Eircom Line Quality

markmcg

I currently can only get 1MB from Eircom.
My telephone line was put in over 10 years ago.
I heard its the line quality is the reason i cani get more than 1MB.
A house near me has 7MB. there line was all replaced with new copper.
Much will it cost to get eircom to change the line?
I'm going to do a petition because there is also 4 other houses want it but we are on the same line going to broadband.
The house that the line was changed is only 200 metres away so If i could get eircom to change my line to there i should get faster speeds.
Any advice i'm willing to pay for the line change.
thanks

_Kooli_

markmcg wrote: »

I currently can only get 1MB from Eircom.
My telephone line was put in over 10 years ago.
I heard its the line quality is the reason i cani get more than 1MB.
A house near me has 7MB. there line was all replaced with new copper.
Much will it cost to get eircom to change the line?
I'm going to do a petition because there is also 4 other houses want it but we are on the same line going to broadband.
The house that the line was changed is only 200 metres away so If i could get eircom to change my line to there i should get faster speeds.
Any advice i'm willing to pay for the line change.
thanks

Welcome to the club. I cant even get 1MB.
Some advice i got from a friend working in Eircom.

They will do nothing if you are paying already. Why would they bother working on your line if you are paying for it anyway. They are getting your money already.

So myself and some neighbors are canceling Eircom BB. We will say if they fix the lines we will sign up again.

watty

It took me five years to get eicom to replace my line 900m from exchange, limited dialup to an unreliable 19k. It was the local cabinet connection < 30m away. Speed was then 42k

I now save €26 a month on rental by have no line and have 8Mbps down/1Mbps up on a 12.5km Wireless link, with two phone numbers.

See if you can get UPC cable, Imagine Breeze or Digiweb Metro. Unless your line actually fails eircom is unlikely to replace it.

markmcg

I just checked eircom.ie last night. typed in my house no and it nows show 3MB and 7MB. I ordered 7MB. what sort of download speeds you get?

Sponge Bob

eircom have been knows for selling unsustainable products in the past , I would not dare try 7mbits with your history, go to 3 first and see how it goes . They may simply have done some rather routing maintenance to improve the copper quality ...cleaning spiders nests out and stuff

lucernarian

markmcg wrote: »

I currently can only get 1MB from Eircom.
My telephone line was put in over 10 years ago.
I heard its the line quality is the reason i cani get more than 1MB.
A house near me has 7MB. there line was all replaced with new copper.
Much will it cost to get eircom to change the line?
I'm going to do a petition because there is also 4 other houses want it but we are on the same line going to broadband.
The house that the line was changed is only 200 metres away so If i could get eircom to change my line to there i should get faster speeds.
Any advice i'm willing to pay for the line change.
thanks

You wouldn't be able to get broadband if the line was being shared with 4 other houses. Do you know how far you are from the exchange?

markmcg

Hi,
I checked my line on Sunday night and it showed up 3MB and 7MB.
last tuesday was the day the eircom guy came and took me off carrier line and i now have direct line to exchage. from my house to exchange its only 2.4 miles. so that is well under the distance.
I'm sort of confused that from wednesday to saturday it was only showing 1mb and on sunday it displayed 3mb and 7mb.
i ordered the 7mb.
will 7mb work on my line?

lucernarian

markmcg wrote: »

Hi,
I checked my line on Sunday night and it showed up 3MB and 7MB.
last tuesday was the day the eircom guy came and took me off carrier line and i now have direct line to exchage. from my house to exchange its only 2.4 miles. so that is well under the distance.
I'm sort of confused that from wednesday to saturday it was only showing 1mb and on sunday it displayed 3mb and 7mb.
i ordered the 7mb.
will 7mb work on my line?

Are you saying you had broadband before the carrier was removed?

What do you mean "it showed up 3 mb and 7 mb"? The router's status page? The eircom website?

I can't really understand what you are trying to say or what exactly displayed 1 mb from Wednesday to Saturday. Apologies.

markmcg

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Are you saying you had broadband before the carrier was removed?

What do you mean "it showed up 3 mb and 7 mb"? The router's status page? The eircom website?

I can't really understand what you are trying to say or what exactly displayed 1 mb from Wednesday to Saturday. Apologies.

Right ok. it does sound confusing.
Last tuesday eircom removed me from carrier line.
The day after that I checked up on eircom.ie for broadband packages and it only showed 1MB.
On sunday I again typed in my house number on eircom.ie and it also displayed 3MB and 7MB broadband available.
So I ordered the 7MB.
Does that mean that my line can take 7MB Broadband?
thanks

lucernarian

Aha. Good to hear someone else being freed from the chains of carrier lines:D

If your line is around the 2.5 miles mark, I expect that you will get a faster speed than 3 mbps but not much more. Maybe 4 or 5 mbps if you order the 7.6 mbps product, and it runs the risk of disconnects if the netopia modem acts up when the signal margin is less than 8dB.

In other words, I'd recommend the 3 mbps package.

The reason why it said "line may be suitable" with the 1 mb limit at first is that they had to remove the carrier first to determine what speed would actually be likely (kinda). People with other line problems, e.g. long distance get the same message but in their case 1024 kbps is the best they can hope for and eircom are lazily using the same message for people on carriers. It's a generic disclaimer message really. The line would then have been tested properly for broadband after the carrier went, hence why you could order whatever you wanted subsequently.

HTH

markmcg

I ordered the broadband on sunday nigght so when should i get the router and do they have to a thing called jumper the line at exchange?
What sort of speed u actually get when downloading? the 4 or 5mb would only show when u do speed test.
thanks

Blazer

normally takes about 4-5 working days for the router to arrive.
You could be lucky and get it by Thursday.

markmcg

Berkut wrote: »

normally takes about 4-5 working days for the router to arrive.
You could be lucky and get it by Thursday.

Could be.
So cani wait because the current broadband i have is wireless. its 1mb but u only get 110kbps tops from it.

lucernarian

110 kBps = 880 kbps. You lose the remaining 100 kbps on extra data sent on the line for error correction, signalling, addressing etc., called overheads.

Same way that your download speeds in internet explorer (when on Dialup!!) reported about 4.5 kB/s while your line was connected between 40000 and 50000 bps. 40000 bps = 5kB/s (before you include overheads)

Sounds like a normally functioning 1 mbps connection.

newballsplease

We upgraded to 3mb eircom bb over 3 months ago...and the speed is ridiculously slow. we contacted eircom tech support 4- 5 times, each time doin the usual plugging out the router and doin line checks.
They said an engineer may have to call out. they gave me a reference number and all- nothing changed. i called them again, and they said 'on monday' they have to sort cables out. i asked what did he mean? and he couldnt tell me. this was over 2 weeks ago. again no change to the speed.

gonna ring up the complaints department tomorrow- we are paying approx 35 euro a month for dial up speed and worse. ive run speed tests 3 times
a day.sometimes getting .14mbps other times getting .22mbps download. .21 upload.

distance -50mi from server. ping 89ms.


Any advise lads or what do I do with this??

Sponge Bob

Well if the engineer is 'sorting out cables' I assume this is best done when it ain't constantly pissing sideways like it has been in the west all this week .

Once the engineer calls out it is his job, get his mobile number off him and ring him direct .

watty

Never mind the Infrastructure. Apparently all they need is better marketing:
http://www.independent.ie/business/media/spirited-fightback-at-eircom-1927561.html

leoc

Yes indeed, Eircom is now selling itself on its customer service.

bealtine

leoc wrote: »

Yes indeed, Eircom is now selling itself on its customer service.

The problem is that nothing much has changed at the network level, the same carrier lines are still there, the same cruddy lines. Now we just have better marketing.

This marketing campaign is in response to the Voda assault on eircom and their guarantee that they will always be 20% cheaper than eircom. So eircom revert to margin squeeze to silence the competition...

lucernarian

bealtine wrote: »

The problem is that nothing much has changed at the network level, the same carrier lines are still there, the same cruddy lines. Now we just have better marketing.

This marketing campaign is in response to the Voda assault on eircom and their guarantee that they will always be 20% cheaper than eircom. So eircom revert to margin squeeze to silence the competition...

In my experience, and I've seen a lot of Ireland in the last couple of years, carrier lines are being removed from a lot of lines. Not all of them, but credit has to be given for the fact that most linesmen will now remove them if a person is looking to get broadband. This thread is but another example of this.

Also, there's not much room for poor lines being improved. They either work fully or they're crackly/completely out of order. It's not as clear cut for the higher frequencies used in DSL but it's a similar story. Replacing old lines with new lines will change little.. Distance is the main enemy on the PSTN network for higher speeds.

bealtine

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

In my experience, and I've seen a lot of Ireland in the last couple of years, carrier lines are being removed from a lot of lines. Not all of them,

I've seen the opposite...usually when there are no spare pairs available carriers are left in situ and customers are told "sorry"

Distance is the main enemy on the PSTN network for higher speeds.

Agreed on the distance thing but the solution is relatively simple (and is being rolled out in the Dublin area) move the sub-loop closer to the customer. Line lengths fixed up...Of course for a broke telco the investment is enormous but moving the loop closer to the consumer is the norm is most other European countries.

lucernarian

The opposite?? The opposite of what I said would be that they're installing more pairgains in various places around Ireland than before. And I never said that everyone who asked for its removal would get it. I merely gave praise to the changed attitude in eircom (and indeed eircom's attitude to previous ComReg judgements) regarding pairgains, and how thousands more lines around Ireland can get rid of that blighted technology with just a bit of effort.

It is not true to say that the same carrier lines are there as they were circa 2004. It is also not true to say that poor line quality is really an issue. Like LLU, the local loops themselves are becoming the problem in getting ubiquitous >10 mbps broadband.

For ANY telecoms co. replacing the dispersed elements of the local loop with fibre is a major investment. FTTH is no good if people would rather have 10 or 20 mbps with 2 mbps upload at a much cheaper price. 100 mbps needs to have a clear advantage over 20 mbps if it is to be widely adopted.

watty

See this

Line distance roughly converts to attenuation (and vice versa)

Older eircom DSL enabled exchanges are DSL with eircom and ADSL2+ if LLU. Recently enabled eircom exchanges are mostly ADSL2+ even without LLU, eircom or other companies' Bitstream.

Green line is newer eircom ADSL2+ exchanges (or some Smart or Magnet or BT).

Blue Line is original eircom ADSL exchanges and original bitstream.

In practice there is no advantage more than 3km (45dB to 50dB). The Average line length is slightly under 3km and only 15% are more than 6km (too long). However pairgains or poor line or bad connections can make a line fail. A multipair cable only 500m can be half as fast as the graph if there are a lot of DSL customers which increases cross talk. Increasing Interleaving (higher latency) reduces crosstalk and helps maintain a higher speed. ADSL2+ has slightly less crosstalk issue than original ADSL.


Also http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/extreme/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.DMT
This good too
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,12770014

10Mbps with DSL2+ corresponds to about 3km or AVERAGE line length, i.e. About 1/2 of customers can't get 10Mbps even if every line is perfect and has ADSL2+. At 3km VDSL is no help. In the real world maybe 40% of lines could do 10MBps or more even if EVERY line is working and has ADSL2+

To even have > 3Mbps on DSL for 80% of people is probably impossible. At the very least you ned HFC/Coax or FTTC + VDSL/ADSL2+ in Urban/Suburban (10Mbps via longer ADSL2+ from fibre fed cabinets for sparcer Suburban).
Fixed Wireless can easily deliver 5Mbps (20km) to 10Mbps (15km) to the rest of rural too far from cabinets. Some Rural would get cabinet (FTTC) + ADSL2+ at 5Mbps to 10Mbps.

This is why the LLU argument and Bitstream pricing and Line Rental issues are becoming Moot. We need NOW a new plan with FTTC, Cable, FTTH/FTTK and quality Fixed Wireless. The existing eircom infrastructure can't provide.

YouTube "so callled" HD is near 2Mbps. If you have more than one user in an Home/Office/Digs then 8Mbps down/1Mbps up is a minimum. 5Mbps is an absolute isolated one user rural minimum.

Sponge Bob

eircom engineers on the ground have become quite ingenious at swapping pairgains off lines as DSL rolled out , in fairness to them . You say you want DSL and they will generally do their best.

The old denial of service policies of the McRedmond/Nolan/O'Reilly era are gone . Underinvestment is still a huge issue of course and the urban VDSL plan announced by Danon 3 years ago is dead in the water .

Once UPC roll out Docsis 3 in the cities they will cream eircom from next year onwards. We can see a slow migration to Cable already as ADSL loses connections despite higher availability .

Eircom are swamping areas where new exchange launches are planned and are even offering sneaky ADSL2 selective line card upgrades on exchanges that are not ADSL2 marketable through their wholesale arm . They are in a defensive frenzy right now.

Over half of all eircoms customer are now on 3mbits+ where that was 1mbit in 2007 . The differential on price is €5 a month .

I would calculate that such a speed is available on a good line at 3 miles line length and on an substandard one at 2 miles line length .

As we have 720 exchanges in the state with DSL and as each can cover crudely 20 square miles at that bitrate I would think that AVERAGE DSL speeds of 3mbits are only available to at most 14200 square miles out of the 26500 square miles area of the state .

Adjusting that for the smaller geographic coverage area that urban exchanges have ( conservatively 100 exchanges x 10 square miles mainly in Dublin Cork Galway Limerick Waterford ) and we lose another 1000 square miles meaning that in around 50% of the state people can get 3mbit minimum speeds and of the rest around 25% can get sub 3mbit and 25% can get nothing at all .

Population wise ( this is very rough unlike the calculation above) around 70% can get 3mbits and 15% sub 1 mbit and 15% can get nowt ....often not even stable dialup .