3 National Broadband Scheme - how do I escalate a complaint?

ToadVine

drunkmonkey wrote: »

3 have an escalation procedure. You go through 1913 and you do not make demands as it won't work, either will intimidation.

3 do not have an escalation procedure to speak of. This is what happens ...

1. You phone 1913 and they politely listen. Then they tell you that they have emailed your complaint/details to the network support team in Dublin and that they will phone you back in 24-48 hours.

2. They do not phone you back.

3. You call 1913 again and they tell you exactly the same thing and promise a callback from Dublin in 24-48 hours. When you say you have already been promised this they say the complaint has been fwd again this time with "highest priority level".

4. You get no call.

5. You call 1913 again and go through all the same nonsense again. They now say that Dublin have all information but that there has been an unusually high level of network problems over the last week and you can expect a callback late next week.

6. You get no call.

5. Repeat steps 1 to 6 until you want to smash your mobile phone into 1,000,000 teeny tiny pieces.

That is 3's customer support and complaints resolution procedure. It is an absolute disgrace. The tech support team in India have a script which they cannot go beyond... they have very little power to do anything. I feel sorry for them, but it is impossible not to get very frustrated by this.

drunkmonkey

ToadVine wrote: »

The tech support team in India have a script which they cannot go beyond... they have very little power to do anything

They got an engineer to someones house within 24hrs of me making a call to India last week. The NBS support has improved especially turn around times once the problem is identified. You have to play along for a few days but once you do it gets sorted out.

So what's the situation with your NBS connection at the moment. Are you still not getting anywhere, have you any service?

starfish12

why do you have to 'play along' for a few days? most people dont have time or the patience for that kind of carry on! i admit that as consumers we cant expect people to appear at our front doors with a resolution every time we ring a call centre with a problem, but surely as paying customers people should expect better from 3, having to repeatedly call the same number and reiterate the same story 3-4 times before anything happens is not a viable proposition?

drunkmonkey

When I say play along I mean follow the steps to resolution which may take a few days until everything is troublshooted. I gave 3mts playing along with Vodafone home broadband, now that's rubbish support and guess what the support was Irish it didn't make the ordeal any less painfull.

Sponge Bob

ToadVine wrote: »

Yesterday I got a call from 3 who are sending an engineer to me on Monday to install an external antenna on my house. I phoned him and the guy said he had a range of options available to get my connection up to spec and he seemed fairly confident he would have some success. If the external antenna does not work I'll be fully expecting a satellite link. And I wont pay a penny to 3 or give up till I get it.

The customer care number for the NBS is not 1913 but 1800 944 791

The sequence is.

1. Give you a dongle , if the signal is too weak then
2. Give you a repeater ( internal antenna like this) if the signal is still too weak then
3. Give you an external antenna, then
4. If all that fails to deliver the specified minimum service level, give you satellite which is NOT quite the same service level.

The 3g service spec is minimum download speed of 1.2mbps, a minimum upload speed of 200kpbs, a maximum contention ratio of 36:1, a latency of 120 milliseconds and a 12 DOWN and 3 UP cap to a total of 15 Gigabytes. This is a minimum speed, 3 claim you should get this at the edge of the cell.

It may well be faster than in some cases but should never be slower than 1.2mbps.

BUT If you get satellite off 3 the spec changes to a minimum download speed of 1.2mbps, a minimum upload speed of 128kbps, a maximum contention ratio of 48:1, latency of 800 milliseconds and a 10 DOWN and 1 UP cap to a total of 11 Gigabytes.

clohamon

Sponge Bob wrote: »

3 claim you should get this at the edge of the cell.

Is the "edge of the cell" defined?

Sponge Bob

clohamon wrote: »

Is the "edge of the cell" defined?

The edge of the cell is the limit of 3G in an electoral district that is served by the NBS, everyone else in that electoral district is supposed to get Satellite.

clohamon

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The edge of the cell is the limit of 3G

That begs the question doesn't it?

watty

The cell edge distance varies by almost 4:1 ratio or maybe more depending if there are 1 or 20 people on the sector.

As the customer base grows those on the "previous" cell edge experience more and more frequent disconnects, no connects or sub 1Mbps speed.

At Cell edge only 2 to 3 simultaneous users of entire sector* are possible to knock you below 1Mbps. This is physics, it's in the vendor spec and design of 3G/HSPA.

google CDMA cell breathing

*Typically a cell has 3 pizza slice "sectors" that overlap with each other and neighbouring cell.

drunkmonkey

Will HSPA + make any difference, they were due to announce something this week according to the business post last week but I haven't heard anything about it since.

clohamon

watty wrote: »

The cell edge distance varies by almost 4:1 ratio or maybe more depending if there are 1 or 20 people on the sector.

.

Isn't that the point.

It is the performance that defines the cell edge.

Making any guarantee of performance that uses the "cell edge" as a reference is meaningless. Its like saying it is wherever it is. And as you (Watty) say, that may change at any time.

watty

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Will HSPA + make any difference, they were due to announce something this week according to the business post last week but I haven't heard anything about it since.

no.
HSPA+ simply allows higher speed in the 10% to 2% of area close to mast and adds HSUPA (higher upload speed if there is a very good signal).

The overall increase in performance with HSPA+ compared to 3.6Mbps HSDPA is marginal. No difference to cell size and almost no increase in cell capacity. It's just software.



from http://www.techtir.ie/comms/fixed-wireless-broadband-better

Most HSDPA is the orange, HSPA and HSPA+ are yellow and dark browny/purple trace. The % of users is really based on even distribution of users in Cell. If the mast in on a building in a town/village/city that is true, if it is rural on a hill, then the graph is much worse (maybe no difference and no-one gets more than 3.6Mbps as no-one is close enough for higher speeds).

The speed depends on Signal/Noise ratio. This depends on distance (twice distance is about 1/4 speed) and because it's CDMA also on number of other users. Above a certain level of users (15?) the latency (ping) rises rapidly as they run out of CDMA codes and users must be time scheduled.

There is a significant jump in performance from 1.8Mbps to 3.6MBps (but only near to mast), but above that each increase is very marginal.

The "Green" line is for comparison with Fixed Wireless system (everyone gets same speed no matter where they are in cell, i.e. Metro or Breeze, speed limited by package rather than system capacity typically, but in the same 5Mhz channel that would be capacity speed of system, or speed for a single user on unlimited package )

Speeds in the graph are for percentage of users where only one user at a time connects.

anotherfinemess

No your chances of getting a decent connection if you are in a remote rural area are closer to zilch. Pigeons on Es would be more reliable.

watty

There is a spec for that.
You can beat even 100Mbps broadband with pigeons, but the latency is hours and packet loss can be high if there are raptors.

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt (basic standard)

Adding QOS: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549.txt

Think a pair of mini SDHC cards.

Of course like many advanced networking ideas it has been tested on Linux

For large file downloads from Heanet this will beat the NBS. Maybe the Green party would fund further experimentation?

I has been successfully deployed on a test basis in Israel (who have their own TV satellites and lots of fibre, unlike us). It easily beat ADSL in a South African test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

Or just use AnPost or Bus Eireann

Sponge Bob

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Will HSPA + make any difference, they were due to announce something this week according to the business post last week but I haven't heard anything about it since.

HSPA+ and LTE are morkeshing drivel in the main. The only thing that will make any difference is if 3g is ( probably) allowed on the current GSM frequencies after they are refarmed over the next 3 years ( the eircell and digifone allocations run out in that time)

Even then they will provide a sort of universal dialup. Core HSPA frequencies are higher than core 3g frequencies and will not penetrate buildings.

Unless you propose to use your 100mbit dongle in the pissing rain outside the laws of physics will always tend to get ya

Breeding pigeons is a damn fine idea.

ToadVine

drunkmonkey wrote: »

They got an engineer to someones house within 24hrs of me making a call to India last week.

This is not my experience. It took me over 3 weeks of constant calls to get an engineer to visit.

How did you get them to call so quickly?

starfish12

it just depends on who else in your area is complaining in my experience!! if you have other people with similar problems they group them together, otherwise you end up waiting for someone to fit you in

ToadVine

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The sequence is.

1. Give you a dongle , if the signal is too weak then
2. Give you a repeater ( internal antenna like this) if the signal is still too weak then
3. Give you an external antenna, then
4. If all that fails to deliver the specified minimum service level, give you satellite which is NOT quite the same service level.

The 3g service spec is minimum download speed of 1.2mbps, a minimum upload speed of 200kpbs, a maximum contention ratio of 36:1, a latency of 120 milliseconds and a 12 DOWN and 3 UP cap to a total of 15 Gigabytes. This is a minimum speed, 3 claim you should get this at the edge of the cell.

It may well be faster than in some cases but should never be slower than 1.2mbps.

BUT If you get satellite off 3 the spec changes to a minimum download speed of 1.2mbps, a minimum upload speed of 128kbps, a maximum contention ratio of 48:1, latency of 800 milliseconds and a 10 DOWN and 1 UP cap to a total of 11 Gigabytes.

Thanks very much for this SpongeBob.

In your experience does the external antenna tend to work reliably enough? Does this external antenna go to a repeater such as the one in your post above, and if so does this have to be in the same room as the dongle? Or can it be in a different room to the room where the computer is being used with the dongle?

I am also having problems with my Mi-Fi dongle. It seems to work sorta ok when in the same room as the other computer, but wont transmit a reliable wi-fi signal if placed in a different room (but I accept this might because my signal is so weak).

I'm asking this because I hope to have the external antenna on my roof with cable to a repeater in the main bedroom, and use the mi-fi dongle with 2 or 3 computers in an office (different room). It will be difficult to get the cable/repeater to the office because of the layout of the house. Is this likely to work ok?

Sponge Bob

ToadVine wrote: »

Thanks very much for this SpongeBob.

In your experience does the external antenna tend to work reliably enough? Does this external antenna go to a repeater such as the one in your post above, and if so does this have to be in the same room as the dongle? Or can it be in a different room to the room where the computer is being used with the dongle?

Either it does or else a 2 part repeater is used ( one part inside and one part outside linked wirelessly @ 5.xxGhz usually) . I have not seen it deployed.

I am also having problems with my Mi-Fi dongle. It seems to work sorta ok when in the same room as the other computer, but wont transmit a reliable wi-fi signal if placed in a different room (but I accept this might because my signal is so weak).

Trial and error is the only way to find out. Can you up the wifi signal by configuring the output level on the Mifi or ELSE on your laptop ( driver properties for wifi network card). Both should be around 30mw minimum but could be less. Increase in 10mw steps. But I dunno to be honest.

I'm asking this because I hope to have the external antenna on my roof with cable to a repeater in the main bedroom, and use the mi-fi dongle with 2 or 3 computers in an office (different room). It will be difficult to get the cable/repeater to the office because of the layout of the house. Is this likely to work ok?

That is a recipe for grief IMO.

Maybe the Dovado solution ( thread up top) installed in a box outside could does the trick better. Get 'biscuit tin' type box, install high and external with dovado inside and sim in it ( you need to get power out) and the Dovado penetrates the wall into your house with a 2.4ghz wifi signal.

Have you K Glass installed ???

anotherfinemess

After 4 months of farting about, 3 have emailed an apology and offered me another repeater device (I refused to accept the one they sent without warning previously) and a waiver of charges. How I laughed. Ha ha. I'm demanding my money back and threatening the small claims court and max publicity. I now have eircom 1 meg broadband, it seems to be working well so its 2 fingers to 3 with gloves off.

anotherfinemess

Is a mbps the same as a meg?

Sponge Bob

Yep , 1024 kilobits = 1 megabit = 1mbit = 1mbps = "a meg" or 1 meg.

eircoms 1 meg is actually around 800k because you lose around 200k in overhead the way they quote their product.

davetne

ToadVine wrote: »

I got 3 NBS about ten days ago as I have no other BB options. I installed everything and got repeater, Mi-Fi, etc working. From day 1 the speeds were between 0.3gbps and 1.5gbps download and 0.01mbps and 0.3mbps upload with pings between 90ms and 400ms. In other words absolute crap. The connection also constantly dropped ... the Internet is in effect unusable.

So I decided to contact 3 to see if they could do something about this. I now know the meaning of frustration.

First contact with 1913 was last Monday. The Indian tech based in Bombay ran me through a plethora of tests which had absolutely no effect. He then promised me that the Irish Network Support team had been emailed as a priority and they would be back to me within 48 hours max.

Wednesday came (48 hours later) and still no contact from 3 so I called 1913 again on Wednesday afternoon and got Bombay again. An incredibly polite Indian technicians listened patiently, and then assured me my complaint was sent again to a higher level Irish Network Support team and that I would be guaranteed to hear back within 24 hours.

Friday came (another 48 hours) and still nothing from 3. I phoned 1913 again and this time insisted to talk to a manager rather than go through the same thing with another technician. The manager listened to my story (I was telling it for the 3rd or 4th time at this stage) and gave me his word that he would deal with this personally and that he had enough clout to escalate this to the highest level of the Network Support Team in Dublin. he also promised to personally phone me back within 2 hours to let me know what was happening.

6 hours later ... no phone call ... I'm sitting in front of a computer that refuses to connect to the Internet and when it does it takes an age to load a page and drops connection immediately I click on a link.

I am not happy when I phone 3 again. Another Indian technician. Takes my details again. Listens to my story again. Promises to email Dublin and escalate my complaint again. Tells me I'm guaranteed to be contacted within 48 hours again. I am fuming and tell him all this has been done to no effect twice before. He cannot pass me to anyone higher because they have all left for the weekend. He cannot do anything except email Dublin with my complaint. He assures me that I will be contacted within 48 hours.

I hang up feeling more frustrated that I have ever felt before.

So what can I do now? Is there anyway I can contact Dublin directly? There must be a way around Indian tech support ... anyone know what it is? Who can I email? What can I do?

Any advice appreciated.

Hi, my name's <SNIP> , (3 a/c # <SNIP> ) My experience very similar and I have told them exactly my opinion - that they have used dishonesty to take my money. My advice; don't go anywhere near these thieves!

Cabaal

davetne wrote: »

Hi, my name's , (3 a/c # ) My experience very similar and I have told them exactly my opinion - that they have used dishonesty to take my money. My advice; don't go anywhere near these thieves!

davetne, I've removed your real name and Three A/C number from your post for your own protection.

I'd rcommend you don't post such details on boards.ie as its a public forum which means anybody in the world can see this information,

madasastick

Not sure if you are sorted. We had hassle in my area, in my case it was a fault with the tower which was down for almost a week. I got no satisfaction off the helpline so I emailed their complaints department and copied in the department of communications on customer.Service@dcenr.gov.ie. Miraculously it as all resolved within 24 hours, got a far better response from the DCENR than 3. It's the NBS so it's probably politically sensitive to some extent.

onthehorizon

Ahh the wonderful :rolleyes: 3 NBS. A load of rubbish that does not work period.

I signed up 6 months ago. I am not able to get any other service what so ever so was very pleased when a man from 3 turned up on my doorstep promising wonderful things. Should of known it was too good to be true.

Dongle didn't work on its own, but then I never expected it to as the man told me I would need a repeater.

Engineer turned up to install repeater could only get a singnal when the aerial was perched precariously on my son bedroom window sill and he had to run a cable across the room!!! I was not happy, my son is 7 and would easily pull that down but he insisted he HAD to install it there as it is company policy and if I had a complaint I had to get back onto 3. Which I did.

Signal was still rubbish, still got nowhere near the promised 1.2, complained over and over again till they sent men out to put up and external aerial.

They were here half and hour and could NOT get a signal AT ALL!! They got onto 3 and informed them that they had no signal and could not install aerial. They told me that someone would contact me within 48 hours to arrange whether I needed a satellite or not.

No one called...I had to call them!!

In this time I did get service, but I would compare it to dial up of the old days but less reliable. It would ALWAYS drop off at the most stupid moments and between 4pm and 9pm you could forget it all together.

So finally last week the men turned up with my satellite. It is enormous, three times the size of a sky dish. They installed it and then informed me that I was only allowed to download 100 MB a day or else my speed would slow down!! I told him that is stupid...I am entitled to 1mbs speed with the satellite no matter how much I use it a day unless I go over my 10g a month...not so he says.

So anyway first few days it is flying and then grinds to a terrible halt.

Get back onto 3....they try telling me I have gone over my daily limit of 560mb a day.....another limitation but one I know is not true, I have the numbers in front of me to prove it. An HOUR i was on the phone with the Inidian bloke who kept trying to fob me off making out it was my fault. I am not stupid I work with computers I know what I have and have not done.

Finally he agrees to reset my totals and that after this happens within 48 hours it should work again.

Guess what...it doesn't.

When it is working it flys along, but 80% of the time it doesn't. It is slow, the signal drops off and then won't work for an hour at a time. If you go over 100mb a day then the signal which is supposed to slow down by 13% goes down to zip so you can't use it at all. 100mb is nothing at all. I only use the net for checking e-mails, a few forums and facebook and I can easily use it, god forbid if you try to use youtube.

The only time it works properly is between 11pm and 4am when they open up the channels and allow you to use it as much as you like over your alloted 100mb.

Oh and I just have to put up with it or if I want to I can end my contract....how very nice of them I have no other choice but 3 and they know it.:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Sponge Bob

onthehorizon wrote: »

So finally last week the men turned up with my satellite. It is enormous, three times the size of a sky dish. They installed it and then informed me that I was only allowed to download 100 MB a day or else my speed would slow down!! I told him that is stupid...I am entitled to 1mbs speed with the satellite no matter how much I use it a day unless I go over my 10g a month...not so he says.

So anyway first few days it is flying and then grinds to a terrible halt.

Get back onto 3....they try telling me I have gone over my daily limit of 560mb a day.....another limitation but one I know is not true, I have the numbers in front of me to prove it. An HOUR i was on the phone with the Inidian bloke who kept trying to fob me off making out it was my fault. I am not stupid I work with computers I know what I have and have not done.

Finally he agrees to reset my totals and that after this happens within 48 hours it should work again.

Guess what...it doesn't.

When it is working it flys along, but 80% of the time it doesn't. It is slow, the signal drops off and then won't work for an hour at a time. If you go over 100mb a day then the signal which is supposed to slow down by 13% goes down to zip so you can't use it at all. 100mb is nothing at all. I only use the net for checking e-mails, a few forums and facebook and I can easily use it, god forbid if you try to use youtube.

The only time it works properly is between 11pm and 4am when they open up the channels and allow you to use it as much as you like over your alloted 100mb.

Oh and I just have to put up with it or if I want to I can end my contract....how very nice of them I have no other choice but 3 and they know it.:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

The satellite has a different and lower limit than 3 Midband. It is capped at 10gb down and 1gb up a month. However there is no DAILY limit in the contract . That is a MONTHLY limit.

Get onto the department, customer.service@dcenr.gov.ie like the previous poster did give them your account number and let them explain the contract to 3 . Deal with them through the department not through Mumbai. The minimum speeds are 1mbit down and 128k up, minimum!!!!

Is it a Eutelsat Tooway gizmo inside the house or what is the make/model of the gizmo with the lights you plug into. I heard they fell out with Tooway recently

I can understand an enormous dish in the west by the way

onthehorizon

Yep I have a tooway modem, the satellite is tooway as well.

I will get onto the department as you suggested. I told the people at 3 that they had never told me about a daily fair usage allowance, I said to them that if I wished to use my entire 10gb in a week I should be able to as long as I don't then use it for the rest of the month but they disagreed and stuck to the notion that if I go over a certain amount a day I will be penalised for it with a slower rate of speed. the mad thing is is they quoted me that I am allowed 560mb a dayand I go nowhere near that!!

My speed slows to a halt if I go over 100mb which is exactly what the engineer who installed the satellite told me, but 3 seemed oblivious to this and when I mentioned it to them they told me they had no information about the satellite. I told them to put me onto someone who does and I was passed for one person ot the next....none answered my question!!

Thanks for the advice, I will get onto that straight away.

watty

It's a dish actually. The Satellite is 22,500 miles away in space.

Sorry for being pedantic.

What you have (modem + ODU + Dish) is called VSAT, Very Small Aperature Terminal as for two way link rather than reception only , anything smaller than 3m (10') is regarded as "small".

There is little or no capacity with dedicated Irish "footprints" (reception area, think of a giant flashlight or car headlamp shining down from space), so on the same satellite where 80cm works in England and 75cm works in France, out West here you may need 1.2m (1200cm). Signal is very much worse in rain, especially your uplink (transmission from ground back to satellite) so in far south west or west some Satellites need a 1.8m dish. Almost all traffic, except streaming radio or video need a short acknowledgement on uplink, so even if receive is still good, poor uplink in rain will make loading Web pages very much slower, though YouTube might be unaffected (after an initial delay).

Your allowance is Monthly. Anything less is a breach of 3's contract for NBS.

cowboy.1981

onthehorizon wrote: »

Ahh the wonderful :rolleyes: 3 NBS. A load of rubbish that does not work period.

I signed up 6 months ago. I am not able to get any other service what so ever so was very pleased when a man from 3 turned up on my doorstep promising wonderful things. Should of known it was too good to be true.

Onthehorizon - thanks for an excellent account of your dismal experience with the NBS. While thousands of people are experiencing this, few persevere as you have, and fewer still keep a record of their experiences.

The Tooway satellite service is also re-sold by Digiweb, who have very helpfully provided full details of the download caps on this service.

http://support.digiweb.ie/questions/3808/Tooway+Satellite+Traffic+Usage+%26+Fair+Access+Policy+Explained

As you can see, in addition to the daily cap, there is even a 1 hour cap - if you exceed 120MB in a 1 hour period (assuming that 3 have opted for the cheapest package - "Tooway Value"). This would explain why you are seeing your speeds throttled within one day of usage over 100MB. (120MB including overheads). The total monthly download limits on this package are 2.4GB well below the 10GB mandated in the NBS. As Watty has pointed out, the NBS terms only refer to a monthly cap - therefore invoking 1 hourly caps is completely contravening the terms of the NBS.

Here are the NBS terms stated clearly on Department's own site,

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/National+Broadband+Scheme/NBS+FAQs.htm#Speeds

It is definitely time to report this to the DCENR, as SpongeBob recommended.

While you are at it, lodge a Small Claims Court claim on-line for the full value of your contract to date with 3, plus your wasted time, and expenses (max €2,000). It will cost you only €15 to lodge the claim, and you can claim back this cost in your expenses. It is clear that at no time have you been provided with the services you have contracted for.