Broadband Calry area?

selko

Am going to Sligo IT in September. Have place in Calry area. Need advice on broadband possibilities. Is Fastcom the only one available? Other providers dont seem to have coverage there. I dont want a phone or TV service. Fastcom want E39.99 per month for broadband only. Seems high and am worried about service and speeds. Any advice would be appreciated.

AlmightyCushion

Fastcom is rubbish. I've got it here and it's complete shíte. Speeds drop at peak times badly and it keeps disconnecting. If I can't get rid of it, I'll be moving it's that bad. I think they throttle torrents as well so if you download torrents you might want to consider someone else. You could go with upc. They let you only take broadband if you like.

Xiney

You may be able to get Digiweb - we got it in Ashbury Lawn and that's not too too far from Calry.

Speeds are good, customer service is excellent. Only problem is they're real tightwads about the bandwidth cap.

dingding

Some parts of calry can get eircom broadband, and all the companies that resell Eircom broadband.

Depends on how far you are out from town and if there is an existing phoneline.

Also some of the 3G dongles might work but it depends on how near town.

selko

Will forget fastcom and do further research on digiweb and what is upc? On most broadband maps my area seems quite blank! But, the remains of an NTL modem and disconnected phone in my house leads me to think previous tenant had NTLpackage. But I dont want a phone line and more bills so will keep on looking. Can use college for basic message replies etc. but nothing can beat surfing when you cant sleep! Many thanks for all replies

AlmightyCushion

selko wrote: »

Will forget fastcom and do further research on digiweb and what is upc? On most broadband maps my area seems quite blank! But, the remains of an NTL modem and disconnected phone in my house leads me to think previous tenant had NTLpackage. But I dont want a phone line and more bills so will keep on looking. Can use college for basic message replies etc. but nothing can beat surfing when you cant sleep! Many thanks for all replies

UPC are the new owners of NTL and chorus. You don't need a landline and you don't need to take their tv service to get broadband.

selko

thanks almighty! will get on to upc.

selko

Upc have checked and have no availability where my house is. Eircom must install the phone line first to check my availability. then if not available I must pay E26 for one months line rental before cancelling! I must take a phone and broadband package of E41 monthly if I can get it even though I really dont need a phone. Will have to get line installed I think as no other options available in area.

El Weirdo

I have Fastcom and tbh I don't find it that bad. Most of the time I am getting very close to the advertised speeds. I also don't have any reason to believe that they throttle torrents either as I get pretty decent speeds.

Mind you, I am in an area where contention would not be as much of an issue. Also, the connection does seem to drop for about 30secs or so quite regularly but I can live with that after using 3mobile for the previous year.

My only other option would have been a landline package and there was no way I was going to pay that sort of money for a phoneline that would never be used for anything other than BB, along with twice the contention and (from my parents' experience) half the speed.

AlmightyCushion

el_weirdo wrote: »

I have Fastcom and tbh I don't find it that bad. Most of the time I am getting very close to the advertised speeds. I also don't have any reason to believe that they throttle torrents either as I get pretty decent speeds.

I don't normally download using torrents. I only suspected they throttled them because I was downloading something that took over a week to get more or less nowhere then went back to my parents place for the day and it finished in a few hours.

darealtulip

I have to say that eircom hardly gives me the 2mb I'm paying for. I complained lots of times but they said it's a maximum not a minimum!!!! Avoid eircom as the plague.

I have Irish broadband and they took it much more serious. The problem is you have to have a year of eircom first before you can switch. I also have to pay for the land line I don't want. Thought about Fastcom but it turns out to be roughly the same money as Irishbroadband and my landline:mad:.

Last but not least Fastcom and irishbroadband were the only ones without a download limit, very important to me, never had problems with downloading torrents by any of them BTW.

AlmightyCushion

darealtulip wrote: »

I have to say that eircom hardly gives me the 2mb I'm paying for. I complained lots of times but they said it's a maximum not a minimum!!!! Avoid eircom as the plague.

I have Irish broadband and they took it much more serious. The problem is you have to have a year of eircom first before you can switch. I also have to pay for the land line I don't want. Thought about Fastcom but it turns out to be roughly the same money as Irishbroadband and my landline:mad:.

Last but not least Fastcom and irishbroadband were the only ones without a download limit, very important to me, never had problems with downloading torrents by any of them BTW.

The eircom connection can be limited by the technology yhey use. Not really their falut ifyou are too far away from the exchange to get the fulls peed. Having used both eircom and fastcom, I'd pick eircopm every time. Fastcom are just terrible. Eircom provided a stable connection that rarely went down for me and they never enforced the download cap. With my fastcom connection I haven't even had the chance to break my download cap it's that rubbish.

El Weirdo

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The eircom connection can be limited by the technology yhey use. Not really their falut ifyou are too far away from the exchange to get the fulls peed. Having used both eircom and fastcom, I'd pick eircopm every time. Fastcom are just terrible. Eircom provided a stable connection that rarely went down for me and they never enforced the download cap. With my fastcom connection I haven't even had the chance to break my download cap it's that rubbish.

There is no download cap on Fastcom.
You're not the first person to say that they had trouble with Fastcom so I was quite weary about the service before I got it in. But, like I said in my previous post, I had endured a year of 3mobile "broadband" so I knew it couldn't be as bad as that.

Are you in Sligo itself? Maybe it is a contention thing in areas with denser population with the people that I've spoken to that say its crap?

I'm in West Sligo and I spoke to a friend who has it not too far from me before signing up and he said it gave him some problems at first but it had improved a lot since then so I went ahead with it.

Mind you, I've had that 30sec connection drop a good few times tonight, so I hope I haven't jinxed it...

AlmightyCushion

el_weirdo wrote: »

There is no download cap on Fastcom.
You're not the first person to say that they had trouble with Fastcom so I was quite weary about the service before I got it in. But, like I said in my previous post, I had endured a year of 3mobile "broadband" so I knew it couldn't be as bad as that.

Are you in Sligo itself? Maybe it is a contention thing in areas with denser population with the people that I've spoken to that say its crap?

I'm in West Sligo and I spoke to a friend who has it not too far from me before signing up and he said it gave him some problems at first but it had improved a lot since then so I went ahead with it.

Mind you, I've had that 30sec connection drop a good few times tonight, so I hope I haven't jinxed it...

I'm sorry but every broadband connection has some sort of cap even if they say they don't. A truely unlimited connection just isn't possible.

All I know is that myself and two of the lads I live with are sick of fastcom. It's slow as **** and always disconnects. I'd rather be using carrier pidgeons for my internet. If the other housemate insists I pay to get it disconnected I'm moving just so I don't have to pay those bastards at fastcom another cent. The other lads in the house are willing to move as well that's how bad it is.

El Weirdo

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I'm sorry but every broadband connection has some sort of cap even if they say they don't. A truely unlimited connection just isn't possible.

All I know is that myself and two of the lads I live with are sick of fastcom. It's slow as **** and always disconnects. I'd rather be using carrier pidgeons for my internet. If the other housemate insists I pay to get it disconnected I'm moving just so I don't have to pay those bastards at fastcom another cent. The other lads in the house are willing to move as well that's how bad it is.

Fair enough. One can only go by their own experiences with the service I suppose. Christ, there are even posters on the 3Mobile M-M-MEGATHREAD trying to convince people that its actually a good service.

Good luck with finding a decent provider, but if you're in town, you at least have a bit more choice than us poor buggers here in the sticks!

darealtulip

el_weirdo wrote: »

Fair enough. Good luck with finding a decent provider, but if you're in town, you at least have a bit more choice than us poor buggers here in the sticks!

and that will be us! we moved to a village just to get broadband a few years back.

darealtulip

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The eircom connection can be limited by the technology yhey use. Not really their falut ifyou are too far away from the exchange to get the fulls peed.

Eircom provided a stable connection that rarely went down for me and they never enforced the download cap.

Is it not eircom providing the infra structure for broadband? It's definitely not my comp etc if that is what you mean.

depends on how much you download and I download a lot!

AlmightyCushion

darealtulip wrote: »

Is it not eircom providing the infra structure for broadband? It's definitely not my comp etc if that is what you mean.

depends on how much you download and I download a lot!

Yeah it is. I was drunk at the time so forgive that, I was talking shíte. I also download a lot and eircom never once charged us or throttled us.

darealtulip

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I also download a lot and eircom never once charged us or throttled us.

good to know, since it would be cheaper to go back to eircom or switch to BT.

AlmightyCushion

darealtulip wrote: »

good to know, since it would be cheaper to go back to eircom or switch to BT.

Bt start throttling once you go over the download limit or at least some of their customers posting in broadband have said.

darealtulip

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Bt start throttling once you go over the download limit or at least some of their customers posting in broadband have said.

thaks good to know aswell! think I stick with eircom and irishbroadband, not cheap but have no complaints, you probaly get what you pay for.