UPC vs Eircom 8Mbs are Eircom for real?

Ranicand

Eircom 8 meg NGB €29.99

* No Congestion Next Generation Broadband:rolleyes:
* Download speeds of up to 8Mbs:D
* Usage allowance of 30GB:D
* Delivery within 5 working days
* 12 month contract

UPC 8 meg €25.00
# congestion free
# 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
# 24 hour online connection - no time restrictions
# No telephone line required
# 120GB usage limit:eek::eek::eek:

CrazyRabbit

You forgot to add in Eircom's line rental charge.

And the terrible support that they both provide to customers.

KennyLegend

Ranicand wrote: »

Eircom 8 meg NGB €29.99

* No Congestion Next Generation Broadband:rolleyes:
* Download speeds of up to 8Mbs:D
* Usage allowance of 30GB:D
* Delivery within 5 working days
* 12 month contract

UPC 8 meg €25.00
# congestion free
# 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
# 24 hour online connection - no time restrictions
# No telephone line required
# 120GB usage limit:eek::eek::eek:

Ya... And the uncontested NGB is slower !!! You'd be lucky to be getting 4m on an 8m contract !! Feckin joke if u ask me.

I just signed up for 30mbps UPC ;-)

jambofc

having been with eircom now for 6 months,im regretting it,it has slowly got worse to the point that between 6.30-10.30pm it's almost unusable.
ring them up and as usual you get"we will look into it" ring back a few days later and the engineers report says "all is well"
sick of them already and stuck for another 6 months with them :mad:

Ranicand

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

You forgot to add in Eircom's line rental charge.

And the terrible support that they both provide to customers.

Yes Eircom line rental €25.36 total €55.35

UPC stand alone charge €7.75 total €32.75.

AlanC27

any1 know which download sities part from pirate bay eircom have blocked ?

KennyLegend

Supposedly, TPB is the only site blocked .
I heard recently that ISPs blocking sites is illegal. Don't know how much truth is in this though

CrazyRabbit

Oh, and "Next Generation Broadband" is very misleading. It leads people to believe that this is some kind of new type of broadband. It isn't. It's just the clever name their marketing division gave to this 'package'. It's still the same old ADSL.

Think I might be getting UPC for my apartment. Good to know.

Podman

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Oh, and "Next Generation Broadband" is very misleading. It leads people to believe that this is some kind of new type of broadband. It isn't. It's just the clever name their marketing division gave to this 'package'. It's still the same old ADSL.

That's true.

I have had the 3mb package for around a year now, and the average down speed is 1.66mb. They get around it legally by saying it's up to 3mb.
(find out what your internet speed is, here)

It's just about fast enough to stream channel 4 on demand, so it's ok as long as I don't want to watch anything in HD.

My friend has upc and gets at least four times the down speed.

zenno

I'm using upc now for over 2 years and they are great. i'm on 30MB down and 3MB upload which is grand. I left them an e-mail the other day asking them do they do 100MB download as i have heard that they might be rolling it out but they said they are not doing that kind of speed just yet, shame really i was looking for 100MB down and at least 30MB upload but i should have known, i woke up to reality very quick and copped on i'm living in ireland so i will probably have to wait till the year 2056 before that comes in. 30MB and 3MB upload is old fart slow crap in this day and age. especially for a power user. ah well. i may as well dream on, and when i am reincarnated 3 times then i might avail of it.

moonboy52

Zenno i would have to disagree.

30 / 3 is a well decent speed.

I am also a heavy user and have no issues with that speed.

Each to their own

harryohh

Well to be fair if you don't have UPC TV then add on €7.75 to the UPC price.

Ranicand

harryohh wrote: »

Well to be fair if you don't have UPC TV then add on €7.75 to the UPC price.

Or add €25.36 to the Eircom one for line rental.

zenno

moonboy52 wrote: »

Zenno i would have to disagree.

30 / 3 is a well decent speed.

I am also a heavy user and have no issues with that speed.

Each to their own

don't get me wrong it is an excellent speed but i could do with a higher upload.

3 meg upload is very low considering the download speed is 30megs but not complaing i'm sure upc will put that up for free soon anyway. they usually do.

watty

Unlike Mobile, all are always on Broadband and should be zero packet loss and low jitter unless there is unusual interference or fault.

None are contention or congestion free.

1. UPC can have very low contention depending how many are on the cable. Upstream congestion and Contention is inherently poorer than DSL (Eircom), but less people upload, so there appears to be less upload congestion.
2. Digiweb Metro is essentially UPC's technology over a very high capacity Microwave link instead of coax cable. So similar constraints but less capacity hence lower rolling cap to ensure low congestion.
3. Eircom could have no contention or very low contention depending on backhaul. There is no inherent contention or congestion in the technology.

1. UPC 8 meg €25.00 + 7.75 = €32.75

• 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
• Typical Speed for 90% of users is more than 7.5Mbps
• No telephone line required. Needs UPC TV cable very close to Premises
• 120GB usage limit
• Phone Service extra €6 a month. Cheaper calls than eircom? http://www.upc.ie/phone/tariffs/
• Very Low latency < 15ms

2. Digiweb 8M Metro €39.95

• 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
• Typical Speed for 90% of users is more than 7.5Mbps
• No telephone line required. Needs LOS radio link to Mast < 15km
• 30GB usage limit (no excess charges, just throttle)
• Phone Service free 1st line. 2nd line extra. Cheaper calls than eircom. Free calls to other Metro users. http://www.digiweb.ie/home/bundles/metro-bundle/CallCharges27-11-08.pdf
• Low latency < 25ms

3. Eircom 8 meg NGB €29.99 + 25.36 = €55.35

• Download speeds of up to 8Mbps (10% of Users)
• Typical Speed is 3Mbps. 10% to 20% of users get 1Mbps
• Needs phone line installed.
• Usage allowance of 30GB
• Phone service included, calls cheaper than Mobile Prices? http://www.eircom.ie/About/Activities/VOP1_eircom_Value_Business_Multi_Line_Plans.pdf
• Medium Latency < 50ms

Hard to find non-bundle prices to compare call costs.



Other Differences

1. UPC can only economically service high density areas. They can't easily have zero congestion, just very low. It's inherently asymmetric. The 30Mbps and 100Mbps services can't do very much faster upload.
2. Digiweb Metro can't realistically offer more than 12Mbps due to limitations of Radio spectrum. If Comreg licence and costs allowed and Line Of Sight possible it can do 30km range. If the 800MHz "Digital Dividend" band was used Metro like technology could offer 30km without line of sight using a TV aerial for radio link. It can't offer higher caps without a bad effect on congestion without a lot extra Spectrum from Comreg.
3. Eircom can only fix congestion not speed. In theory Eircom could offer slower symmetrical up to 4Mbps + 4Mbps, typically 1.5Mbps + 1.5Mbps. Eircom has the most variable speed. It's physics. They can't fix it: http://www.techtir.ie/comms/dsl-limits

jor el

zenno wrote: »

3 meg upload is very low considering the download speed is 30megs

Upload being 10% of the download is fairly typical for any broadband product. Practically no one needs more upload than that, unless you're trying to run a server, which would be against the terms of service anyway. No ISP is going to try to introduce a product that only a minority of people would use, and those who would use it would likely use the hell out of it, which would cause even more problems.

Even if it were possible, they're not going to do it.

watty

On Cable, I don't think it's really possible.

Downstream link (downloads) can use any 8MHz channel from 110MHz to over 900MHz. DOCSIS 3.0 can "bond" up to five channels giving up to 125Mbps download. DVB-c Transport stream multplexes shared channels

Upstream can use 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 or 6.4MHz time shared (TDMA) upload. There is only 5MHz to 65MHz band on Euro system or 15MHz to 45MHz on other systems. That's roughly 9 x 6.4Mhz channels. Upstream uses less intense coding (lower data rate for same symbol rate) than down stream, so much less data in the 9 channels (or 18 x 3.2MHz channel).

Downstream could have 70 to 100 channels if there was no TV. Obviously TV exists also (You can see why Analogue at 8MHz per channel is doomed compared with Digital's 20 channels in 8MHz possible using MPEG4 and 256QAM).

So typically 8:1 to 15:1 is ratio of Downstream:Upstream on any practical Cable Broadband system. This suits average usuage.

DSL can in theory vary ratio of downstream:upstream from 16:1 to 1:1 (SDSL) to 1:16, but getting a non LLU supplier to do it is near impossible. Eircom wholesale, Magnet and Digiweb/Smart can do SDSL, but it's a much more expensive product. Also 8M down and 512K up may be typically 3M + 3M as SDSL at typical distance on 24Mbps ADSL2+ LLU exchange. You really don't want SDSL on regular old ADSL exchange.

You can get Microwave 20Mbps + 20Mbps and fibre 100Mbps + 100Mbps products. These are seriously expensive, but of course have decent "SLA" and probably no contention, congestion or cap.

DSL, Metro and Cable Broadband can be used by business, but they are technologies developed for the Domestic mass Market. Not Hosting Web Servers, inter-office high speed VPN & etc.

vibe666

zenno wrote: »

II left them an e-mail the other day asking them do they do 100MB download as i have heard that they might be rolling it out but they said they are not doing that kind of speed just yet, shame really i was looking for 100MB down and at least 30MB upload but i should have known, i woke up to reality very quick and copped on i'm living in ireland.

where are you from that you think this is a reasonable request?

the fastest consumer broadband in europe is offered by UPC in some of it's territories (holland for one) and it's 120mbps down and 10mbps up. you'll be hard pressed to find anything quicker than that anywhere outside of asia.

FYI, UPC are launching 100mbps imminently in ireland, but you'll be paying through the nose for it.

Headshot

ugh

its a curse living in the country

electronic

Hi could anybody tell me if im able to cancel my broadband with eircom or if i need to.I only just got my router today and hooked it up.the speeds im getting are horrendous.its meant to be 3mb broadband but im getting 0.30mbs on speedtest.last week when i ordered it the eircom rep actually rang me back after i ordered it and said the line was cabable for 8mb and i should be getting speeds around that.This was all over the phone to ericom sales when i rang inquiring about their free line rental for 10months with a broadband package .i was in my parents house when rang up eircom and as a result didnt have my bank details with me so i havent actually paid anything as of yet and wont be for them speeds.does anyone know if eircom will be able to enforce me to pay anything or am I in the clear to cancel.sorry if the post was a bit long winded.thanks if anyone can help

electronic

Anybody help me please as i was gonna ring them in a while

vibe666

you should be able to cancel it if it's only just been installed, particularly if its that bad.

i'd give them an opportunity to fix it first if you would be happy with it if it worked at the proper speeds, it could just be something simple.

Sponge Bob

unplug everything, all filters phones sky box etc.

plug dsl modem into main socket with no filter, now what is the speed ??

electronic

Thanks for replying lads.i rang them up and tried to cancel as i didnt hold out much hope after reading scary threads about eircom.according to them i could cancel broadband but not my phoneline.i hadnt even plugged in a phone to the line.after realising i was gonna have to pay 110 euro to cancel i asked them to transfer me to tech support to try sort out broadband.end result speed 6mb which im happy with as i would have been stuck either way.i know i should have rang tech support first but i was having serious doubts about eircoms ngb and just wanted out.anyway im happy now as long as it stays that speed!!

watty

6Mbps is twice the Irish average and at least twice typical non-ADSL2+ exchange speed

sonic.trip

have to say I have always had the speed offered by eircom. had there 1mb for years then 3mb over the last year. however this NGB really pissed me off. No charge for upgrading to 8mb which was great, then on the first new bill they slapped this 1.65 per gb charge for exceeding my cap.

Over the last year there have been many consecutive days were I have maxed out my rapidshare account of 25gb per DAY. = 600gb a month!

The hell with that, I'm going to change to UPC 30mb with unlimited download now.

eircom are rip off artists

aN.Droid

sonic.trip wrote: »

have to say I have always had the speed offered by eircom. had there 1mb for years then 3mb over the last year. however this NGB really pissed me off. No charge for upgrading to 8mb which was great, then on the first new bill they slapped this 1.65 per gb charge for exceeding my cap.

Over the last year there have been many consecutive days were I have maxed out my rapidshare account of 25gb per DAY. = 600gb a month!

The hell with that, I'm going to change to UPC 30mb with unlimited download now.

eircom are rip off artists

250gb/month AUP

CrazyRabbit

sonic.trip wrote: »

have to say I have always had the speed offered by eircom. had there 1mb for years then 3mb over the last year. however this NGB really pissed me off. No charge for upgrading to 8mb which was great, then on the first new bill they slapped this 1.65 per gb charge for exceeding my cap.

Over the last year there have been many consecutive days were I have maxed out my rapidshare account of 25gb per DAY. = 600gb a month!

The hell with that, I'm going to change to UPC 30mb with unlimited download now.

eircom are rip off artists

Limericks is correct. 250GB per 30 days, 'fair use' policy is in place. No ISP is gonna be happy with you downloading 600GB in a month.

Skerries

what do power users like that use it for?
are they downloading HD movies and if so where are they storing it?
or are they using it for server purposes?

CrazyRabbit

Skerries wrote: »

what do power users like that use it for?
are they downloading HD movies and if so where are they storing it?
or are they using it for server purposes?

Not-so-legal Movies
Not-so-legal games
Not-so-legal TV series
Legal ISO images (Linux etc)
Porn...lot's of porn.
Youtube

Erm...just speaking generally...I don't mean this is what I do.

As for storage....hard disk drives are very cheap these days. My pc is almost out of alphabetical letters for the drive names...I wonder what happens after Drive Z:

sonic.trip

Skerries wrote: »

what do power users like that use it for?
are they downloading HD movies and if so where are they storing it?
or are they using it for server purposes?

I used 600gb as an example of when I downloaded in the last year and didn't get charged. I don't donwload 600 every month but would use 250 or so.

Also 2TB HD's are very cheap these days

bricks

Once you run out of drive letters you can start mounting your drives in folders

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Not-so-legal Movies
Not-so-legal games
Not-so-legal TV series
Legal ISO images (Linux etc)
Porn...lot's of porn.
Youtube

Erm...just speaking generally...I don't mean this is what I do.

As for storage....hard disk drives are very cheap these days. My pc is almost out of alphabetical letters for the drive names...I wonder what happens after Drive Z:

vibe666

or do what i did and buy a decent sized nas.

you can get 7 or 8 drive nas's for a few hundred quid and fill them full of 2tb drives in raid5 and you've got over 10tb of storage at your disposal.

sonic.trip

vibe666 wrote: »

or do what i did and buy a decent sized nas.

you can get 7 or 8 drive nas's for a few hundred quid and fill them full of 2tb drives in raid5 and you've got over 10tb of storage at your disposal.

Bought a nice LaCie a year or so ago and then wished I had of bought a nice NAS afterwards!!

Althought there was quite a significant price difference between a eSATA HD and a NAS HD. How much did you pay for yours mate'?

vibe666

well, i went a bit extreme and bought a thecus n7700 which is a 7 bay jobbie. i currently have 4x 1.5tb disks in it which (using RAID5) gives me around 4tb of storage, although i'm using some of that for iSCSI at the moment.

the thing about getting a multi disk nas is that you still need to have some kind of backup solution in place to do it properly.

raid5 is going to protect you from a single disk failure, but that's not the only way to break your nas and if you lose it, it's all gone then, whereas if you'd lost one disk out of 4 or 5 disks, you'll only lose the data on that disk and still have the rest.

my next step is to buy a 4 bay esata enclosure and put 2x 2tb disks in that (jbod) to backup what i have now on the nas and have nsync run every night to keep an up to date copy and then stick 3 more 1.5tb disks in the nas and go from there and maybe add another 2tb disk.

it's never ending really.

one thing i would say though is don't go for a thecus nas if you do, you'd be much better off with a synology nas, they are heaps better. even the single drive synology nas's have better features than my thecus. i only went for it when i did because of a special offer on it at the time, but if i'd had a chance to compare the OS's and features running on them I'd have gone straight for a synology.

anyway, kinda gone off topic a bit.

christo82

DAMN!!! I just checked the UPC site, and they still don't do broadband or phone in my area(Skerries). So I guess I'm stuck with Eircom for the foreseeable. The only real problem I have with Eircom is the download limit-30GB. I seem to get through that quite quickly, but I'm not sure how. I don't download movies or any other huge files. As far as Speeds on the NGB, I get 7MB usually. Just waiting to see my next bill to see if they'll charge me for the excess.

sonic.trip

christo82 wrote: »

DAMN!!! I just checked the UPC site, and they still don't do broadband or phone in my area(Skerries). So I guess I'm stuck with Eircom for the foreseeable. The only real problem I have with Eircom is the download limit-30GB. I seem to get through that quite quickly, but I'm not sure how. I don't download movies or any other huge files. As far as Speeds on the NGB, I get 7MB usually. Just waiting to see my next bill to see if they'll charge me for the excess.

1.65 per gb, max of 20euro per month

just cancelled them and gettting vodafone, 120gb d/l allaowance and cheaper too

WillieFlynn

vibe666 wrote: »

the fastest consumer broadband in europe is offered by UPC in some of it's territories (holland for one) and it's 120mbps down and 10mbps up. you'll be hard pressed to find anything quicker than that anywhere outside of asia.

Go to Paris and some other French cities. They have put fiber into many buildings giving 100Mb up & down for 30 euro per month (inc. TV and phone).

The modems they use are 1Gb, but currently they limit packages to 100Mb.

vibe666

WillieFlynn wrote: »

Go to Paris and some other French cities. They have put fiber into many buildings giving 100Mb up & down for 30 euro per month (inc. TV and phone).

The modems they use are 1Gb, but currently they limit packages to 100Mb.

but it's not widespread enough to be considered a realistic option for most people. you can get 100mbps in some parts of london too, but it's not available to the vast majority of people, much the same as 100mbps fibre in france, but unlike UPC in the netherlands and elsewhere (even ireland) where they are major players.

france has a very high uptake of broadband, but well over 90% of it is ADSL users, so if you take into account the cable and other broadband operators, fibre actually only covers a tiny fraction of the population.

and even if you did include the french FTTH, UPC is still offering the fastest consumer broadband in europe at 120mbps. faster uploads are nice, but when you're talking about broadband speeds, download speed is the main selling point.

it's interesting though whilst i was reading about it that all the ISP's in france got rid of any download limits or FUP's long ago. plenty of people here would have you believe that truly unlimited consumer broadband not a sustainable business model.

watty

It depends on cost of backhaul and INEX etc... I suspect the French infrastructure is cheaper to suck data through than the Irish one.

Smart had no cap. IBB had no cap. Of course the massive debt that both of those dug into wasn't just traffic costs.

Conchúr

watty wrote: »

On Cable, I don't think it's really possible.

Downstream link (downloads) can use any 8MHz channel from 110MHz to over 900MHz. DOCSIS 3.0 can "bond" up to five channels giving up to 125Mbps download. DVB-c Transport stream multplexes shared channels

Upstream can use 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 or 6.4MHz time shared (TDMA) upload. There is only 5MHz to 65MHz band on Euro system or 15MHz to 45MHz on other systems. That's roughly 9 x 6.4Mhz channels. Upstream uses less intense coding (lower data rate for same symbol rate) than down stream, so much less data in the 9 channels (or 18 x 3.2MHz channel).

Downstream could have 70 to 100 channels if there was no TV. Obviously TV exists also (You can see why Analogue at 8MHz per channel is doomed compared with Digital's 20 channels in 8MHz possible using MPEG4 and 256QAM).

So typically 8:1 to 15:1 is ratio of Downstream:Upstream on any practical Cable Broadband system. This suits average usuage.

DSL can in theory vary ratio of downstream:upstream from 16:1 to 1:1 (SDSL) to 1:16, but getting a non LLU supplier to do it is near impossible. Eircom wholesale, Magnet and Digiweb/Smart can do SDSL, but it's a much more expensive product. Also 8M down and 512K up may be typically 3M + 3M as SDSL at typical distance on 24Mbps ADSL2+ LLU exchange. You really don't want SDSL on regular old ADSL exchange.

You can get Microwave 20Mbps + 20Mbps and fibre 100Mbps + 100Mbps products. These are seriously expensive, but of course have decent "SLA" and probably no contention, congestion or cap.

DSL, Metro and Cable Broadband can be used by business, but they are technologies developed for the Domestic mass Market. Not Hosting Web Servers, inter-office high speed VPN & etc.

Just to say it to you, HostIreland.com have just announced their broadband product which starts off at 16meg upstream and downstream for €99/year. Wouldn't say that's much... Have a look and tell them Conor sent ya

watty

Conchúr wrote: »

Just to say it to you, HostIreland.com have just announced their broadband product which starts off at 16meg upstream and downstream for €99/year. Wouldn't say that's much... Have a look and tell them Conor sent ya

€99 a month.
No indication of contention. Licensed or 5.8MHz registered licence free?

One Three Rock mast for half of Dublin?
http://stresa.hostireland.com/broadband.html

Runs Cold

Download Speed: 12.5mbps
Upload Speed: 12.5mbps
and its €99 per month not per year.

Runs Cold

sorry Watty posted at same time as You. anyway its what watty said..:)

Unregistered.

watty wrote: »

€99 a month.

Runs Cold wrote: »

and its €99 per month not per year.

Obviously, neither of you told them Conor sent ya

Runs Cold

Unregistered. wrote: »

Obviously, neither of you told them Conor sent ya

I would have if it was €99 per year.:)

Cabaal

Conchúr wrote: »

Just to say it to you, HostIreland.com have just announced their broadband product which starts off at 16meg upstream and downstream for €99/year. Wouldn't say that's much... Have a look and tell them Conor sent ya

Please don't pimp business like this again, in addition if you are going to post atleast have the decency to post the CORRECT information

KennyLegend

Cabaal wrote: »

Please don't pimp business like this again, in addition if you are going to post atleast have the decency to post the CORRECT information

PMSL

Freddie59

Runs Cold wrote: »

Download Speed: 12.5mbps
Upload Speed: 12.5mbps
and its €99 per month not per year.

Ouch.

homerdog

I've been on the Eircom 8mb package for about 9 months now and I have never got even close to 4mb , never mind 8mb. Lately, I have been speed testing every day and the speed varies from a max of 1.9mb down to the lowest reading yet. .64mb and that was at 2300 hours tonight.

Apart from the crap speeds, what is annoying me is that when I rang Eircom about it, the tech told me the lines in this area can only handle 4mb. So where is the morality of Eircom selling me something they can't, by their own admission, provide.

I rang UPC today and while they can provide a 15mb or 30mb fibre optic broadband in parts of Navan, it is not available where I live , even though we have UPC/Chorus Tv in the house.

Very frustrating.