What exchange?

MagicSean

I've been in my current house for two and a half years (Longwood, Meath). When i first moved in i contacted Eircom to enquire about broadband and was told it would be in my area within six months.

Happy days I thought. So six months pass and I ring them again. She does a check and informs me that the Navan exchange has been upgraded a while and I should have been able to get broadband. I inform her that I am 30km away from Navan and I doubt I would be on that exchange. She then asks if I am in the Dundalk area. She was adament that i had to live in either of those areas. At this stage I was getting annoyed so I asked to be connected to someone who knows something about the actual network instead of someone reading from a script. In fairness to her she connected me to someone who I think was in the networks section. He told me I was on the Enfield exchange (5 minutes down the road). He told me that I would be able to get broadband by the end of 2010 at the latest.

I contacted eircom at the end of 2010 to be told that my area would never be upgraded to broadband and I would have to use a different method to obtain broadband. Two months later a salesman from another provider calls to my door to sell me 8mb broadband. He says my line has recently been upgraded for broadband. So i sign up right away along with others in the area. Two months later we are informed that this was a mistake and we cannot obtain the high speed broadband.

At this stage I make peace with the fact that I will be stuck with satellite broadband, despite living in a large village quite close to Enfield. My own provider takes this opportunity to cap download and upload speeds and increase prices. I have no alternatve so I have to keep paying them. Fast forward to a month ago and I find out that Enfield has been upgraded to Next Generation Broadband but for some reason this doesn't include my area. I contact Eircom to try and get something concrete on if or when I can get broadband. This was difficult as their website does their best to hide useful phone numbers. Eventually I get through to someone and ask the question. He doesn't know. He advises me to contact sales. They don't know. They agree to forward my request for information. I get a confirmation of this in my email. I then get an email which basically says we don't know and gives me another contact to ask.

So basically I have no idea what exchange I am on and apparently Eircom don't either. I have no idea if I will ever receive proper broadband and it would appear that Eircom don't either. Can anyone please advise me on how to find this stuff out.

EDIT: I have just put my number in the product availability thing on the website ant it now says I am eligible for 24mb broadband. Seriously confused now.

regress

As many have found Eircoms refusal to provide any information on fixed line plans is a very frustrating experience.

You may eventually discover what Exchange you are serviced by and that that is one of the approx 270 Exchanges that are not enabled for broadband. It may even be the case that Eircom promised to enable your
Exchange years ago. That promise is now broken and plan long abandoned.


The best that I have been able to get after months of questioning is an assurance that there is a secret plan to rollout broadband that has not been discarded. However there is no proof of the existence of this mythical plan and reps are embarrisingly unable to say which Exchsnges if any might
be enabled in the future or when

It may even be the case that your Exchsnge is now enabled as Eircom appear to still be
enabling a small number of Exchanges every year e.g The Naul and Ballycotten in 2011. However as the plan to rollout broadband is confidential and top secret, Eircom staff would have had no advance knowledge or information on this.

Sponge Bob

I am afraid the Longwood exchange is notorious and the activities of eircom salespeople on the doorstep over the years have not helped.

The Longwood exchange area was carved out of the Newtown exchange ( give it 10 secs to load) but anyone with an old number ie 046 9560xxx probably appears to be served out of Newtown which might have ADSL2 at 8mbits.

Anyone with a 'new' number is probably shown 'in' Navan , ie 046 9554xxx , owing to system misconfiguration inside eircom. Mark or Tony can confirm whether this is the case. I can confirm 046 9554xxx numbers are in Longwood not in Navan.

Only about 250 active lines connected to it and bigger exchanges than that were promised DSL 5 years ago by eircom and never got it.

I can safely say that The Longwood Exchange is the Tattiest Exchange in Ireland and how dare eircom leave it in that state This is it HERE.

I don't think eircom ever announced they would do Longwood even though door to door salesmen will always lie promise anything to get a signature.

MagicSean

At this moment the website is offering me 24mb next generation broadband and the automated american machine in the sales department is telling me i can't have any broadband.

regress

Impressive. Astounding that half a dozen Eircom staff whose job it is to provide information to customers were unable or unwilling to provide this information.

Sponge Bob

regress wrote: »

Astounding that half a dozen Eircom staff whose job it is to provide information to customers were unable or unwilling to provide this information.

Look what happened to neighbours of the OPs 3 years back...again they probably had Newtown numbers and were informed of the plans for Newtown even though they were not connected to Newtown.

Longwood does not have ADSL and was never officially promised ADSL by eircom....and even if it was promised by eircom they could be 5 years waiting for ADSL in Longwood like many other small towns spread across the country are today.

eircom: Mark

MagicSean wrote: »

I've been in my current house for two and a half years (Longwood, Meath). When i first moved in i contacted Eircom to enquire about broadband and was told it would be in my area within six months.

Happy days I thought. So six months pass and I ring them again. She does a check and informs me that the Navan exchange has been upgraded a while and I should have been able to get broadband. I inform her that I am 30km away from Navan and I doubt I would be on that exchange. She then asks if I am in the Dundalk area. She was adament that i had to live in either of those areas. At this stage I was getting annoyed so I asked to be connected to someone who knows something about the actual network instead of someone reading from a script. In fairness to her she connected me to someone who I think was in the networks section. He told me I was on the Enfield exchange (5 minutes down the road). He told me that I would be able to get broadband by the end of 2010 at the latest.

I contacted eircom at the end of 2010 to be told that my area would never be upgraded to broadband and I would have to use a different method to obtain broadband. Two months later a salesman from another provider calls to my door to sell me 8mb broadband. He says my line has recently been upgraded for broadband. So i sign up right away along with others in the area. Two months later we are informed that this was a mistake and we cannot obtain the high speed broadband.

At this stage I make peace with the fact that I will be stuck with satellite broadband, despite living in a large village quite close to Enfield. My own provider takes this opportunity to cap download and upload speeds and increase prices. I have no alternatve so I have to keep paying them. Fast forward to a month ago and I find out that Enfield has been upgraded to Next Generation Broadband but for some reason this doesn't include my area. I contact Eircom to try and get something concrete on if or when I can get broadband. This was difficult as their website does their best to hide useful phone numbers. Eventually I get through to someone and ask the question. He doesn't know. He advises me to contact sales. They don't know. They agree to forward my request for information. I get a confirmation of this in my email. I then get an email which basically says we don't know and gives me another contact to ask.

So basically I have no idea what exchange I am on and apparently Eircom don't either. I have no idea if I will ever receive proper broadband and it would appear that Eircom don't either. Can anyone please advise me on how to find this stuff out.

EDIT: I have just put my number in the product availability thing on the website ant it now says I am eligible for 24mb broadband. Seriously confused now.

Hi MagicSean,

Can you private message me with your address in full and I can look into the broadband availability for you.

Thanks, Mark

_HULK_SMASH!

Sorry to Resurrect this old thread, but i'm in the same position as the OP. I live about 30 meters from that Exchange in the above pic

I moved to longwood at the end of 2003 and have hoped to get Eircom to upgrade the Exchange, It became evident Years ago that Eircom were unwilling to upgrade this exchange..

However maybe once a year, I take a mad fit and Google "Broadband Longwood" to see if theres any new info.

This thread was returned by one such Google search.

Did the OP contact Eircom? and what was the result?

Im with 02 Mobile broadband and its killing me slowly..

Please help......:(

regress

_HULK_SMASH! wrote: »

Sorry to Resurrect this old thread, but i'm in the same position as the OP. I live about 30 meters from that Exchange in the above pic

I moved to longwood at the end of 2003 and have hoped to get Eircom to upgrade the Exchange, It became evident Years ago that Eircom were unwilling to upgrade this exchange..

However maybe once a year, I take a mad fit and Google "Broadband Longwood" to see if theres any new info.

This thread was returned by one such Google search.

Did the OP contact Eircom? and what was the result?

Im with 02 Mobile broadband and its killing me slowly..

Please help......:(

You're wasting your time Hulk. Eircom Reps on this forum are prohibited from saying when of if any of the 270+ non enabled Exchanges will ever be broadband enabled. You might get some meaningless stock response like "no plans at this time" or "pm me your details"

eircom: Ant

_HULK_SMASH! wrote: »

Sorry to Resurrect this old thread, but i'm in the same position as the OP. I live about 30 meters from that Exchange in the above pic

I moved to longwood at the end of 2003 and have hoped to get Eircom to upgrade the Exchange, It became evident Years ago that Eircom were unwilling to upgrade this exchange..

However maybe once a year, I take a mad fit and Google "Broadband Longwood" to see if theres any new info.

This thread was returned by one such Google search.

Did the OP contact Eircom? and what was the result?

Im with 02 Mobile broadband and its killing me slowly..

Please help......:(

Hi _HULK_SMASH!,

Thanks for your post. Can you PM your phone number or address so I can check this for you.

Best Regards,
Ant

MagicSean

_HULK_SMASH! wrote: »

Sorry to Resurrect this old thread, but i'm in the same position as the OP. I live about 30 meters from that Exchange in the above pic

I moved to longwood at the end of 2003 and have hoped to get Eircom to upgrade the Exchange, It became evident Years ago that Eircom were unwilling to upgrade this exchange..

However maybe once a year, I take a mad fit and Google "Broadband Longwood" to see if theres any new info.

This thread was returned by one such Google search.

Did the OP contact Eircom? and what was the result?

Im with 02 Mobile broadband and its killing me slowly..

Please help......:(

Eircom will be continuing their policy of preventing the residents of Longwood from obtaining cable broadband and apparently have been lying to me on all previous correspondence. Turns out the automated service was
more informed than all the people I spoke to.

As it stands I have to get a commercial package from Ripple to have any kind of decent speed. It costs €75 per month and has a fluctuating service.

To be honest i can't see how Eircoms control of broadband markets is not considered anti-competitive as they are preventing other service providers from entering the geographical markets.

Sponge Bob

_HULK_SMASH! wrote: »

Sorry to Resurrect this old thread, but i'm in the same position as the OP. I live about 30 meters from that Exchange in the above pic

Does it still look as ugly as ever Hulk, honestly if an exchange ever needed a lick of paint it is the Longwood one.

You guys know that BT are showing interest in dropping a VDSL box into areas like Longwood ( where they could go as low as 200 cable pairs) but they should deal with a single LOCAL committee on the matter. They have fibre along the Mullingar-Kilcock railway/canal and along the old N4 around Moyvalley...VERY close in fact.

_HULK_SMASH!

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Does it still look as ugly as ever Hulk, honestly if an exchange ever needed a lick of paint it is the Longwood one.

You guys know that BT are showing interest in dropping a VDSL box into areas like Longwood ( where they could go as low as 200 cable pairs) but they should deal with a single LOCAL committee on the matter. They have fibre along the Mullingar-Kilcock railway/canal and along the old N4 around Moyvalley...VERY close in fact.

wow! that is close!

Yes, its still full of grafiti, The fact its outside an unmanned garda station says a lot...Cutbacks eh?

The Canal is about a mile, mile and a half from longwood.

It would be fantastic to have Cable broadband in longwood, feel like im in the stone ages.

My sister in-laws husband works for Eircom, Business Broadband, I got non- committal answers years ago from him and gave up! Typical salesman...Says more than his prayers

Got fobbed off years ago from him about Eircom going into Wi-Max..It will be fantastic he says...

Eircom is a huge Dinosaur with everyone more interested in keeping their job instead of providing the country with a service in my opinion..

Its a feckin disgrace.

I can barely watch a youtube vid without buffering all the way through, and thats not even in HD. I mean REALLY.....

When I see Uk ads offering 24 meg broadband with calls included for a pittance it really feckin annoys me (doing my best not to swear now!)

I realise the countrys in bits and they cant do it now... Then why the hell didnt they do it years ago when everyone was throwing money they didnt have at them??

Eircom has let the network fall to bits and unless you live in a big city, you might as well sit on your roof with a metal clothes hanger in your hand for all they care.

The country needs competition in the sector.. What sort of a fight could Eircom put up though god only knows..

I really hope your right about BT, People in Longwood and other black spots would throw money at them because we really are in the dark ages..

I'm lucky to get 1 meg download from mobile broadband.

Thats a F***ing joke!

(Rant Over)

Feel better now (not much)

Sponge Bob

What BT are proposing is a VDSL cab and very fast speeds in the village near the Cab if they bite.

It would be located next to the eircom cab and if you can offer a corner of your garden for the cause they would be interested.

BT then offer TV over this fast telephone line service, called BT Vision . see http://www.btvision.bt.com/

Its is like cable...but over telephone wire.

Get a small committee together and contact BT when ye know what ye are talking about and have perhaps scoed the demand in the village...within 500m of the cab especially.

and tell eircom to paint the shagging thing.

lubo_moravcik

Sponge Bob wrote: »

What BT are proposing is a VDSL cab and very fast speeds in the village near the Cab if they bite.

It would be located next to the eircom cab and if you can offer a corner of your garden for the cause they would be interested.

BT then offer TV over this fast telephone line service, called BT Vision . see http://www.btvision.bt.com/

Its is like cable...but over telephone wire.

Get a small committee together and contact BT when ye know what ye are talking about and have perhaps scoed the demand in the village...within 500m of the cab especially.

and tell eircom to paint the shagging thing.

Any more info on this BT thing and if it's a possible goer??


This is my experience of Eircom away back last year http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74977992 :mad::(

Sponge Bob

Have ye a committee formed yet??

Seeing as eircom are now seemingly doing the similar small exchange in Oldtown in Dublin you could also go to eircom and demand a VDSL cab beside that existing eyesore...and a bit of paint too. The Longwood exchange area is physically small and suitable for universal VDSL....just like Oldtown. eircom are buying a lot of VDSL cabs nowadays.

The other alternative is to approach Bord Gais Telecom who have DARK FIBRE NETWORK 1 MILE NORTH OF LONGWOOD along the R160 about leasing a dark fibre to Dublin. Then dig in your OWN FTTH Network and do speeds of 'up to' 10Gbit. You would run most of the network from a Datacentre in Dublin and with a Fibre Ethernet switch somewhere in the village.

But it is ultimately up to the people of Longwood to help themselves ....because nobody else will give a damn about you out there in Rural Ireland. Luckily there is alot of fibre quite close.

lockup35

Are there any maps online that show the fibre backhaul routes in Ireland so you can check if your exchange is close to any of these routes? In the slim hope that my exchange will ever see anything faster than ADSL1..

MagicSean

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Have ye a committee formed yet??

Seeing as eircom are now seemingly doing the similar small exchange in Oldtown in Dublin you could also go to eircom and demand a VDSL cab beside that existing eyesore...and a bit of paint too. The Longwood exchange area is physically small and suitable for universal VDSL....just like Oldtown. eircom are buying a lot of VDSL cabs nowadays.

The other alternative is to approach Bord Gais Telecom who have DARK FIBRE NETWORK 1 MILE NORTH OF LONGWOOD along the R160 about leasing a dark fibre to Dublin. Then dig in your OWN FTTH Network and do speeds of 'up to' 10Gbit. You would run most of the network from a Datacentre in Dublin and with a Fibre Ethernet switch somewhere in the village.

But it is ultimately up to the people of Longwood to help themselves ....because nobody else will give a damn about you out there in Rural Ireland. Luckily there is alot of fibre quite close.

So you think we should write to Eircom and Bord Gais and suggest this?

Sponge Bob

You get the committee to meet them, if you write to them you will get some boilerplate yadda back saying roughly no never and go away culchies . eircom will not use the Bord Gáis fibre, you would need to install your own FTTH network locally.