Small Towns/ Villages with good broadband

YankIE

Hi There-

We are moving to the ROI, and are in the process of trying to determine precisely where we are going to live, within ROI. We are looking at a small town or village (rather than a city).

I'm a freelance web-designer/ marketing consultant (with primarily existing USA clients)- hence the freedom on choosing where to live/work.

We have multiple criteria on choosing a location- but lack of good internet access is a deal-breaker, so thought we'd start with that in narrowing down areas.

BTW- we rely heavily on VOIP, and the most important time for quality calls will be in the evening (USA working hours)...

So, any guidance on general areas where we can feel confident that entire towns/regions have decent access? Entire regions to rule out? Or would it really be hit and miss, and we'd have to find a place, then try and figure out if we can get good internet prior to closing on lease?

We are still pretty wide open on location- but FWIW, west/south county cork seems to have a fair amount of rural lets in our price range/size.

Thanks!

ScumLord

There's really only one city in Ireland and that's Dublin. By international standards everything else is a town. Cork is the next biggest "city" (by Irish standards) with a population of half a million. Galway is next up with a population of around 75,000. "Cities" smaller than Galway are hit and miss on broadband speeds. Any town near to Dublin, Cork and Galway can have decent enough internet speeds up to 100-150gb if they have UPC like fiber optic lines but for the most part it's DSL throughout Ireland with a maximum of 7mb, if your lucky.

Although having said all that 4G will be coming on line soon enough and Ireland is so small we should have pretty decent coverage throughout the country. That has the potential to be up to 90mb I think but if we get half that it would still be pretty decent.

bealtine

ScumLord wrote: »

There's really only one city in Ireland and that's Dublin. By international standards everything else is a town. Cork is the next biggest "city" (by Irish standards) with a population of half a million. Galway is next up with a population of around 75,000. "Cities" smaller than Galway are hit and miss on broadband speeds. Any town near to Dublin, Cork and Galway can have decent enough internet speeds up to 100-150gb if they have UPC like fiber optic lines but for the most part it's DSL throughout Ireland with a maximum of 7mb, if your lucky.

Some DSL exchanges can go to 24Mb/s but I agree with what you've outlined here.

Although having said all that 4G will be coming on line soon enough and Ireland is so small we should have pretty decent coverage throughout the country. That has the potential to be up to 90mb I think but if we get half that it would still be pretty decent.

Speeds of 30Mb/s seem utterly unlikely on 4G, this is based on engineering analysis not marketing wishful thinking...we'll see

thebman

ScumLord wrote: »

Although having said all that 4G will be coming on line soon enough and Ireland is so small we should have pretty decent coverage throughout the country. That has the potential to be up to 90mb I think but if we get half that it would still be pretty decent.

The 4G license issued pretty much ensures this won't happen IMO.

UPC have the best broadband in the country by a long way at this stage.

Once you decide on an area, you can enter the address on page below and see if it is available:
http://www.upc.ie/shop/basket/?addedproducts=59_default

Most places with UPC should be able to get Eircom too but you can also check a phone number in the area on their site to see if the exchange is enabled for broadband.

Usually in a town, there is a few Fixed wireless providers too but speeds are much lower.

I'd say decide what kind of area you want to live in then find the town with broadband near that area.

colm_mcm

You won't get UPC anywhere remotely rural for a start.

uncle_sam_ie

We live outside a small village and 2MB is the most we will ever have. And, we are very lucky to have that. Ireland's broadband coverage is a disaster if you live outside Dublin or Cork. I'd be very carefully were decide on living.

Cheerful Spring

ScumLord wrote: »

There's really only one city in Ireland and that's Dublin. By international standards everything else is a town. Cork is the next biggest "city" (by Irish standards) with a population of half a million. Galway is next up with a population of around 75,000. "Cities" smaller than Galway are hit and miss on broadband speeds. Any town near to Dublin, Cork and Galway can have decent enough internet speeds up to 100-150gb if they have UPC like fiber optic lines but for the most part it's DSL throughout Ireland with a maximum of 7mb, if your lucky.

Although having said all that 4G will be coming on line soon enough and Ireland is so small we should have pretty decent coverage throughout the country. That has the potential to be up to 90mb I think but if we get half that it would still be pretty decent.

Any reason why you left out Limerick city? This is Ireland's third biggest city not Galway.

Cheerful Spring

colm_mcm wrote: »

You won't get UPC anywhere remotely rural for a start.

Eircom, will be pushing into rural areas with Fibre to the cabinet, but it will be mainly small towns by 2015.

Cheerful Spring

bealtine wrote: »

Speeds of 30Mb/s seem utterly unlikely on 4G, this is based on engineering analysis not marketing wishful thinking...we'll see

One thing for sure we know though the upload speeds will beat DSL uploads by a large margin. That alone for me would be an incentive to leave Eircom.

I'm just hoping they don't start off in city areas with fibre already there. And hopefully there data limits not too low.

debabyjesus

YankIE wrote: »

Hi There-

We are moving to the ROI, and are in the process of trying to determine precisely where we are going to live, within ROI. We are looking at a small town or village (rather than a city).

I'm a freelance web-designer/ marketing consultant (with primarily existing USA clients)- hence the freedom on choosing where to live/work.

We have multiple criteria on choosing a location- but lack of good internet access is a deal-breaker, so thought we'd start with that in narrowing down areas.

BTW- we rely heavily on VOIP, and the most important time for quality calls will be in the evening (USA working hours)...

So, any guidance on general areas where we can feel confident that entire towns/regions have decent access? Entire regions to rule out? Or would it really be hit and miss, and we'd have to find a place, then try and figure out if we can get good internet prior to closing on lease?

We are still pretty wide open on location- but FWIW, west/south county cork seems to have a fair amount of rural lets in our price range/size.

Thanks!

like the username! Rural cork would be a great place to live but broadband will be patchy. i live right beside an eircom exchange in a semi rural area close to Dublin and i get a consistent 7mb.

Upc is the best broadband in Ireland at the moment but is only available in some, not all, densely populated areas

bealtine

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

One thing for sure we know though the upload speeds will beat DSL uploads by a large margin. That alone for me would be an incentive to leave Eircom.

I'm just hoping they don't start off in city areas with fibre already there. And hopefully there data limits not too low.

How do we know this? 4G isn't even launched yet here...and any speeds quoted to date are for one user right beside the cell site, exactly like 3G. In fact on a reasonably "loaded" cell the performance will be roughly the same as 3G (by loaded I mean a couple of users)

The only way to control contention on cellular is by keeping the caps low so you can expect low data caps, it's inevitable and probably high prices too.

A slightly over-optimistic analysis : http://www.vodafone.ie/phones-plans/smartphones/4g/

Note they say only twice as fast as 3G...now we all know 3G can go from 0Mb/s (no connection) to 3/5 Mb/s in reality so twice as much as zero is still zero.

So don't expect magic when the PR bunnies are trying to sell you something that doesn't exist yet

niallb

I live in a rural area, and the ADSL speeds available to me max out at 2Mb down.
I had to argue with Eircom to even get it raised to that as they said the lines in the area wouldn't handle it.
This was a line I had upgraded to ISDN several years before DSL was available, but I told them I wanted to pay
for the faster speed even if I wasn't getting it - because it would give me an uplink speed of 256kb instead of 128kb...
As it turns out, I usually do get the 2Mb speed - except when it's been raining for a few days straight - and it's significantly faster than what my neighbours get on their older lines. We're more than 8km as the copper lies from the exchange.

A few miles away in two directions there are local wireless providers with reasonably good connections at good prices.

You could also get satellite broadband in addition to a low bandwidth DSL line, and use the satellite for the heavy lifting,
so that you can keep the low latency DSL dedicated for voip/skype/video chat/remote desktops.
It depends on your budget, but look at your budget holistically.
You'll save a bit in rent/mortgage living somewhere more remote, so putting that back into your communications budget is reasonable.
Add back on to it the added fuel costs of transport though and things even out.

DSL is completely hit and miss, and on a per line basis - not a per village basis once you get into rural areas.
Eircom will not guarantee you service on any particular line, and there are no other providers for DSL.
No matter what they say, outside the cities and towns, they're just reselling what Eircom give them.
There are very few places with no access at all, but they do still exist.
Have you any experience using LTE for VoIP ? It'll be here at some stage soon.
Don't rule out somewhere wonderful to live because it's got slower internet access, just if it's got none :-)

Can you set up a firewall at home to restrict your available internet speed for a week to 5Mb and then to 3Mb and 2Mb to see what you can realistically cope with? Not sure what you're used to in terms of internet speeds. There are plenty of places in the US with terrible internet access too!

A move is a big deal, and you're right to put broadband access on to the list as you work from home,
but balance it with everything else that you're moving for. Hope it goes well for you.

Cheerful Spring

bealtine wrote: »

How do we know this? 4G isn't even launched yet here...and any speeds quoted to date are for one user right beside the cell site, exactly like 3G. In fact on a reasonably "loaded" cell the performance will be roughly the same as 3G (by loaded I mean a couple of users)

The only way to control contention on cellular is by keeping the caps low so you can expect low data caps, it's inevitable and probably high prices too.

A slightly over-optimistic analysis : http://www.vodafone.ie/phones-plans/smartphones/4g/

Note they say only twice as fast as 3G...now we all know 3G can go from 0Mb/s (no connection) to 3/5 Mb/s in reality so twice as much as zero is still zero.

So don't expect magic when the PR bunnies are trying to sell you something that doesn't exist yet

We know this because 4G has been tried and tested by other countries already. And the common thing with 4G is uploads tend to be great. Download can though vary from operator to operator. I've Eircom and my upload is 324kb. I will bet you now 4G would best this by miles!

Ireland, population is low so there will be lot less people connecting to 4G upgraded masts.

Sponge Bob

I think you need more localised knowledge OP. At least narrow yoru selection down to a county or two. The most widely available product is up to 8mbits DSL but some exchanges are hideously congested and capped at 2-3 mbits so as not to overwhelm the backhaul.

Then again there are areas with excellent rural WISPs only a few miles from Dublin and in rural fringe areas around towns Digiweb Metro often supplies a stonkingly good service. 5 miles away you might need satellite BB rubbish .

EG > http://www.net1.ie/ and http://www.digiweb.ie/home/broadband/metro/

So the answer is....it depends.

If you reliably need a 2 mbit+ uplink then be very VERY careful where you live.

bealtine

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

We know this because 4G has been tried and tested by other countries already. And the common thing with 4G is uploads tend to be great. Download can though vary from operator to operator. I've Eircom and my upload is 324kb. I will bet you now 4G would best this by miles!

Ireland, population is low so there will be lot less people connecting to 4G upgraded masts.

Well that's not the general experience with the NBS (also in lightly populated areas), some people have good service some have crap service. This is the essential problem with a mobile service, connections speeds can vary wildly so depending on it for a home broadband solution is not a good idea, one minute you are connected the next you have no connection, it simply can't be relied on. I'd hate to try and run a web dev business on 3G/4G.

I just ran some engineering tests on the local 3G mast (I'm less than 200 metres from it and it's rarely loaded) I got 1.5 Mb/s upload and a 200ms ping.
10 minutes later I did the same test and got 300kb/s. I guess some users connected...

Anyway to date most speeds "measurements" for 4G are marketing snake-oil and are carefully manipulated and stage managed to give the best possible results, we'll see what it's really like soon enough:)

Crasp

As you mention South/West Cork as a possible location, the best advice I can give you is to stick to somewhere close to a town. Stay away from small villages for the most part.


If you're looking at towns Bandon/Clonakilty/Bantry/Skibbereen/Kinsale you should expect a reliable broadband connection. Unfortunately, it will be far from what you're used to in the states, probably about 8mb.


If you're talking about villages in West Cork there is a high chance that the internet service will be much less reliable or even available.
By village I mean Lisavaird/Glandore/Timoleague/courtmacsherry etc. You might have more difficulty finding a decend connection in these areas.

Despite some duff information above, we actually have more than one city in Ireland (:rolleyes:) and most towns will have reliable broadband. More rural vilages might not.

What is true though is that outside of the cities you cannot expect 100mb-plus broadband, unfortunately.

uncle_sam_ie

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Eircom, will be pushing into rural areas with Fibre to the cabinet, but it will be mainly small towns by 2015.

I doubt it. Small towns are low on Eircoms list.

Crasp

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

It'a more like 2-8mb

Yup. Disgraceful, really, but that's for another thread.

Mark in Lucan

West Cork, excellent choice.

Whats internet speeds are you getting where you are now?

Mark in Lucan

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

We live outside a small village and 2MB is the most we will ever have. And, we are very lucky to have that. Ireland's broadband coverage is a disaster if you live outside Dublin or Cork. I'd be very carefully were decide on living.

You should be able to get better than 2Mbps.
Where in the sticks do you live?

uncle_sam_ie

Mark in Lucan wrote: »

You should be able to get better than 2Mbps.
Where in the sticks do you live?

North Cork. I'm three miles from the exchange so, it's the best I can get. There are two wireless companies here that will do 6Mb but, I don't have line of site to one of them. The other is Ripple but, they charge if you go over your limit. And, from what I'm hearing the service is patchy and they're not a good company to deal with. So, I'm stuck on a 2mb line. I guess I'm lucky though some people around were I live can't even get on DSL.

Sponge Bob

Rural SW Cork has excellent WISPs like Digitalforge and Nova Networks but one should try getting in contact to confirm where they can supply broadband ( I mean as in precisely where X marks the house on Bing maps) seeing as a single tree could leave you in Satellite broadband territory.

Don't move to a house unless you can get a wireless or DSL service.

This map shows DSL enabled exchanges and they are not enabling any more.

http://irelandoffline.org/map/

DSL is highly variable and some of the exchanges in that map are maxed at 3mbits even if the gear could do 8mbits ....no backhaul.


Only these Cork exchanges below have modern backhaul and MOST offer up to 24mbit DSL services in some cases too. But the one below will all give you a full 8mbits if you live close by.

Some of these exchanges below will also offer VDSL late this year ( I bolded them) and only the bolded ones will offer a decent upload speed over 2mbits (5-10mbit range)

BALLINCOLLIG BNC
BANDON BND
BANTRY BAY
CARRIGALINE CGI
CARRIGTWOHILL CHT
CHURCHFIELD CHF
CLONAKILTY CKY
COBH COV
CORK AIRPORT CKA
CORK CENTRAL CKC
DENNEHYS CROSS DYX
DOUGLAS DGS
FERMOY FMY
FOXHOLE FXH
GLANMIRE GMR
GLENBROOK(Passage West) GNK
HETTYFIELD HYD
KANTURK KTK
KINSALE KSL
LITTLE ISLAND LED
MACROOM MRM
MAHON MAH
MALLOW MLW
MIDLETON MDN
MITCHELSTOWN MSN
QUAKER ROAD QKR
RATHLUIRC (Charleville) RLC
RINGASKIDDY RIS
WELLINGTON ROAD WRD
YOUGHAL YHL

HTH

Cheerful Spring

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

I doubt it. Small towns are low on Eircoms list.

Trust me its happening. I live close about six miles away from one such town that is listed in phase 5 of Eircoms NGA fibre rollout.

It literally is a town in a rural location in the middle of nowhere and is about 15 miles away from Limerick city. Population is less than 2,000.

bealtine

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Trust me its happening. I live close about six miles away from one such town that listed in phase 5

It literally is a town in a rural location in the middle of nowhere and is about 15 miles away from Limerick city. Population is less than 2,000.

no rural towns were announced or scheduled by eircom...so it's unlikely

Sponge Bob

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Trust me its happening. I live close about six miles away from one such town that listed in phase 5

eircom announced 300 exchanges 6 years ago for BASIC ADSL upgrades and 15 of them are incomplete today while eircom won't even say how long more they must wait!

Phase 5 will probably never happen bar a few here and there and eircom will blame anybody but themselves as usual.

Cheerful Spring

bealtine wrote: »

no rural towns were announced or scheduled by eircom...so it's unlikely

This the link And Askeaton is the town i live only six miles from it. Its only a small town in co limerick in the middle of nowhere.


http://www.nextgenerationnetwork.ie/ngn-access

Cheerful Spring

Sponge Bob wrote: »

eircom announced 300 exchanges 6 years ago for BASIC ADSL upgrades and 15 of them are incomplete today while eircom won't even say how long more they must wait!

Phase 5 will probably never happen bar a few here and there and eircom will blame anybody but themselves as usual.

Are they not on phase 2 or 3 now?

Sponge Bob

Why are there no dates for most of the phase 5 exchanges then, eg the "To be advised." ones ???

uncle_sam_ie

Sponge Bob wrote: »

eircom announced 300 exchanges 6 years ago for BASIC ADSL upgrades and 15 of them are incomplete today while eircom won't even say how long more they must wait!

Phase 5 will probably never happen bar a few here and there and eircom will blame anybody but themselves as usual.

Is there any hope for us in rural Ireland Sponge Bob? Throw me a bone:(

Cheerful Spring

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Why are there no dates for most of the phase 5 exchanges then, eg the "To be advised." ones ???

I think Eircom are more focused on getting 1 and 2 and 3 of the phases completed.

I'm no supporter of Eircom, but they've least listed a small town * a rural town. It might take three years to get it done. But least its a small sign Eircom is willing to branch out beyond large city areas.

Sponge Bob

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

But least its a small sign Eircom is willing to branch out beyond large city areas.

Well a fig leaf held over my unmentionables would be a small sign that I cared I suppose. OK it is a small sign but is it any use. ??

Mark in Lucan

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

North Cork. I'm three miles from the exchange so, it's the best I can get. There are two wireless companies here that will do 6Mb but, I don't have line of site to one of them. The other is Ripple but, they charge if you go over your limit. And, from what I'm hearing the service is patchy and they're not a good company to deal with. So, I'm stuck on a 2mb line. I guess I'm lucky though some people around were I live can't even get on DSL.

Your neighbours must be on carriers (3 lines/carrier) and you on a copper.
Are there any '3' masts around? '3' can be reasonable if directly in sight of mast (+ external antenna with modem, B683...). Other providers may be similar. I got 15Mbps once with '3' on E5331 modem but generally 5Mbps.

YankIE

Thanks all for great info. You've all definitely confirmed that I'll need to be careful as we move further away from the cities. Some comments below...

ScumLord wrote: »

Any town near to Dublin, Cork and Galway can have decent enough internet speeds up to 100-150gb if they have UPC

On the business side- the most critical thing for me actually isn't raw bandwidth- its latency & jitter for VOIP, as well as uptime. VOIP only needs 100kb per line reserved. Massive bandwidth would be nice, but isn't a deal breaker for me (my family's personal usage consumes far more raw bandwidth than I do in my business- they may not completely agree, but less gaming & tv streaming won't hurt them...:)).

I generally get by with just 5-10Mb Down & 1-2Mb up using cable. Fairly standard where I currently live in San Diego (way short of the advertised rates). We do have extremely good uptime, and very low latency, jitter, & packet loss to the VOIP servers I currently use.

ScumLord wrote: »

Although having said all that 4G will be coming on line soon enough and Ireland is so small we should have pretty decent coverage throughout the country.

Hope to be in Ireland by end of May- so my guess is this wouldn't really be an option.

bealtine wrote: »

I just ran some engineering tests on the local 3G mast (I'm less than 200 metres from it and it's rarely loaded) I got 1.5 Mb/s upload and a 200ms ping.

I have 4G LTE on my iPhone- I just did two tests. See attached if curious... One from wifi (which uses my cable connection), the other on LTE. I'm surprised at how fast it was- anecdotally seems like its hit & miss on my phone, but I actually don't pay that much attention. (BTW- the wifi/cable test was sharing two pandora music streams & one netflix movie stream, while it was running).

niallb wrote: »

You could also get satellite broadband in addition to a low bandwidth DSL line, and use the satellite for the heavy lifting

Good suggestion- I'll keep in mind. Lower cost housing would probably easily offset the higher cost of two internet connections. I'd actually done something similar in the past (different business- one where we actually had a call center using VOIP). Voip phones were on their own LAN, using ADSL connection. All PC's were on different LAN, using cable internet. Worked well for assuring call quality- plus having a failover came in handy on several occasions.

bealtine wrote: »

If you're looking at towns Bandon/Clonakilty/Bantry/Skibbereen/Kinsale you should expect a reliable broadband connection. Unfortunately, it will be far from what you're used to in the states, probably about 8mb.

Those were some of the towns that caught my attention- so that's somewhat encouraging.

bealtine wrote: »

Some of these exchanges below will also offer VDSL late this year ( I bolded them) and only the bolded ones will offer a decent upload speed over 2mbits (5-10mbit range)

Thank you for the specifics! This helps immensely with narrowing the candidates.

Sponge Bob

YankIE wrote: »

Thanks all for great info.

Latency on DSL is cack owing to Interleaving settings. A WISP should be able to ping a selection of servers that you nominate and deliver stats.

You lose around 120ms from Ireland to west coast usa and 90ms to the east coast ANYWAY. You could easily lose another 50ms across Ireland.

A long period ping ( ping www.www.org -t ) should indicate jitter and spikes over 2 or 3 mins.

ED E

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Latency on DSL is cack owing to Interleaving settings. A WISP should be able to ping a selection of servers that you nominate and deliver stats.

You lose around 120ms from Ireland to west coast usa and 90ms to the east coast ANYWAY. You could easily lose another 50ms across Ireland.

A long period ping ( ping www.www.org -t ) should indicate jitter and spikes over 2 or 3 mins.

Was just about to post this, you'll lose a lot going transatlantic. VOIP may end up not being practical.

Sponge Bob

And eircom routes all its transatlantic traffic through Telehouse in london so whan the packet leaves west cork it travesl 500 miles plus to London transit or else to Level 3 in London and then wanders past Cork on a transatlantic cable after another 500 miles .

So having already travelled 1000 miles+ eircom now have the Voip traffic within 100 miles or so off Mizen Head south west Cork ...innit

Same waste of time on the way back too giving a compounded 1800 miles of inefficient crap routing after which its gotta get to America and across America.

Time was eircom sent the traffic to America VIA West Cork but it still had to transit their core in Dublin. Them were the days when we had a Celtic Tiger too.

YankIE

ED E wrote: »

Was just about to post this, you'll lose a lot going transatlantic. VOIP may end up not being practical.

Hopefully that won't be the case. I've been successfully using it between rural UK (accessing a london server) and USA, and call quality has been good, without too much lag on transatlantic calls.

The service I use (voip.ms) is dirt cheap, and highly configurable (with one of the best features having a local or toll-free number that rings anywhere in the world). I pay less than a cent per minute for US<->UK (ROI slightly over a cent). Won't give up on that too easily....

I should probably start researching landline-based solutions, just in case though. Particularly concerned about giving my USA clients a US number, that forwards to me in Ireland. I love how it works with VOIP- just rings through to the softphone on my laptop, wherever I am, and clients don't know any different.

Sponge Bob

Well if you launched out of rural UK then add another 800 miles (( rural Ireland to Telehouse to US MINUS rural UK to Telehouse to US) and back) and its not too bad considering London West Coast US London is 6000 miles plus and 12000 mile return the way networks align themselves.

Latency on landlines is lower, perhaps look at the Level 3 conferencing solution which is not too expensive and gives you the option of 1800 conferencing if you are not at home in ireland or VoIP conferencing if you are. US interests dial a landline number. Cogent do something similar using VoIP and you found a solution that works in London....which may come with UK Geographic number dial in whcih can be bought flat rate with telephony in Ireland as long as no call exceeds 59 minutes.

I thought you was in San Diego, try to be clearer next time.

YankIE

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I thought you was in San Diego, try to be clearer next time.

Sorry- I am in San Diego, but DW is British. Its why its relatively easy for us to move to Ireland (EEA freedom of movement rights). In fact, just picked her up at airport this evening on a return from Heathrow. We were testing out the VOIP in UK while she was visiting family...

Thanks for the suggestions on alternate telecom solutions.