[UPC]UPC Slovakia launches 120mbps fibrepower for €40 per month

vibe666

no, I'm not Slovakian, but i know a man who is who passed on the info.

http://www.zive.sk/spravy/upc-120-mbits-bude-stat-40-eur--dalsie-detaily-doplnene/sc-30-sr-1-a-284117/default.aspx

looks like it's already up and running on the UPC SK website too.

http://www.upc.sk/internet/zakladne_informacie/

considering that their prices in SK used to be more or less comparable to Ireland, it bodes well for UPC users here that UPC intend to keep rolling it out and keeping it aggressively priced through all their territories (hopefully).

we've already had the official announcement that it'll be with us by the middle of next year at the latest, so i guess just watch this space and wait for them to crank up the speed in Ireland.

yes i know, always the optimist, but it can't hurt to hope. even if we get it for the dutch prices it'll be pretty special.

bk

vibe666 wrote: »

yes i know, always the optimist, but it can't hurt to hope. even if we get it for the dutch prices it'll be pretty special.

I fully expect that we will get it at the Dutch price, which is still an excellent €70 for 120mb/s.

Remember people in Slovakia get paid far less then us, so it probably costs a lot more for them as a percentage of their salary. Irish salaries would be more in line with the Netherlands.

In some ways even more exciting then their 120mb/s service is their other cheaper services which will likely apply to many people:

5mb / 512kb €18
25mb / 1.5mb €25 (Currently 3mb / 256k for €22)
30mb / 3mb €30 (Currently 10mb / 1mb for €32)
60mb / 6mb €40 (Currently 20mb / 1.5mb for €42)
90mb / 6mb €50

Entry level 5mb BB for just €18 would blow many people away, more then good enough for the majority of ordinary users and vastly cheaper then Eircom's 1mb entry level service.

mehmeh12

To be honest i think the rollout of UPC superfirbre 120MB in ireland is all hyped up..the majority of people in this country get basic dsl speeds..eircoms infrastructure is a joke. Dont kid yourself waiting for this **** to actually happen in this ****hole of a country.

DECEiFER

mehmeh12 wrote: »

To be honest i think the rollout of UPC superfirbre 120MB in ireland is all hyped up..the majority of people in this country get basic dsl speeds..eircoms infrastructure is a joke. Dont kid yourself waiting for this **** to actually happen in this ****hole of a country.

If that's true, then UPC Ireland have committed PR suicide with their official press announcement of the same.

koHd

mehmeh12 wrote: »

To be honest i think the rollout of UPC superfirbre 120MB in ireland is all hyped up..the majority of people in this country get basic dsl speeds..eircoms infrastructure is a joke. Dont kid yourself waiting for this **** to actually happen in this ****hole of a country.

Well to be honest I thought UPC and 20Mb was something we wouldn't see until around 2012 when I heard about it. But they're rolling it out for the last two years now.

I know they aren't in all areas, it takes time for that.

An area has to make business sense before investing heavily in upgrading. No point in spending 200k on upgrading Johnnysmallvillage if you're only going to see a return of 50k over two or three years.

This is just the harsh reality of capitalism.

But hey, for those lucky enough to live in highly populated and highly profitable areas, it's great news. I can't wait til the day there's a good legal blu ray streaming service running with a 120Mb connection :eek: awesome

Don't know why you mentioned Eircom though? They're on a totally different technology and network to UPC. Their technology is restricted and would require an entire network upgrade to touch UPC's speeds. And Eircom are happy ripping us all off right now, so won't be spending on an upgrade.

Give it two more years when UPC have the market share of broadband users, then Eircom might get off their arses.

paulm17781

mehmeh12 wrote: »

To be honest i think the rollout of UPC superfirbre 120MB in ireland is all hyped up..the majority of people in this country get basic dsl speeds..eircoms infrastructure is a joke. Dont kid yourself waiting for this **** to actually happen in this ****hole of a country.

UPC and Eircom use totally separate networks. UPC have been investing hundreds of millions on their network, Eircom haven't.

vibe666

mehmeh12 wrote: »

To be honest i think the rollout of UPC superfirbre 120MB in ireland is all hyped up..the majority of people in this country get basic dsl speeds..eircoms infrastructure is a joke. Dont kid yourself waiting for this **** to actually happen in this ****hole of a country.

eircom and UPC are apples and oranges. UPC's own network infrastructure investment in the last couple of years far outstrips anything eircom have invested in theirs and they are now the second largest ISP in ireland (over 500k users) next to eircom in a time when companies like BT are giving up and leaving the sector altogether UPC have put in millions of euros in investment of their network so they can roll out 120mbps broadband to as many people as possible.

they said that they were bringing 120mbps broadband to the netherlands and they did. they said they were going to invest misslions in their network to bring next gen broadband to as many people as possible and they did, they said that they were going to start rolling it out to all their other localities and they've started to do that too, so i'm starting to believe them when they said they'd roll out 120mbps in ireland.

i was never a fan of ntl or chorus when i was one of their customers, but upc have made a big investment in ireland and have made some very big changes and i'm starting to like them a whole lot.

no it's still not perfect, but it's getting to be a lot better than it ever was and i'd like to give credit where it's due and i for one welcome our new 120bmps fibre optic overlords.

mehmeh12

Ok ok i was wrong with the whole eircom thing but do people really believe that upc will bring 120 MB speed to ireland? even if its just the town and cities?

DECEiFER

mehmeh12 wrote: »

Ok ok i was wrong with the whole eircom thing but do people really believe that upc will bring 120 MB speed to ireland? even if its just the town and cities?

They delivered two upgrades last year. They promised one more for next year. They have no reason to be doubted. If they can do it in Slovakia, they can do it here. It's not just that, it's also that they released a press statement, so if they go back on that, they're going to lose so much credibility.

MisterAnarchy

120Mbps,why would you need such speeds ?
You could download a full 4.3GB DVD in 5 minutes !
You wouldnt be long running out of storage space.
Seems like overkill to me.

DECEiFER

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

120Mbps,why would you need such speeds ?
You could download a full 4.3GB DVD in 5 minutes !
You wouldnt be long running out of storage space.
Seems like overkill to me.

Not at all. Think of the bandwidth you could share amongst your family or housemates, and share the bill too! Not to mention the growth of multimedia, such as streaming media, which is only going to get more demanding as time progresses. It's all happening very quickly.

Also, think of the online games. All the data that online games need to scrape out because of bandwidth constraints, where in the future it will be more or less no holds barred on how good online gaming can get.

That's all only the beginning, part of what to expect in the future. Keep up, or get left behind.

So it's not all about downloading this and that, and trying to find the local HDD capacity to store it.

Koloman

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

120Mbps,why would you need such speeds ?
You could download a full 4.3GB DVD in 5 minutes !
You wouldnt be long running out of storage space.
Seems like overkill to me.

I think it's called planning for the future. A few years ago some people questioned whether they needed broadband at all!

With the difference between a PC and a TV becoming more blurred then ultra fast broadband is what will be needed for this.

Ranicand

Koloman wrote: »

I think it's called planning for the future. A few years ago some people questioned whether they needed broadband at all!

With the difference between a PC and a TV becoming more blurred then ultra fast broadband is what will be needed for this.

Nonsense you can't beat a good dial up connection downloading one song was an adventure in itself.

Heisenberg1

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

120Mbps,why would you need such speeds ?
You could download a full 4.3GB DVD in 5 minutes !
You wouldnt be long running out of storage space.
Seems like overkill to me.

Ive asked myself the same question i have the 10mb pack and i think its

lighting quick but id still love to see it become available.

DECEiFER

Ranicand wrote: »

Nonsense you can't beat a good dial up connection downloading one song was an adventure in itself.

Oh trudat. Napster, 1999, 1 song, 10-20 minutes. Bliss.

Ranicand

luzon wrote: »

Ive asked myself the same question i have the 10mb pack and i think its

lighting quick but id still love to see it become available.

People are missing the big picture here you may not max out the connection with one download but you could have a few going at once along with video streaming and games all at the same time.

Think of it Xbox Playstation and a pc or two all at the same time.

cbr954

I will be happy when (if) I can get a upc 10mb connection in Bray!!

vibe666

the big picture is exactly the point.

it's pushing the envelope.

who would make better and better games if hardware manufacturers didn't keep improving the hardware?

i had something called bt home highway when i was in the UK (pre-2000) which was basically 64-128kbps ISDN and it was great. when i got 512kbps DSL i thought i was in heaven because of how fast everything happened online.

then i got 3mbps and it was a whole new world all over again. then 7mbps and now 20mbps and i haven't looked back.

if i had to put up with 512kbps again it would be like the dark ages. like a lot of people my use of the internet has grown and developed with the speed of my internet access.

at the moment eircom is struggling to offer what UPC are offering, and when they bring in the 120mbps packages eircom will have to try very hard to keep up with them. right now there is nothing eircom could possibly do to match their speeds with the infrastructure they have, but that just means they'll have to find other ways of keeping all the customers they can which means better packages and lower prices for everyone.

even if you can't get UPC, in the end everyone wins.

Dublin_Gunner

DECEiFER wrote: »

Not at all. Think of the bandwidth you could share amongst your family or housemates, and share the bill too! Not to mention the growth of multimedia, such as streaming media, which is only going to get more demanding as time progresses. It's all happening very quickly.

Also, think of the online games. All the data that online games need to scrape out because of bandwidth constraints, where in the future it will be more or less no holds barred on how good online gaming can get.

That's all only the beginning, part of what to expect in the future. Keep up, or get left behind.

So it's not all about downloading this and that, and trying to find the local HDD capacity to store it.

No to mention that having that much bandwidth would eradicate the need for storing most stuff locally anyway. Think of future speeds where you can store all your apps & large files online, and stream them to your PC where they're executed - all in real time.

Store movies online, and stream them directly to your TV via a HDTV box.

Seriously, there are no limits.

Once its reliable of course.

bk

vibe666 wrote: »

at the moment eircom is struggling to offer what UPC are offering, and when they bring in the 120mbps packages eircom will have to try very hard to keep up with them. right now there is nothing eircom could possibly do to match their speeds with the infrastructure they have, but that just means they'll have to find other ways of keeping all the customers they can which means better packages and lower prices for everyone.

I think the way Eircom would compete in the short term is move everyone (at least in urban areas that have UPC) over to ADSL2+ and make "up to" 24mb/s the entry level product *

Sure that won't compete with the headline 120mb/s UPC service, but the reality is most people will probably just sign up to the 5mb/s or 25mb/s products in the short term at least. It is these two very cheap, yet nice speed products that Eircom have the most to fear from.

* Yes most people probably won't get more then 12mb/s on ADSL2+ never mind 24mb/s, but it won't stop Eircom trying to fool people into thinking they are getting more then they are.

vibe666

bk wrote: »

* Yes most people probably won't get more then 12mb/s on ADSL2+ never mind 24mb/s, but it won't stop Eircom trying to fool people into thinking they are getting more then they are.

ditto.

it may not be practical for UPC to aim to reach every house in ireland, but as long as they can cover as many of the more densely populated areas as possible to reach enough people to put a big dent in eircom's customer base, eircom will have to do *something* to keep existing customers from jumping ship and new customers from going elsewhere.

i think the times when eircom could survive on its name recognition alone are over, particularly in the current economic market, people aren't as willing to throw money away for an easy life.

P.S. don't post saying you'd be happy to pay the dutch price, you never know who's watching.

gabbo is coming

Ranicand wrote: »

People are missing the big picture here you may not max out the connection with one download but you could have a few going at once along with video streaming and games all at the same time.

Think of it Xbox Playstation and a pc or two all at the same time.

Exactly. PS3, 2 PCs on the go and an internet radio. Plus someone on the Blueface phone. That kind of bandwidth can be used....

hightower1

gabbo is coming wrote: »

Exactly. PS3, 2 PCs on the go and an internet radio. Plus someone on the Blueface phone. That kind of bandwidth can be used....

Sure what would ya want a PS3 online for? If your that into S&M you can get a fix of that on the PC!

GigaByte

Ranicand wrote: »

People are missing the big picture here you may not max out the connection with one download but you could have a few going at once along with video streaming and games all at the same time.

Think of it Xbox Playstation and a pc or two all at the same time.

Exactly and its not only that, how many times have people been on here posting about slow speeds and it being blamed on contention ratios??

Even with a 120MB on a 17:1 contention ratio (upc's ratio) at max load you'll still be getting 7MB per sec.

vibe666

hightower1 wrote: »

Sure what would ya want a PS3 online for? If your that into S&M you can get a fix of that on the PC!

yeah, but the PS3 is already dressed in shiny black stuff, so it's ready for a good S&M session.

have to say though, since i manually added the opendns servers into the PS3 network settings i haven't had any network/online gaming problems with it at all (touch wood).

accensi0n

GigaByte wrote: »

Exactly and its not only that, how many times have people been on here posting about slow speeds and it being blamed on contention ratios??

Even with a 120MB on a 17:1 contention ratio (upc's ratio) at max load you'll still be getting 7MB per sec.

Mb/s

Don't get ahead of yourself.

fulltimeride

I read in sunday business post the max speed you can have on a landline e.g.bt,eircom is 24mb/s.But UPC customer service is shocking about 10 hourson the phone and three months waiting to tell me that I could not have service for tv and broadband in my house.I choose Bt at least i have somebody to talk to and there so efficent and dont make promises they cant keep unlike UPC.I have it today and its 5.5mb/s but there upgrading the telephone exchanges to make broadband across the country faster.

Dublin_Gunner

fulltimeride wrote: »

I read in sunday business post the max speed you can have on a landline e.g.bt,eircom is 24mb/s.But UPC customer service is shocking about 10 hourson the phone and three months waiting to tell me that I could not have service for tv and broadband in my house.I choose Bt at least i have somebody to talk to and there so efficent and dont make promises they cant keep unlike UPC.I have it today and its 5.5mb/s but there upgrading the telephone exchanges to make broadband across the country faster.

Funnily I've neer had a bad experience with UPC. More fool you for staying 10 hours on the phone.

And TBH - after attempting to get BB with BT - I swore never to use them for anything, ever again. They must have changed considerably in recent times so.

bk

fulltimeride wrote: »

I read in sunday business post the max speed you can have on a landline e.g.bt,eircom is 24mb/s.But UPC customer service is shocking about 10 hourson the phone and three months waiting to tell me that I could not have service for tv and broadband in my house.I choose Bt at least i have somebody to talk to and there so efficent and dont make promises they cant keep unlike UPC.I have it today and its 5.5mb/s but there upgrading the telephone exchanges to make broadband across the country faster.

Are you kidding me, BT customer care are dreadful, in particular their billing. I helped both my sister and parents sign up to BT at the same time and it was a complete disaster. They ended up charing my parents €350 on their first bill, it should have only been €50. It took weeks of phone calls and finally threats of solicitors to get it sorted and even then they only ended up giving them €300 credit, rather then paying it back. Sister had a similar experience. And god help you when you cancel the service, they will continue to bill you months later.

As for not keeping promises, no one will get 24mb/s from an ADSL2+ line, you nearly have to be sitting on the exchange and then you are only going to get about 20mb/s. Most people likely won't get over 12mb/s in Ireland due to the quality of the lines.

GigaByte

accensi0n wrote: »

Mb/s

Don't get ahead of yourself.

Maybe next year...

weisses

As I said in a different thread ... A lot of the European countries have Infrastructure ... I was in Hungary last year in a very small remote rural town about 300 people lived there ... and they had ADSL .. seriously couldn’t believe it Drove through the most of Europe the following weeks .. and there’s was wifi cable dsl in almost every country on a scale that you can only dream of in Ireland ...

Most governments realize the importance of that kind of infrastructure

over here they take the money allocated to the broadband scheme and put it into a wood pellet scheme.

120 mbps in Ireland ?(maybe for a small group of people in Dublin) I seriously hope I'm wrong

vibe666

weisses wrote: »

120 mbps in Ireland ?(maybe for a small group of people in Dublin) I seriously hope I'm wrong

yup, you are.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12855/business/upc-is-building-a-120mbps-next-gen-broadband-network.

UPC broadband is available in over 500,000 homes in Ireland at this stage, they're a big player in the broadband market these days and are going to cause eircom some serious headaches come this time next year.

dogpile

vibe666 wrote: »

yup, you are.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12855/business/upc-is-building-a-120mbps-next-gen-broadband-network.

UPC broadband is available in over 500,000 homes in Ireland at this stage, they're a big player in the broadband market these days and are going to cause eircom some serious headaches come this time next year.

"Dunn concluded: “UPC’s philosophy is simple – this amazing but often complex digital world should be for everyone. We’re not the finished article, but we promise there’s more to come"

It's not tho is it, a major European city like Dublin and still not available to all who want it

Talisman

Presumably the 120Mb product would first be offered to businesses at a premium price.

AlmightyCushion

Talisman wrote: »

Presumably the 120Mb product would first be offered to businesses at a premium price.

That doesn't seem to be how UPC have introduced it in the past.

vibe666

Talisman wrote: »

Presumably the 120Mb product would first be offered to businesses at a premium price.

nope, based on what they have already rolled out under the "upc fibre power" banner, anyone who can get UPC broadband will be able to upgrade.

check out their already existing fibre power enabled countries here:

http://www.upc.nl/internet/
http://www.upc.sk/internet/zakladne_informacie
http://www.upc.cz/internet/
http://www.upc.hu/kabel-internet

available to anyone who wants it (who is in a cable broadband enabled area).

as for not offering broadband to every house in ireland, or even in dublin, who exactly does?

there's plenty of people posting on here living in dublin who can't even get DSL off eircom for one reason or another and they bought a fully functioning (more or less) telecoms company off the irish government with cable already laid to most of the houses in the country and they still can't offer their own broadband to absolutely everybody who wants it. :eek:

upc have ploughed millions of euro's into delivering their services to as many homes as possible, but like the man says, they're still not done yet, but you have to give them some credit for the amount of effort they're putting in. their broadband customer base has grown a huge amount in the last couple of years and is still growing now, which is probably more than you can say for eircom just recently, i'd be surprised if they have any broadband customers left by next month the way they've been going recently.