UPC Broadband, would you recommend it?

TommyKnocker

Hi All

I am sick waiting for e-fiber to be rolled out to my area and also sick of the Eircom line rental charges.

I currently have a up to 25mbps offering from Eircom, which give me 12mb up and .7mb down. I don't have any issues with the broadband.

However I was thinking of giving up my UPC TV package as I do not watch TV Anything I watch I download or stream. I was also thinking to switch to UPC broadband for the faster speeds.

The thing I am not sure about is the number of complaints I see posted here and in other forums about the Horizon router. So I am wondering what the current consensus is with regards to UPC BB offerings?

Can I request the Cisco 3925 router from UPC or do I just have to accept what I am given? How do the UPC BB customers here find their BB?

Any and all feedback will be very much appreciated.


TIA

colm_mcm

Horizon is a tv box, if you're giving up tv then you don't get one.
Router wise, its the technicolor 7200 they're giving out. You can't get anything different than that at point of sale. You can buy an external wifi access point if the supplied wifi isn't sufficient.

bk

The current consensus is that UPC broadband is amazing, with fantastic performance for the vast majority of people. Easily the best broadband available in Ireland.

Why you would remain with Eircom 12mb/s when you could be getting 240mb/s from UPC is beyond me!!!

If you get broadband only, then you won't get a horizon box, just a standalone router. Even if you up to get Horizon you can still request a separate horizon box.

The wifi performance of UPC's routers isn't so great, but that is true of all ISP's, it is just less noticeable with Eircom because you can only get a max of 100mb/s with them. The deficiencies of wifi are much more noticeable when you are getting 240mb/s

With the UPC wifi you will still get 60 to 80mb/s. Much faster then what you get already. Use ethernet and you will get 240mb/s, get your own high quality wifi router and expect to get 150mb/s to 200mb/s!!

UPC is a no brainer if available to you.

Sarn

Just to add, with the Technicolor 7200 I get >100 Mb/s over wifi using the 5 GHz band and that's on the 120 Mb/s package. As pointed out this will vary depending on your setup.

Oat23

Switched from Eircom to UPC back in 2008 and I've never regretted it.

My first post on boards was in this forum about my sh*te Eircom broadband actually. The speeds were fine in the morning and went to sh*t in the evenings. They refused to admit it was a problem on their end and blamed my computers. They all had viruses apparently. I'd never go back.

They were supposed to upgrade my area to Fibre in July..then August...then September. It's January and they still haven't got round to doing it.

ThisRegard

Sarn wrote: »

Just to add, with the Technicolor 7200 I get >100 Mb/s over wifi using the 5 GHz band and that's on the 120 Mb/s package. As pointed out this will vary depending on your setup.

Did you simply select 5Ghz and away you went with no issues, and did you set the SSID as the same as your 2.4 ? I mentioned on another thread that when I switched to 5Ghz the signal strength and quality dropped drastically and speeds fell to less than 5Mb.

I have home plugs capable of 5Ghz with 40Mhz channels that I must try tomorrow to see if there's some odd interference coming from somewhere or if it's the router.

Sarn

My router has separate SSIDs for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. Only one can be active at a time (as far as I know). The 5 GHz band had to be enabled before it would work but none of my devices picked it up initially. Once I rebooted the router it appeared and my devices connected.

ThisRegard

Yeah, one broadcasting at a time as it's not capable of both simultaneously. I set both to the same for convenience sake and maybe that's part of the issue. I dunno, I'll have another mess around.

TommyKnocker

Thanks for the feedback folks, it is much appreciated. Another question or two, can I do port forwarding and bridging on the technicolor 7200? Can I http into the router like I can with my current router?

TIA

ED E

You can bridge it but its awkward to do.

There are basic port forwarding features available. And you can access it locally sure, but I dont know if it has the option to expose the management UI on the WAN(internet) side.

Tzardine

Just to throw my 2 cents in here.

I went from Eircom to UPC. I had an awful experience. Constant disconnections which UPC flat out denied were happening. Even when it happened with an engineer in my house he said it was Google that was the problem ( I kid you not)

There are plenty of threads over on the UPC forum with people having the same problem of constant disconnections which UPC fail to acknowledge.

My advice to you if you are going to go with UPC is to order it online. You then have 7 days to make sure it is working properly, if it is not you can cancel. If you need to cancel outside of the 7 days then it will cost you €200.

ED E

If you received a Cisco unit Tzardine then you arent alone, add a fan to the top and itll stabilize.

TommyKnocker

Tzardine wrote: »

Just to throw my 2 cents in here.

I went from Eircom to UPC. I had an awful experience. Constant disconnections which UPC flat out denied were happening. Even when it happened with an engineer in my house he said it was Google that was the problem ( I kid you not)

There are plenty of threads over on the UPC forum with people having the same problem of constant disconnections which UPC fail to acknowledge.

My advice to you if you are going to go with UPC is to order it online. You then have 7 days to make sure it is working properly, if it is not you can cancel. If you need to cancel outside of the 7 days then it will cost you €200.

Spoke to a few folks here in work and they all say it is good and no more problematic than any other BB they have used. I have just signed up over the phone and I have a 14 day cooling off period, so 2 weeks to see what it is like.

The Eircom BB has not caused me any issues, but it is an "Up to 25Mb" package delivering 12Mb down and .7 up. Also there is €48 line/equipment rental on the phone line and I have been waiting now for 13 months for e-fiber to be rolled out and they still could not tell me when it would be available, even though the folks at the back of me have it.

So I have given up my UPC TV package, which was costing €45 and signed up for 240Mb BB at €45/mth, so no difference in cost. But as I will be giving back the Eircom BB and phone, I will be saving myself almost €70/month.

Again, cheers all fro the feedback, it is very much appreciated.

Tzardine

ED E wrote: »

If you received a Cisco unit Tzardine then you arent alone, add a fan to the top and itll stabilize.

I had more modems that I can remember. I had the Cisco, The Technicolor and the Horizon box. None of them made any difference. Connection dropped 4-5 times and hour , sometimes more.

Calibos

Where do you keep your modem and is it near any heat source? Do you torrent a lot?

Capt'n Midnight

bk wrote: »

Why you would remain with Eircom 12mb/s when you could be getting 240mb/s from UPC is beyond me!!!

Unless you have a house alarm that needs a phone line.

Yes you can get a box that allows the alarm to talk but they aren't cheap.

Gadgetman496

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Unless you have a house alarm that needs a phone line.

Yes you can get a box that allows the alarm to talk but they aren't cheap.

You can fit a GSM unit to most house alarms which use an independent SIM costing Approx €100 and it's far better than paying eircom on an ongoing basis.

And yes, there are GSM jammers available but sure nothing's perfect :pac:

TommyKnocker

Just to update, I received my UPC modem on Tuesday, a day after ordering, so kudos to UPC for the fast dispatch. The modem is a Ubee evw3226 unit.

Only hitch in setup was that the cable that comes with the modem is "push on" and not the screw on type, while both the interface on the UPC wall socket and the modem are screw on.

Phoned UPC tech support, who answered fairly quickly, and was informed to just push on cable over both interfaces, which worked, so connected up everything and powered on the unit.

It took about 20 minutes and a number of automatic reboots before the modem was stable and ready to use. Tested the speed and I am getting 205Mbps down and 25Mbps up on wired connection on a 240Mbps link. On Wifi I get between 75Mbps and 96Mbps. Checked the signal strength around the house and have 5 solid bars on each room. Speed tests in the bedrooms was mid to high 70Mbps. This is using the 2.4Ghz SSID.

I notice a big difference between this and the old broadband with downloading or streaming, so at this point in time I am happy that I switched.

Again thanks a mill for all the feedback, it was very much appreciated.

TheDoc

would recommend BB in a heartbeat. In my parents home we moved to hem when they first launched and maintained the highest package. in all those years think we had one major issue that was sorted through really helpful technical support.

last year moved into an apartment where eircom was the only option and it was a nightmare. 8 months internet was in tatters and games could barely be played, download speeds garbage, and was being charged 67 euro a month for a 24mbps adsl line, a decade old technology.

moved house around this time last year, and the main criteria was back to upc catchment. Got a 120mb package and not one problem. the recent price increse i range up and got a package bump, doubled BB speed and phone benefeits, for the same price.

where possible, i simply will never understand why anyone would go anywhere other then upc. by far and simply put the best broadband provider in the country bar none . unless your lucky to be one of the few who live in magnet catchment on their actual infrastructure, which is very good also. But unfortunately their catchment is tiny.