Fair dues to those of them that do not impose caps due to greed like most others are doing.

Caps are there for a reason,

Yes, plain and simple greed, no other reason, caps are there due to greed.

people will always have to pay a premium for any "unlimited" broadband because of this, and there just doesn't seem to be enough of a market right now for such unlimited services to seem worthwhile to most ISPs.

Explain to me then how IBB and some other smaller ISPs have no caps on their service yet don't charge a premium for it ?

Rip off merchants, plain and simple, second hand carpet sellers roaming around in their Hiace vans selling crap to people.

I'm done with arguing on here tbh as I know it's pretty pointless, what with half the board working for digiweb, an ISP who couldn't even pay their own bills to the Isreali company providing them the wireless kit years ago and who left their customers absolutely shafted when the Israeli's sent them a dodgy upgrade to be applied to all the kit, which Digiweb duly did, on a live system, destroying it all.

Only hope to improve the market in Ireland was with BT but with the state ESAT was in then - all hope was lost.

If Magnet and IBB merged into one company, they take over the whole market here and it would be for the better, driving out all the rest of the rip off merchants and finally providing Ireland and it's citizens with the hope of a decent broadband service for the future. It's probably too late now though with the downturn in the economy.

If you had a choice of a cap or no cap, only a retard would choose the capped service.

Me, if IBB weren't available here then I'd go back to Satellite broadband as there would be no way in hell I'd hand my money over to another stupid paddy rip off merchant.

The_Conductor

DingDong wrote:

I didn't want to say it but I agree eircom do have alot to answer for. Are they putting any money back into the network or just beating a dead horse?.

Current capital expenditure (according to their annual report) is below the rate of depreciation of their installed equipment and cables, and has been for the last 4 years running.

Recently when "party-lines" were identified as the reason why a number of people would never ever be able to activate ADSL on their copper, Eircom's response was to issue a statement that the government should fund the upgrade of these, and any other lines, as the lines were obviously laid before the company was privatised.

By the way- how can you reckon that less than half the average EU speed being the top speed available in our 8 best counties- and even comparing us to our close neighbour the UK- even allowing for iPlayer and other goodies- we're still right at the bottom of the heap. If you want a decent link between offices here, you either lay your own fibre (as several government departments did), or you use microwave links (ala the demonstrations on Georges Street a few years back). Even in the best of situations- you cannot get a reliable highspeed service here- unless you go and do it yourself.

S./

The_Conductor

PogMoThoin wrote:

What those stats don't show is that a large percentage of the rural population can't get broadband at all and have to rely on mobile internet or stay on dial up if all else fails

Its not just the rural population- I'm in Lucan village- precisely 11 miles from College Green in Dublin City Centre. Eircom are unable to offer me DSL, Smart and BT have yet to enable the exchange (for some strange reason I'm not on the Lucan exchange at all......) I've flirted with NTL cable BB and with Vodafone and 3 Broadband. I've a 3G mast, designed for a boat, wired into my wall to ensure coverage at peak times, and have NTL BB too- not that its reliable in the least...... At least I've moved on from using dialup via a data cable with my mobile.......

I despair.