Broadband: North Clare options..

dasium

Hey,

Have recently spent a lot of time in the Ballyvaughan area. My parents are using an O2 dongle for broadband.... after getting used to exceptionally fast broadband within city limits, I found it to be a brutal service...what options are open to them to improve the service?

Know of or heard of these companies but has anyone good or bad references/opinions on them?


'Airwave'.... is it good/bad
'Airwire'...
'Eircom'.... tied into a 12month contract with little guarantee of bandwith
'Lighthouse networks'.... any one use these?
O2/Vodaphone dongles/wireless connection... thus far unsatisfactory...
Perlico...
Heard mention of 'hotspots' but not a clue what that means...


Thanks in advance...

munchkin_utd

are they in the area covered by the official government rural broadband scheme?
If so then maybe that could be an option. The speeds there are damn good as its subsidised and not very widely used.

maybe the reception with the dongle is bad.
If you got a 3g router for say upstairs or in your attic and used the chip from the dongle then your reception would be better. The better the reception, the better the broadband speeds.
A side effect of getting a wireless broadband wifi router is obviously that then you have wifi broadband all over the house so you could piggyback on that when visiting home.

dasium

munchkin_utd wrote: »

are they in the area covered by the official government rural broadband scheme?
If so then maybe that could be an option. The speeds there are damn good as its subsidised and not very widely used.

maybe the reception with the dongle is bad.
If you got a 3g router for say upstairs or in your attic and used the chip from the dongle then your reception would be better. The better the reception, the better the broadband speeds.
A side effect of getting a wireless broadband wifi router is obviously that then you have wifi broadband all over the house so you could piggyback on that when visiting home.

Thanks for the reply... Being a complete idiot when it comes to technology I hate asking any questions on the matter... But either my knowledge is improving or your explanation was very well put together as I think I understood it entirely!

I'm almost certain we were just outside the zone around Ballyvaughan for the rural broadband scheme, but was under the assumption that was closed for over a year anyway?

colm_mcm

Good few people using ripplecom up that way I think. Not sure if its any good

Know someone in corofin using lighthouse, said its great.

Kilnababe

In Corofin and using Perlico, very old phone line, very rural area and it's very good

colm_mcm

Perlico = Vodafone = eircom line

redzerologhlen

In ballyvaughan parish and with lighthouse networks. Its the fastest we can get here by a long way. Have tried 02 dongle and vodafone dongle but it was very slow. Lighthouse networks is 35e a month but the best we can get around here. Just did a speed test now, take a look for yourself.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2215997990.png

redzerologhlen

Kilnababe wrote: »

In Corofin and using Perlico, very old phone line, very rural area and it's very good

I have a friend in a very rural part of corofin that is with perlico too and he told me it is very slow where he is, he said he has to wait a few minutes for vids to load on youtube before he can watch them.

tagoona

Sister-in-law is using ripplecom in Ruan. It's faster than the ~4mb Vodafone/eircom landline that I use.