UPC or EIRCOM

Shanew14

From your own personal experience which is better? i live in a rural are in meath and upc is available but there is a download limit... of 500gb whereas eircom doesnt.. i need an internet to hold 3 laptops and a ps3? Or are both poor?
ANy reply is always appreciated
thanks

Paulw

I have UPC and find it brilliant. While there is a cap, most average users don't hit it.

I watch Netflix and play games online, and have yet to hit the cap.

Slippin Jimmy

Upc

awedf

Shanew14 wrote: »

upc is available but there is a download limit... of 500gb whereas eircom doesnt..

Read the eircom fine print, eircom has a cap of 250gb. By far upc is the best you can get in Ireland

celticcrash

eircom LOL the walking dead

btard

UPC is God tier. Eircom is **** tier.

/thread

-=al=-

UPC.

Unless you're downloading an absolute mental amount of stuff, you're fine

Eircom probably (almost certainly) has a fair usage policy in the small print... could even be less than 500 gigabytaroonis

starviewadams

UPC!

Hands down a better service then Eircom,and cheaper too as you don't have to pay line rental.

Shanew14

IM quite rural tho and currently on vodafone which is complete crap The random disconnects kill me... So im gonna go for upc thanks lads

rebeve

UPC every time.

grizzly

Eircom!




























































































Not really :pac:

Karen23

Our UPC Broadband is absolute rubbish , we use our neighbours Eircom :cool:

towger

UPC x 1000

lac007

I heard today that Eircom will be doing TV soon and higher speed broadband.

AlmightyCushion

UPC, no question about it. Only time to consider eircom over UPC is if you are able to get their new fibre packages but right now that isn't a lot of people.

Shanew14

Say i cant get upc is eircom the second best?

bk

lac007 wrote: »

I heard today that Eircom will be doing TV soon and higher speed broadband.

You know, Eircom was planning to do TV and higher speed broadband back in 2002, they even bought loads of gear and trialled it.

10 years later and still nothing. I wouldn't hold my breadth.

Yes Eircom are currently starting to rollout higher speed BB via FTTH and FFTC and I'm sure they will do TV over that too at some stage. But the rollour is very slow, probably more likely 2013 before it starts becoming available and even at that only a small number of people.

Don't forget Eircom is bankrupt (technically in examinership) with over 4 billion in debts. Don't hold your breath for any big developments from Eircom.

If you can get UPC, get it. Very high speed BB (100mb/s) and TV for very reasonable prices, today. Not off in some distant future.

ollaetta

Switched from eircom to UPC about 6 weeks ago. Very pleased so far.

practice

Much prefer Eircom. fair usage is 250gb.
If you get phone and broadband from UPC you must have you router connected to mains to use the phone.

Shanew14

Turns out i cant get upc what would u now recomend?

Paulw

Shanew14 wrote: »

Turns out i cant get upc what would u now recomend?

All depends on what you CAN get. Have you checked that out first?

Ranicand

No Eircom is much better.

I am stuck with UPC and I have to say I feel very disconnected from my broadband.
Never having to reset the modem and getting my downloads really fast takes away from the whole experience.

To add insult to injury 500GB usage on even the lowest pack makes the bandwidth feel pointless.

Lastly the lower call charges and lack of line rental on UPC phone makes the calls feel worthless.

Stick with what you know Eircom all the way.

colm_mcm

What rural part of Meath has UPC?

galait

colm_mcm wrote: »

What rural part of Meath has UPC?

None , The OP is an Idiot

colm_mcm

Oh right. Says he lives in skreen, which UPC def don't cover.


Pretty much like every other rural area so.

-=al=-

Fixed wireless or 3G it is.

Solair

UPC broadband is only available in cities and towns with cable service.
If you're outside an urban area or not passed by cable, forget it, it is not available.

Technologically speaking, eircom's not even in the same league at all.
UPC's got a full fibre-to-curb network with high-bandwidth coax to your house which has widespread coverage in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Sligo and many other urban areas.

Vs eircom which has fibre to curb in about 4 exchanges!

Eircom's 'fibre' rollout is largely going to be VDSL by the looks of it i.e. fibre-to-curb with a phone line from there to your house.

That compares with a coax last mine link on UPC which comfortably delivers 100mbit/s and can deliver a lot more too.

omg a kitty

Eircom's usage limit: 10GB or "Unlimited"
Read carefully and you will find out that "Unlimited" broadband is capped at 250GB
10GB will keep you going for 2 days maybe..

UPC: 500GB for all

If you can't get UPC, get Eircom..it's still better compared to Vodafone I guess.

I'm sickened by Eircom selling 10GB broadband to customers who don't really know much about broadband..

Solair

Actually if you're after huge limits Vodafone's not the worst option.

DSL will suck if your line is bad or if your local exchange has some kind of congestion issues and is still on "classic ADSL" instead of NGB and ADSL2+.

omg a kitty

Solair wrote: »

Actually if you're after huge limits Vodafone's not the worst option.

You're right actually. I forgot, they start at 40GB which is okay for a light user. They have a 350GB option too. I heard about ping issues with VF, not entirely sure about it.

Solair

omg a kitty wrote: »

You're right actually. I forgot, they start at 40GB which is okay for a light user. They have a 350GB option too. I heard about ping issues with VF, not entirely sure about it.

We had it in Cork for a while and it was fine ping-wise, wasn't ever a problem and I use VoIP, so I'm fairly sensitive to ping.

Again though, it varies from line to line and exchange to exchange so you can't really guarantee anything unfortunately.

The main thing seems to be if you're on an exchange that's NGB / they call it "Enhanced Broadband" then you'll have a decent service. If it's an older setup, you can't guarantee the backhaul's not congested and choked up.

The best bet is to actually bring a laptop over to someone's house who has the ISP you're thinking of using and run www.speedtest.net and www.pingtest.net from a connection to the Ethernet port on their router, not WiFi.

And maybe plug in a VoIP phone if that's what you use.

kenyard

i looked into options besides upc, being "rural" also....

all other services besides sat broadband work off eircoms existing lines so what you have with one you will more than likely have with the others.
Eircom have "metro" now which is their next gen. still old system, maxes at 24mb/s. they're broke so wont upgrade in future + LTE+fibre optic is the future anyway (LTE rights being sold soon. gonna be a huge deal for whoever gets them for phones and even sat broadband) fibre, upc already have the market sucked in.
I went with digiweb, changing from eircom's 1Mb service to digiwebs 8Mb service (my line maxes at 7Mb so i only get that)
its 100Gb download limit (vodafone have 400 i think), iv hit..or my nephew hit 150Gb on it and no problems, the limits are a fair usage policy, their main reason is so that you dont affect other customers and when you are rural and have max speeds at all times (i cant guarantee you will, its area specific) they wont enforce any limits.
I relooked at the services since and i think vodafone are cheaper than digiweb at the moment.
Bigger towns but not having upc will have metro more than likely (eircom have coverage map on their site) and all those do enforce the fair usage pretty much.
Also on another note. if your line goes down, its up to eircom to fix it, and since you arent their customer it can take ages (we were with perlico years upon years ago now, and it happened, and eircom didnt fix it- said 2 weeks so we switched back and they fixed it the next day...:P)
but everything going well, I would recommend digiweb or vodafone.
ping times, for me i think they were 30-60ms..thats on wifi, anything below 100ms is fine imo... =either way online gaming is fine using wifi on my xbox/wii/pc..im up there with the best of them generally so no lag issues
vodafone charge for going over your limit on broadband also i think (a fortune) whereas digiweb say they just throttle you(slow you to dialup speeds)
theres been lots of people complained in past abuot 500 euro bills and stuff from vodafone unexpectantly.. dunno if its still the case.. 2 years since i read into this stuff properly.
there may be others also. eircom line rental is 90% of my bill, so thats what it comes down to really.

jimmymal

Magnet might be worth the look, though not sure about rural situ!

https://www.magnet.ie/

Solair

jimmymal wrote: »

Magnet might be worth the look, though not sure about rural situ!

https://www.magnet.ie/

Magnet and Smart offer a LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) product i.e. they connect you to their equipment. In Smart's case, this is for both voice and data, so you get a dial tone from their exchange, not eircom's.

I'm not sure if Magnet provides its own voice service, or uses line-sharing i.e. the local eircom voice switch + their own DSL service. Perhaps someone who has magnet could clarify this?

These companies have only installed equipment in high-density population areas and even then only in a selection of exchanges (this could be based on factors like size, and also ability to connect to their fibre networks). In both cases this is about 40 exchanges, all of which are in major urban centres.

Both companies now provide bitstream i.e. using eircom's wholesale DSL access products routing data to their network i.e. the same as anyone else.

In areas where eircom has NGB you'll get up to 24mbit/s, if not you'll get up to 8mbit/s.

LLU providers can sometimes have better ping times, but to be honest, there isn't a huge difference between ADSL2+ on an LLU provider or on an eircom hosted one. It's the same technology.

Smart had a huge lead when it was providing LLU 24mbit/s ADSL+ when eircom was only doing 8 and in the days before UPC was a serious player.

scamalert

comparing upc to eircom is like comparing Ferrari to motorbike,in other words peace of $hit nothing else eircom is ,as to this day they still live in 1800s with their rotten phone lines and ridiculous charges 20e month for a phone line which no one ever uses one these days,that's my opinion.

Solair

scamalert wrote: »

comparing upc to eircom is like comparing Ferrari to motorbike,in other words peace of $hit nothing else eircom is ,as to this day they still live in 1800s with their rotten phone lines and ridiculous charges 20e month for a phone line which no one ever uses one these days,that's my opinion.

Well, I'd say more the 1990s than the 1800s.

They're suffering from two problems:

1) Serious lack of investment in new technology and

2) Irish bad planning laws which have resulted in scattered, expensive to serve populations and ridiculously long lines. You can thank previous Governments and the people who brought you the troika, the IMF, national financial humiliation, NAMA, property bubbles and bank collapses for that one!

Oh, yeah and the lack of investment, well guess who came up with the great deal that resulted in them going down a path where they ran up billions of debt without spending a cent on their networks!

Eircom have a fairly sophisticated fibre core but their access networks are pants in many areas and still living off infrastructure that was cutting edge in about 1988. They should have been investing in cabinets and fibre, instead they just borrowed money to buy themselves several times over.

I'm not entirely sure what the future's likely to hold for eircom, I just wish someone who actually ran telephone companies i.e. a major large European telco would pick them up. It urgently needs to be run as a going concern and a boring utility, not a speculative play thing!

scamalert

Solair wrote: »

Well, I'd say more the 1990s than the 1800s.

They're suffering from two problems:

1) Serious lack of investment in new technology and

2) Irish bad planning laws which have resulted in scattered, expensive to serve populations and ridiculously long lines. You can thank previous Governments and the people who brought you the troika, the IMF, national financial humiliation, NAMA, property bubbles and bank collapses for that one!

Oh, yeah and the lack of investment, well guess who came up with the great deal that resulted in them going down a path where they ran up billions of debt without spending a cent on their networks!

Eircom have a fairly sophisticated fibre core but their access networks are pants in many areas and still living off infrastructure that was cutting edge in about 1988. They should have been investing in cabinets and fibre, instead they just borrowed money to buy themselves several times over.

I'm not entirely sure what the future's likely to hold for eircom, I just wish someone who actually ran telephone companies i.e. a major large European telco would pick them up. It urgently needs to be run as a going concern and a boring utility, not a speculative play thing!

I believe you are right they have thousands of customers and over the years instead of investing money into structure they did F all,