Best Broadband for Douglas, Cork

JSGraham

Hi All,

Does anyone know what the best broadband provider is for Douglas Cork.

Any suggestions most welcome.

Regards

Owen

If your area is covered, UPC by far.

JSGraham

That's the problem it's hasn't reached my area yet.

Any other suggestions?

Owen

You don't have a whole lot of options so, either Eircom, or any one of the 3g providers. Don't believe a word of Eircom's advertising either, their 'next generation 24 Meg' broadband is delivering 4Mb at a friends house who's pretty close to his exchange.

JSGraham

Nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nonoperational

There's landline ADSL which can give upto 24Mbit/sec depending on how close to the exchange. I'm about 2.5km and get 12Mbit consistently with Eircom. Getting 4Mbit close to the exchange means something's not right.

There's also fixed wireless options. Novanetworks get good reports. Upto 30Mbit/s speed. Both are miles better than any mobile 3G could offer.

Contrarian

33 eircom fibre cabinets are in the process of been installed in douglas so this may benefit you in the coming months

Solair

Your options are:

1) UPC (not for you, but Douglas has pretty widespread fibre-power cable)
2) Eircom / Other DSL providers (Fibre on its way in Douglas, cabinets are almost installed!)
3) Nova Networks
4) Digiweb Metro

Other than that, mobile companies and WiMax etc.

jumpin jack

Did you try www.eastcork.net

Their service is first class!:D

Solair

jumpin jack wrote: »

Did you try www.eastcork.net

Their service is first class!:D

Is that not only a available in East Cork though?

jumpin jack

Their network is continuously expanding, it's worth giving them a call.

magnumbud

what part of douglas are you in? i have upc in donnybrook so would seem strange if it is not in other parts of douglas.

Solair

Most places in Douglas do have UPC, but there are always one or two one-off houses and other developments that somehow managed to miss being cabled up.

It's the same everywhere, UPC's connections are far from universal even in densely cabled areas.

Chorus also managed to miss a lot of places in the 90s and 00s that ought to have been cabled. They saw digital MMDS and cable as interchangable products at one stage and failed to cable some estates and developments.

To be honest, if you're in Douglas I would go with DSL rather than one of the wireless providers if you can't get UPC.

Nowhere in Douglas should be very far from the exchange, it's an urban area and as long as you're actually in the urban area itself, you will get a decent DSL signal.

Also, eircom is literally in the process of rolling out fibre-to-kerb and fibre-to-home in Douglas so, they will quite likely be offering fairly UPC-like speeds soon in that area.

BTW: Douglas has two exchanges - one fairly large one on Church Road in Douglas village which serves most of the area 489 / 436 numbers. The other is a smaller one called Hettyfield - 429 numbers, which covers anywhere on the city side of the Douglas flyover towards the City Centre, Ballinlough, parts of Blackrock etc this is not being cabinetised and fibre-to-kerb enabled at the moment.

If you're in Douglas Village, East Douglas, Rochestown, Doneybrook etc or anywhere that has a 436 or 489 number, you'll likely be able to avail of fibre to home / fibre to kerb (VDSL) soon though!

That's their fibre offering : http://www.eircom.net/broadband/fibre/

douglasman

Does anyone know if there are any plans to install any cabinets in the heart of Douglas village itself? Or is it the case that people who's lines are being served directly from the exchange itself (with no cabinets of any kind in between) will continue to be copper all the way from exchange and simply connect into VDSL2 equipment in the exchange? VDSL2 probably won't make much difference to me based on the VDSL2 speed guides, my line is approx 800 metres line length (the actual distance as crow flies is much less, but thats irrelevant) and can sync at the full 24Mb for ADSL2+, but with VDSL2 speed guide an "upgrade" to 25Mb download / 8Mb upload with much lower 100GB quota is about as good as it will get. So much better upload speed is as exciting as it will get without any cabinets being put in between. I guess I've been spoiled in the ADSL and ADSL2+ phases though, so can't complain too much. Eircom's speed estimates are likely to be conservative too, my original line profile was 17Mb when I first upgraded to ADSL2+, got them to change it to full 24Mb, and synced at full speed no problem.

Solair

I'd assume they will install cabinets in the village itself. It's probably just a matter of finding space to locate them on the street and it's also probably a job that would require more digging than some of the easier targets in housing estates where they were able to install them on green space.

In a few cases they've installed entirely new cabinets too i.e. not just located the cabinet alongside the old distribution cabinets. There were some estates where there were no cabinets and everything was done in vaults underground.

They're still not finished the rollout in Douglas, I'd say it'll be a few more weeks yet.

gordonnet

contractors on behalf of UPC have been doing a lot of digging in the grange / frankfied area over the last few days.

Solair

gordonnet wrote: »

contractors on behalf of UPC have been doing a lot of digging in the grange / frankfied area over the last few days.

I think UPC are still cabling up areas that were skipped by Chorus/Multichannel in during that period when they didn't bother wiring up estates that should have been done.

gammon_steak

Lads,

I'm moving to Grange in the next few weeks. Should I just go with Eircom and then will I be autmatically upgraded to fibre when it's rolled out? Want to have unlimited downloads. Thanks.

Solair

If you're in Grange, go with UPC.
You could be months and months waiting for eircom fibre, assuming it's there.

Also, it's probably going to be a VDSL product i.e. last few hundred meters still over a phone line. So, you'd be looking at 50mbit/s max, dropping off rapidly as you move away from the green box on the street.

UPC's speeds are actually pretty much as advertised as it's coaxial from the street cabinet to your house. A coaxial cable handles vastly more bandwidth than a simple phoneline.

From Eircom's T&Cs :

"Unlimited monthly usage allowance

With Next Generation Broadband Ultimate you have an unlimited monthly usage allowance. This is subject to a fair usage policy of 250GB per month. For more information see the standard Broadband Terms and Conditions."

UPC has a 500GB per month usage.

Smart Telecom : 350 GB Traffic Included
Vodafone at Home : 350GB Usage allowance
(You can add on extra capacity too on this if you pay more)

Nova Networks : Unlimited data (10GB per day full-speed fair usage, equivalent to 300GB per month)

It's all unlimited*

*unlimited packages are subject to limits

Hogzy

Solair wrote: »

If you're in Grange, go with UPC.
You could be months and months waiting for eircom fibre, assuming it's there.

Also, it's probably going to be a VDSL product i.e. last few hundred meters still over a phone line. So, you'd be looking at 50mbit/s max, dropping off rapidly as you move away from the green box on the street.

UPC's speeds are actually pretty much as advertised as it's coaxial from the street cabinet to your house. A coaxial cable handles vastly more bandwidth than a simple phoneline.

From Eircom's T&Cs :

"Unlimited monthly usage allowance

With Next Generation Broadband Ultimate you have an unlimited monthly usage allowance. This is subject to a fair usage policy of 250GB per month. For more information see the standard Broadband Terms and Conditions."

UPC has a 500GB per month usage.

Smart Telecom : 350 GB Traffic Included
Vodafone at Home : 350GB Usage allowance
(You can add on extra capacity too on this if you pay more)

Nova Networks : Unlimited data (10GB per day full-speed fair usage, equivalent to 300GB per month)

It's all unlimited*

*unlimited packages are subject to limits

Grange is on the DOuglas exchange which is in phase 1 of the Eircom upgrade. Probably only a matter of weeks before Grange will have access.

Solair

Hogzy wrote: »

Grange is on the DOuglas exchange which is in phase 1 of the Eircom upgrade. Probably only a matter of weeks before Grange will have access.

I would still recommend UPC.

From what I gather, eircom will be offering VDSL, not fibre to home.

UPC's fibre to kerb with coax over the last mile is vastly superior to VDSL.

I would adopt a wait and see approach to eircom as the product is not properly launched yet.

gammon_steak

UPC broadband is not available in the estate I'm going to according to their website so I rang and asked about the installations. They said it would be at least 6 months before it's ready and she stressed the words 'at least.'

Solair

You could order DSL, but I'm not sure what the story is with upgrading to VDSL/Fibre in terms of minimum contract periods etc. You'd be better off going with eircom or talking to Magnet.

Both eircom retail and Magnet will be selling the service when it does launch.

I'd suspect that UPC will put even more resources into cabling-out any areas of Douglas that Multichannel/Chorus ignored as they will not want to see eircom getting a foothold in what is a high-uptake cable area.

gammon_steak

Met an Eircom technician earlier in Douglas and he told me that fibre will be available in two weeks. Hopefully true.