Moving to Ennis

brendy_b

Hello there, I found the boards here using google search. Kinda kicking myself I didn't think to look for community boards!

I'm moving to Ennis (Ennis Town, not too far from the Dunnes) and I'm looking for high speed broadband. Looking around the other threads, bbnet looks good, but might not have coverage in the area. Vodafone and Eircom seem to advertise high speed DSL but the reality seems to be different?

Most of this is from posts back in 2009. Do any of you have any recommendations for 2012?

High speed, high/no caps!!

Clareman

Welcome to boards brendy, we're a good bunch here

I live out the Kilrush Road in Ennis and am with Vodafone, I'm currently getting 12meg broadband, I think my limit is 700 gigs a month, I never get close to it and I work from home 3 days a week so I would be considered a high user. The costs is ~€60 a month, there has been problems with their link for the past week or so, but I think that's for all the network not just me

irishbloke77

Welcome brendy_b,
I live on the Tulla road, and am with Vodafone. I am only getting 3 Mbs speed due to the exchange out here. Apparently Vodafone will upgrade me to 8 or 12 Mbs when it's available to me but not yet. I pay €45 per month for local, national landline calls anytime, 200 anytime Vodafone mobile calls and 40gb allowance of wireless broadband. Hope this helps you out.

brendy_b

Thanks a mil, guys!
I had a sneaking suspicion that Vodafone was the way to go.

I'm actually on the Ard na Greine Road. Not a million miles from the town centre.
Anyone with experience of speeds on/near that area?

Mr. G

brendy_b wrote: »

Thanks a mil, guys!
I had a sneaking suspicion that Vodafone was the way to go.

I'm actually on the Ard na Greine Road. Not a million miles from the town centre.
Anyone with experience of speeds on/near that area?

Magnet have broadband in Ennis, but I'm not sure if you get it on your road.

Vodafone are running off eircoms equipment don't forget that. Eircom have next generation broadband for €39.99 that's constant,incl vat and includes irish landlines.

I suggest you get in touch with BBNet and imagine wimax aswell.

Shapey Fiend

Live about a mile from the exchange on Cahercalla Road. Pay for 10 meg Eircom broadband and I get a solid 6 most of the time. Pretty good by Irish standards. Haven't hit the cap and I torrent a lot of movies.

MyKeyG

Hi Brendy welcome to Ennis and the Clare boards. First off Eircom and Vodafone are the same technical infrastructure so all you have to decide between them is price plans. Second I live 30 seconds walk from Ard na Greine. I'm on Eircom 8mb plan and pull a steady 7.02 download. Both my sister and I download like maniacs and we haven't heard a peep from Eircom about it. Might be worth looking into.

The only warning I would give about VF is that they're a re-seller. It's not a problem in itself but they hire the line from Eircom so if anything goes wrong you have to get on to VF and they have to get on to Eircom and yadda yadda yadda. I worked for VF BB when they were Perlico and a lot of people found it oft times inconvenient.

brendy_b

Thanks for the response guys!
Just learned last night that the property I'm moving into doesn't have a landline, I've arranged for an Eircom engineer to come out and put one in. Free of charge these days!

It means that I'm without a landline and broadband for a while. Kinda set on a fixed DSL line with Eircom or Vodafone at this stage, but now I need to figure out a temporary internet solution!

Meteor do a pay as you go connection, how have you guys found that in Ennis?

MyKeyG

brendy_b wrote: »

Thanks for the response guys!
Just learned last night that the property I'm moving into doesn't have a landline, I've arranged for an Eircom engineer to come out and put one in. Free of charge these days!

It means that I'm without a landline and broadband for a while. Kinda set on a fixed DSL line with Eircom or Vodafone at this stage, but now I need to figure out a temporary internet solution!

Meteor do a pay as you go connection, how have you guys found that in Ennis?

Well like I said I'm not far from you. When we were trying to move back to Eircom from Imagine I used the VF dongle in the interim and it worked like a charm. Very pleased with it. Likewise the O2 dongle was very good when it was working but every so often you would get low speeds.

brendy_b

That's brill!
Thanks for your help, MyKeyG.

MyKeyG

Any time buddy.

CptSternn

There are really only two broadband providers in Ennis - Eircom and Vodafone.

There are a few mobile providers of course but depending on where you live exactly the throughput of your provider could be good or bad. There are also two groups doing broadband over dish connections, but they are much more expensive, slower, and are mostly for rural areas that can't get standard DSL like Eircom or Vodafone.

Per those two they use the exact same lines, Vodafone rents from Eircom. The packages change almost monthly, so the deal you are getting from one may be good today, but two months from now the scale might shift the other way.

The three major factors to look at when ordering is the following:

1. Price. See who offers what speed for what price.

2. Limits. See who offers what in terms of how much you can download each month.

3. Censoring. Eircom blocks Pirate Bay, so this is an issue for some people.

I have gone back and forth between the two over the past ten years. I am now with Eircom because when they first upgraded to NGB (Next Generation Broadband) exchanges they had a package that was 30% less than Vodafone with unlimited downloads. I had been with Vodafone for two year previous, but they over night decided to raise their rates and simultaneously enforce strict download limits of 100 gigs per month. That was about a year and a half ago and I switched the day I got a bill for double my normal monthly rate due to the fact I downloaded 110 gigs in a month (breaking the limit cap incurs a €50 penalty fee).

I am not sure what the cost/limits are now, but would encourage you to check the website anyway as they quite literally could change from the time I post them here to the time you signup, you never know when they are going to tweak their packages.

I'm not sure what the lines around Ard na Greine will handle. I was on the Kilrush road myself until last January and now live across the road from Ard na Greine in Tobertascain. We can only get 8 megs top here, but sure, even when I lived on the Kilrush road I had a 14 meg connection but yet neighbors in Cahercalla could only get an 8 meg connection. It all comes down to the lines. One thing you also might want to note - on two occasions now, myself and a mate of mine had originally signed up for Vodafone and were told the lines could only handle like 8 megs. We later switched to Eircom who then told us the lines would handle up to 20 megs. I don't know if the exchanges were upgraded during the time we spent with Vodafone, OR if Eircom (who handles the lines and line queries for Vodafone) intentionally tell new Vodafone customers their lines are only rated at lower speeds to encourage more customers for themselves. Dunno what the story is, but if you do go with Vodafone and they give you a low line download speed try ringing Eircom and inquiring about broadband and they will do a line test and let you know prior to setting you up, and you can cancel the order as this is done well prior to any contracts. I did that last time and it was the difference between 18 megs and 8 megs download speed.

brendy_b

Thanks for sitting down and taking the time to write all that out, CptSternn!
Looking through all the comments, seems like Eircom is the one to go with.

Still... bit underhanded with the 8mb 'limit' on vodaphone lines (if it turns out to be true)!