Imagine wimax in Dublin 7

castlewhite

Thinking of switching broadband and voice calls over to imagine wimax, currently with Eircom. Has anyone in Dublin City centre switched? If so do you have any comments good or bad? tks

jor el

Plenty of comments in the midband forum, most of them not positive.

You'd be switching form broadband to a sub-standard broadband alternative, not another broadband. If you want to get away from eircom, consider other DSL providers like Magnet, or proper wireless broadband like Metro or Breeze. UPC is another real alternate.

deravarra

jor el wrote: »

You'd be switching form broadband to a sub-standard broadband alternative, not another broadband.

A matter of personal opinion tbh -

anyways, OP, never mind the harbingers of doom. There are a good few people well happy with their WiMax. Trouble is, those who dont like it bang their bin lids much louder

watty

Do a search on "devarra" and you will see...

Imagine's Wimax has the potential to be similar to Clearwire or 3G/iHSPA. Much less reliable, erratic latency, and not port neutral compared to eircom DSL.

danjo-xx

watty wrote: »

Do a search on "devarra" and you will see...

Imagine's Wimax has the potential to be similar to Clearwire or 3G/iHSPA. Much less reliable, erratic latency, and not port neutral compared to eircom DSL.

Can I jump in here and ask someone to explain the 3G/iHSPA. signal....I'm getting the same constant signal with Meteor BB to go but without the i in it. It jumped to HSDA once. Have steady blue light.

watty

iHSPA sometimes is 20ms to 40ms lower latency than HSDPA and includes Higher speed upload of the HSUPA. iHSPA is Nokia-Siemens marketing name for HSPA / HSPA+ HSPA-evolved.

In terms of download speed, about 2% of locations can get higher speed than HSDPA.

3G is the Radio System / Air Interface that implements the Mobile phone system at 2100MHz, also known as W-CDMA and UMTS. Basic 3G data (without the later HSPDA, HSUPA, HSPA and then evolved HSPA aka iHSPA/HSPA+) is only 384kbps.

The spectrum, hopping codes and time is shared with the 3G voice calls (5kbps to 12kbps each approx.). At the cell edge if there are ZERO phone calls and no other data users the speed is about 120kbps (0.12Mbps). You can only get the "full" up to advertised if there is no other connections in your sector of the cell and your signal is perfect with no interference.

Phone calls usually have priority as they are 150x to 300x more revenue for the same costs.

Signal drops to a 1/4 or less every time you double the distance from mast, and 1/4 to 1/10th just moving indoors. Speed depends on Signal and how many phone calls and data users there are.

The capacity of even 21Mbps 3G iHSPA+ whatever (there is even a 42Mbps version using two channels) quickly drops to 2Mbps or so per sector as users added geographically across the cell so with 20 simulataneous attempts to watch YouTube on a mast most of the connections stutter and fail even with iHSPA. They should be forbidden to advertise up to speeds and instead have to advertise typical busy hour speeds for a typical mast, with % of users likely to have no connection, % with less 256kbps (0.256Mbps) and % with more than 6Mbps. Also the ping/latency/lag on those connections.

Of course then people would know the truth. It's not Broadband.

danjo-xx

Thanks Watty for that detailed reply it is very informative indeed.

Salvation

Stick to hardwire as I had wimax and within 15 mins it went down hill a complete nightmare.

Stick to the mainstream Imagine are a fly by night and will go down the drain in the next few months.

deravarra

Salvation wrote: »

Imagine are a fly by night and will go down the drain in the next few months.

Considering they have been operating since 1993, I wouldnt be calling them a fly by night.

I'd reckon eircom will be gone before Imagine.

Soooo.... you had it, and after 15 minutes the service suddenly turned bad? Riiiiggghhht!

watty

That would be the eircom now owned by STT who are practically owned by Singapore Government. Riiiiggghhht!

STT Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia), a private investment company part of Temasek Holdings. STT Communications has significant stakes in Equinix, Global Crossing, Indosat and StarHub.

As well as existing holding in Global Crossing in Ireland, since Dec 2009 they are majority holder in eircom / Meteor (the next largest shareholder is ESOT / ESOP ) in Ireland.

Temasek Holdings is an investment company owned by the government of Singapore.

Revenue ▲ $83.284 billion SGD (2008)
Net income ▲ $22.474 billion SGD (2008)
Total assets ▲ $185 billion SGD (2008)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STT_Communications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings


deravarra, if you don't have Imagine WiMax and don't work for Imagine, do you work for Motorola or Intel? Because every slight criticism you are out "tilting"

deravarra

watty wrote: »

That would be the eircom now owned by STT who are practically owned by Singapore Government. Riiiiggghhht!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STT_Communications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings


deravarra, if you don't have Imagine WiMax and don't work for Imagine, do you work for Motorola or Intel? Because every slight criticism you are out "tilting"

slight criticism? I've seen wimax being slated by people who I doubt have the service from what they have been saying!

Is this slight criticism: "Stick to the mainstream Imagine are a fly by night and will go down the drain in the next few months."?

And seeing as you havent researched more into the STT Eircom relationship and the likelihood of it (Eircom) collapsing, here's something to jog the memory a tad...

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/eircom-is-on-the-brink-of-collapse-warns-union-boss-2169598.html


Now, since the Irish government sell off, how many owners has it had? Babcock and Brown and STT immediately come to mind... and the "perilous" financial situation it's currently in...

Compare that to Imagine - how many owners has it had? Just the one - Sean Bolger. Is it in a perilous financial situation? Nope as far as I know.

Who are the eager bed fellows of Imagine? HP, Microsoft, Intel. Yeah they love to partner with fly by nights.

Who do I work for? Not Imagine as I have said before.... And no, I dont have WiMax as of yet - not coming to Mullingar for a bit.

watty

Read here http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=682

And http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=31944

STT know what they are doing. You'll see, they are not of the ilk of previous vulture capitalists and carpet baggers.. The lads in ESOP aren't happy anymore...

prof_frink_2000

watty wrote: »

They should be forbidden to advertise up to speeds and instead have to advertise typical busy hour speeds for a typical mast, with % of users likely to have no connection, % with less 256kbps (0.256Mbps) and % with more than 6Mbps.

They are forbidden, back in 2007 all the operators were written to and informed that they must advertise their busy hour speed. They must also be able to prove it as well. This is why you now see ads saying "Broadband" and no longer quoting speeds. I haven't yet heard of any companies getting fined yet though.

From a regualtion point of view it is a mess, the department of communication, com-reg and consumer rights quangos are all pulling on the industry in different ways. There is no clear and consist message from the state as to the direction they want to go.

I could bang on for hours about the issues in this sector but i won't.

To answer the original question that was posted. Contact imagine and ask for the package and MAKE SURE you don't sign away your 10 day cool-off period. If after 7 days your not happy return it immediately. You may have to pay for using for the first 10 days or month.

deravarra

watty wrote: »

Read here http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=682

And http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=31944

STT know what they are doing. You'll see, they are not of the ilk of previous vulture capitalists and carpet baggers.. The lads in ESOP aren't happy anymore...

So, tell me, how did STT manage to bring Eircom to have the fifth riskiest debt levels in the world?

I'll still with Imagine ... at least I know they wont be folding anytime soon

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eircom-has-fifth-riskiest-debt-levels-in-the-world-2228638.html

watty

B & B did that, in a sense by making the Debt so high (simply by walking away with money). The STT plan is likely to make the obligations worth 10c in the $, so yes the Debts are now deliberately more risky, in fact may become nearly worthless. Then when that happens (as STT did when they got Global crossing) it will be "safe" to invest in a fibre rollout rather than Debt repayments swallowing all revenue.

eircom didn't get any value from the bonds and borrowed money, it was the various "owners" and ESOP that benefited. Stupidity of regulators allowing "leveraged buyouts" and idiocy of people loaning the money. It was never real investment as the money was not used for infrastructure but to pay back the money used to buy the shares!

Imagine's costs are 9M higher than revenue. eircoms costs are falling and if the Debts are sorted would have profits about equal to Imagine's Revenue. eircom is less relevent with the need for fibre, less than 66% of people with lines and UPCs upgrade, but eircom isn't going to go away anytime soon. Even if STT had not bought it, or even if it "goes bust" the actual operation day to day would be unchanged. What would happen is that the bond holders and other people owed money would get nothing.

But if Imagine went bust (which is extremely unlikely) all their fixed line operation would be eircom as it's mostly eircom reselling and only eircom makes money from it. Their wireless would either close or be bought by Digiweb (who are profitable). It might just close as it's not full broadband quality network is lacking in it's own internal backhaul infrastructure compared to eircom, UPC, Mobile operators, Magnet or Digiweb.

MicraBoy

I'm in Dublin 7 here too. I have been using the Imagine Breeze product for several years now and can't say I have any complaints about it. However cost is becoming a major factor for me now and I'm looking to shave money off all my bills. Breeze while a good product is €55 for a 5Mb service.

My options at the moment seem to be to switch to Imagine Wimax or add broadband to my UPC TV. I'm a bit lost though because in the past I have seen both these products slated, and it would be such a kick in the balls to switch from a decent service to a crapper one.

I was all set to switch to UPC because I asked to be contacted by Imagine about Wimax around the launch time and never hearc anything back. On the form I told them I was an existing customer, and paranoia tells me they weren't in a rush to sign me up to a lower revenue stream product

watty

UPC have done a lot of upgrades and continuing.
Far better than Imagine Wimax and should be better than Breeze.

jay93

deravarra wrote: »

A matter of personal opinion tbh -

anyways, OP, never mind the harbingers of doom. There are a good few people well happy with their WiMax. Trouble is, those who dont like it bang their bin lids much louder

yeah but alot of people dont even get dial up speeds with them like any wireless its not dependable at all..ive seen so many people p1ssed at imagine for the service they provide even worse than 3G at times suprise at that tbh..i havnt seen many people happy with wimax in drogheda i know people who have it and had 2 rid of it because the service was dire at yet they are still sending out ads..even to where i live 5km-7km from the town i doubt it if it would even work out here so why are they trying to get people to sign up out here if we cant get connected doesnt make any sense if anything UPC Magnet are REAL broadband wimax has potential but not so much in Ireland the USA seems to have good wimax speeds clearwire have much more capacity than imagine as far as i have seen..im not saying everyone has negative comments about imagines wimax but most people have found it to be no good

watty

Clearwire are using a lower frequency in USA (works better) and competing with EVDO (which is like EDGE speeds) and some 3G/HSPA. People are mostly using it as a complement to real fixed Broadband, for "on the go".

It's particularly Ireland that is marketing Mobile/Nomadic services for fixed use due to our highest line rental in the world!

Cryos

deravarra wrote: »

Who are the eager bed fellows of Imagine? HP, Microsoft, Intel. Yeah they love to partner with fly by nights.

Who do I work for? Not Imagine as I have said before.... And no, I dont have WiMax as of yet - not coming to Mullingar for a bit.

Well actually Deravarra, before you misrepresent HP here as the guys who big up the imagine you would be wrong. HP big up the WiMAX technology, its not HP + Imagine in Bed.

You of all people, if qualified to speak about the technology you are egar to defend should be giving the informed information that the implementation of WiMax by imagine has limitations and shortfalls and should be treated on a case by case basis.

The advise as always to the Op, is look around the forums and see if their location comes up as having some patchy service.

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