Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

Jack Killian

marno21 wrote: »

'Imagine are trying and eir are not.'

Are you for real?

Based on personal experience, absolutely.

According to their line checker, my 2.8 meg phone line is "in an advanced broadband area"; if that's what it considers "advanced", then they quite obviously aren't trying.

The English language is lovely though; because on any of my twice-yearly calls to ask them why the hell the fibre promised in 2009 still is nowhere to be seen, eircom were very trying - trying my patience! And any chance of a cut in price due to others getting far, far better service for the same subscription ? Was there fcuk.

They'll probably sort it next month now that they have competition, but they've burnt their bridges with me.

Johnboy1951

I am amazed that people in this day and age expect companies/corporations to 'care' about anything other than their 'bottom line'.
BTW, I am waiting a decade for one of the fixed wireless broadband providers covering my area, to make their service available to me.
Should I think they don't 'care' either?
Have some sense people .... commercial entities like eir, virgin, Siro, Sky etc etc do NOT care about anyone who is not within their commercial sights.

I don't understand why anyone would expect them to.
Hopefully the NBP, if it is not mucked up by competing 'almost good enough' services, will eventually provide a service to those of us outside of the 'commercial care' areas.

ItHurtsWhenIP

@Jack Killian, I meant to add that if you check this thread, you will see that @marno21 has been posting regular updates from open eir on the amount of premises they are enabling on a weekly/fortnightly basis.

The last two updates show almost 5,000 premises were enabled to get VDSL. That is why @marno21 is correctly stating that eir are delivering more than Imagine.

They're just not doing it for you (or me for that matter).

ED E

Jack Killian wrote: »

Based on personal experience, absolutely.

According to their line checker, my 2.8 meg phone line is "in an advanced broadband area"; if that's what it considers "advanced", then they quite obviously aren't trying.

And if you knew how to read the checker you'd know Advanced is a bistream class from the early 2000's when 1Mb was the basic package and 3Mb was the high end one. This immediately followed 56 & 128k dial up, so at the time it was advanced.


We've a mega low density nation with rampant ribbon development and a USO provider which was asset stripped three times. Not really surprising upgrades have been slow until recent years (when they've seriously spun up the war machine).

bk

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

The last two updates show almost 5,000 premises were enabled to get VDSL. That is why @marno21 is correctly stating that eir are delivering more than Imagine.

They're just not doing it for you (or me for that matter).

You see this time and time again on this forum. Many, if not most people don't have the ability to think outside of their own narrow little world.

If company x is not delivering service y to them today, then company x is rubbish and not doing anything!

But if you step back and look outside your own circumstances and instead look at the entire country, you can see the bigger picture.

And the bigger picture is that Eir has spent hundreds of millions if not more then a billion bringing very high speed broadband via VDSL to 2/3rds of the homes in Ireland. They achieved this in just 3 years which is incredible, non of us thought they could do this so quickly, their rollout of VDSL was one and the fastest and most impressive by any telecoms company in the world!

And they have even brought this VDSL into rural Ireland too, into places that I would think are relatively questionable financially. And now even better they have started rolling out FTTH in rural Ireland, by far the best and most suitable technology for rural areas.

For years we have been asking them to focus on fixing rural broadband rather then always focusing on the much more financially viable and easy to do urban areas that largely already have good broadband. And they are now doing exactly what we have been asking for, focusing on the most rural areas, fixing them with the best technology that will service rural Ireland for 100 years and all at the expense of their much more valuable urban customers!

And yet we have idiots complaining that Eir aren't doing anything and a rubbish technology like LTE is great!

It is such narrow minded, short term thinking that it isn't even funny and in many ways it reflects why we have such major problems with infrastructure in rural Ireland.

jcd5971

bk wrote:

And yet we have idiots complaining that Eir aren't doing anything and a rubbish technology like LTE is great!

I thought your suposed to attack the post not the poster. Mr mod

marno21

What Imagine are doing is using select high sites to provide coverage to wide areas, and it's not been fully examined yet how their infrastructure will hold up when faced with large subscriber numbers.

Imagine's rollout will do nothing for people in current broadband blackspots, it only covers people who can see X mountain. For example, in North Cork, Imagine's mast is on Bweeng Mtn, which is already host to Ripplecom FWA broadband and possibly others. Everyone who can see this mountain can already avail of 8Mbit broadband. People in valleys/blackspots who can't see Bweeng have nothing, and at present, Imagine's solution is only enabling those already with broadband to get faster broadband, doing nothing for hard to reach, blackspots who the NBP will do a good job for

bk

jcd5971 wrote: »

I thought your suposed to attack the post not the poster. Mr mod

Well first of all, I didn't attack any particular poster or even post, rather a mindset of a whole group of people.

And I suppose it reflects my frustration at the critical thinking abilities of so many people!

Eir are finally doing what we have basically being begging them to do for the last 20 years and yet you still have people giving them rubbish, when we should be cheering them on.

jcd5971

bk wrote:

Well first of all, I didn't attack any particular poster or even post, rather a mindset of a whole group of people.

calling people idiots would be addressed quickly if some one called a mod one tho.

Whatever I'm not replying to you anymore, just as your a mod doesn't make your opinion any more valid than anyone else,
And as I said before I'll happily have a conversation with an adult on the subject, but someone resorting to childish insults is a waste of my time.

Jack Killian

ED E wrote: »

And if you knew how to read the checker you'd know Advanced is a bistream class from the early 2000's when 1Mb was the basic package and 3Mb was the high end one. This immediately followed 56 & 128k dial up, so at the time it was advanced.


We've a mega low density nation with rampant ribbon development and a USO provider which was asset stripped three times. Not really surprising upgrades have been slow until recent years (when they've seriously spun up the war machine).

So 16 years ago something was called "advanced", and they haven't updated their website ?

I'm off to buy an "advanced" 256mb 486 with 20 gig hard drive..... it even has a CD player!

Jack Killian

bk wrote: »

Well first of all, I didn't attack any particular poster or even post, rather a mindset of a whole group of people.

And I suppose it reflects my frustration at the critical thinking abilities of so many people!

Eir are finally doing what we have basically being begging them to do for the last 20 years and yet you still have people giving them rubbish, when we should be cheering them on.

Two quick points.

No-one said LTE was "great", but it's better than what eircom are offering in the area - i.e. 12 year old tech.

They also haven't fobbed me off for 8 years while taking my money, while spending €16 million on a pointless rebrand.

And "finally doing what we've been asking them for 20 years" is laugable on three fronts; firstly they're not, because there's no sign of the area on their "planned" map (as I already pointed out), secondly I offered to be their rep and sign 50 people up for them if they could promise the service, but they refused the offer, and thirdly some of those who asked initially are dead by now.

9726_9726

Putting up 12 or 13 FWA sites (many of which are Towercom/former Eircom sites that Imagine/IBB were on anyway, meaning 2-3 days rigging work each) honestly does NOT compare to 100s of millions spent digging streets, running ducts, trimming hedges, replacing poles, dropping copper, installing DPs, 1000s Km of 24-core fibre, 1000s of cabinets, training fibre techs, converting exchanges to eVDSL, restructuring a broke asset-stripped company and planning and beginning the execution of a FTTH rollout the like of that has never been done in rural areas.

And if you don't have LOS to Bweeng or one of the other small few high-sites, then you're SOL still. And if you're not up next on Eir's VAST and unprecedented speedy rollout, you're SOL also. That much is understood. But to say that Eir aren't trying and Imagine are now the saviours of broadband in Ireland is just off the scale really.

rob808

9726_9726 wrote: »

Putting up 12 or 13 FWA sites (many of which are Towercom/former Eircom sites that Imagine/IBB were on anyway, meaning 2-3 days rigging work each) honestly does NOT compare to 100s of millions spent digging streets, running ducts, trimming hedges, replacing poles, dropping copper, installing DPs, 1000s Km of 24-core fibre, 1000s of cabinets, training fibre techs, converting exchanges to eVDSL, restructuring a broke asset-stripped company and planning and beginning the execution of a FTTH rollout the like of that has never been done in rural areas.

And if you don't have LOS to Bweeng or one of the other small few high-sites, then you're SOL still. And if you're not up next on Eir's VAST and unprecedented speedy rollout, you're SOL also. That much is understood. But to say that Eir aren't trying and Imagine are now the saviours of broadband in Ireland is just off the scale really.

well imagine would need 7000 sites if they won NBP and building mast can be expensive planning permission the land it going to be on and people not wanting it near there houses.I think FTTH a better solution and putting fibre on poles make it cheaper.The problem with LTE is it not future proof and I look at there website it let you get speedtest on people who have it.I test Kildare the download were ok but the upload was at 2 to 3mb.

irishchris

9726_9726 wrote: »

Putting up 12 or 13 FWA sites (many of which are Towercom/former Eircom sites that Imagine/IBB were on anyway, meaning 2-3 days rigging work each) honestly does NOT compare to 100s of millions spent digging streets, running ducts, trimming hedges, replacing poles, dropping copper, installing DPs, 1000s Km of 24-core fibre, 1000s of cabinets, training fibre techs, converting exchanges to eVDSL, restructuring a broke asset-stripped company and planning and beginning the execution of a FTTH rollout the like of that has never been done in rural areas.

And if you don't have LOS to Bweeng or one of the other small few high-sites, then you're SOL still. And if you're not up next on Eir's VAST and unprecedented speedy rollout, you're SOL also. That much is understood. But to say that Eir aren't trying and Imagine are now the saviours of broadband in Ireland is just off the scale really.

I totally agree with what you are saying in that imagine are the saviours of high speed broadband in rural island.


We should not accept what is high speed broadband now with imagine as it may be redundant in ten years time and should instead deal with our 0.5 mb speeds with eircom for the next ten years.

Or realistically we can appreciate the speed and quality of high speed broadband imagine have rolled out to our remote areas now and use it and in ten years time either stay with imagine if they upgrade their tech or join one of the competitors who will have progressed at that stage.

rob808

irishchris wrote: »

I totally agree with what you are saying in that imagine are the saviours of high speed broadband in rural island.


We should not accept what is high speed broadband now with imagine as it may be redundant in ten years time and should instead deal with our 0.5 mb speeds with eircom for the next ten years.

Or realistically we can appreciate the speed and quality of high speed broadband imagine have rolled out to our remote areas now and use it and in ten years time either stay with imagine if they upgrade their tech or join one of the competitors who will have progressed at that stage.

well LTE a decent piece of tech it offers vdsl kinda of speeds but the 20Gb day cap kinda limit it in a way you could use vdsl that has monthly caps.I think imagine were smart rolling out LTE now taking as many NBP customers before It even starts meaning they be stuck on a contract.

9726_9726

irishchris wrote: »

I totally agree with what you are saying in that imagine are the saviours of high speed broadband in rural island.

I was saying the opposite, that they are NOT.

Jack Killian

rob808 wrote: »

well LTE a decent piece of tech it offers vdsl kinda of speeds but the 20Gb day cap kinda limit it in a way you could use vdsl that has monthly caps.I think imagine were smart rolling out LTE now taking as many NBP customers before It even starts meaning they be stuck on a contract.

Compared to Vodafone's 30gig a MONTH cap it's on another planet!

They also don't charge extra or cut you off; they just throttle it until midnight.

So you have a fixed bill.

Try the same on Vodafone 4G - which was the only option when eircom gave up on the area - and you'd be looking at bills of €500 a month!

jd

Jack Killian wrote:

I can see city buildings from my house, so it's not like it'd be a major undertaking to implement something, but eircom gave me the two fingers.

If you are some distance from an exchange(going by your download speed you are) in a rural or semi rural area, it's not a trivial undertaking. It's either vdsl cabinets deployed or ftth rolled out to your area to increase your speed. For example St Margarets near Dublin airport is quite some distance from the Finglas exchange, but will go straight to ftth afair.

Jack Killian

jd wrote: »

If you are some distance from an exchange(going by your download speed you are) in a rural or semi rural area, it's not a trivial undertaking. It's either vdsl cabinets deployed or ftth rolled out to your area to increase your speed. For example St Margarets near Dublin airport is quite some distance from the Finglas exchange, but will go straight to ftth afair.

All well and good, but then why promise it as "coming soon" every few months for 8 years ?

(Never said it was trivial BTW, I said "not major"; it lies somewhere between the two.)

Just tell me straight out that my custom wasn't a priority and let me find someone willing to provide the service.

Or even lower my bill to reflect that others were getting better service for the same price I was paying.

Sky do this last bit; old-school broadband is €5 per month compared to the €10 per month for the fibre stuff - and it's not even their fault as they are subletting from the aforementioned eircom.

But no - they wanted the same amount regardless, and it took me a while to cop on to the fact that as long as I kept paying them the same amount they had no incentive to change their ways, as it wouldn't affect their bottom line.

But again - why keep promising it ? That was my biggest issue, that they kept stringing me along.

jd

Jack Killian wrote: »

All well and good, but then why promise it as "coming soon" every few months for 8 years ?

So eir were promising you increased speeds from 2008? They only announced their NGA deployment in July 2011, and I'm not aware of anything else that could push a line synching at 3meg using adsl to a higher speed. I tend to be wary of anything a sales rep says on a phone anyway. Which exchange are you btw?

Chef-1st

Brilliant!
I love the way this thread has gone from just people wanting to know if Imagine LTE is any good, or what masts are up and running, to an Eircom VS Imagine war.
No one gives a f**k. The simple fact is, those of us who are sick of waiting on a fibre line or even an upgraded exchange, are making do with slow inferior broadband a long long time. If we can avail of imagine's fast wireless broadband in the mean time, then yes, we sure as hell will.

Fair play to them. Fair play to Mr. Bolger in seeing a market, shedding the crap he was once serving out with Breeze and WiMax, and going all in for this LTE. So what if it's not future proof. My neighbours over the road are holding out on eircom to run the fibre line the past few years, because eircom keep saying "it's on the wasy soon", "it's on the way soon" and are still struggling with their 0.8M speed for 45euro a month.
How dare they even contemplate moving to Imagine in the mean time!

jd

I think the problem with it not being "future proof" is that it may have implications for the NBP. We may see enet/siro/eir/whoever delayed in the roll out. BTW I fully expect legal challenges no matter who (+) wins the contracts

km79

Chef-1st wrote: »

Brilliant!
I love the way this thread has gone from just people wanting to know if Imagine LTE is any good, or what masts are up and running, to an Eircom VS Imagine war.
No one gives a f**k. The simple fact is, those of us who are sick of waiting on a fibre line or even an upgraded exchange, are making do with slow inferior broadband a long long time. If we can avail of imagine's fast wireless broadband in the mean time, then yes, we sure as hell will.

Fair play to them. Fair play to Mr. Bolger in seeing a market, shedding the crap he was once serving out with Breeze and WiMax, and going all in for this LTE. So what if it's not future proof. My neighbours over the road are holding out on eircom to run the fibre line the past few years, because eircom keep saying "it's on the wasy soon", "it's on the way soon" and are still struggling with their 0.8M speed for 45euro a month.
How dare they even contemplate moving to Imagine in the mean time!

Exactly
I was part of the last NBS
Got an unreliable slow service that is still now my only option except it's more expensive and no technical support !
I have NO INTENTION of waiting another 4:5 years in the hope it will be better next time
I'll be all over this LTE as soon as it's in my area ! And it's so very very close to me already

Jack Killian

jd wrote: »

So eir were promising you increased speeds from 2008? They only announced their NGA deployment in July 2011, and I'm not aware of anything else that could push a line synching at 3meg using adsl to a higher speed. I tend to be wary of anything a sales rep says on a phone anyway. Which exchange are you btw?

In 2008 the line was 1.5 and we eventually managed to squeeze 2.2 out of it after months of contacting them.

So you're partially right - the promise of eFibre "coming soon" has "only" been the last 5 years.

Exchange is Crossagalla. 100s of houses around me within a 2 mile radius, so not a village it by no means isolated or unviable, with all of them screaming for decent speeds and desperate to get decent service.

Absolutely no visible effort or action whatsoever in terms of cabs being installed to shorten the 3 mile run, despite other areas further out and all around appearing on their map at regular intervals.

Now that Imagine have announced their arrival, the eircom vans have been seen regularly over the past 2 months.

jcd5971

Someone made a point as an insult in a previous post, but on reflection he was correct.

People do have a self interest based outlook in these matters, Eir may be spending billions on upgrading the network. Kudos to them, and I get that the likes of imagine are not future proof.

However places like kerry and clare have had to deal with speeds of at most 2mb download for over 10 years, and even giving Eir all the benefits of any doubt, we're still several years from fibre.

Now the point has been made imagine is not the first fixed wireless operator to come along, and this is Also true

The difference appears to be in speed they have promised to deliver a high speed and not oversaturate a mast so speed plummets..... And so far they are staying true to this.

If they continue to do this, alot of people will indeed see them as the saviours of irish broadband.

People are giving regular speedtests here of over 60mb down speed. Moving from less than 2mb to that is game changing.

Again is it fibre.. No
Is it furureproof.. No
Is it ideal.....no
We all know this but that increase in speed is moving from pony and trap to a car.

Sorry for length of post, but trying to be positive and giving a reasonable point of view.

Happy to hear anyone's view who disagree as well, just let's try to keep the your stupid talk out of this thread, its been a very friendly atmosphere in here let's not derail it into bickering and name calling

Chef-1st

By the way, I know some of the followers to this thread, like Chris, are actually interested in how LTE is performing, not like the 'eircom master race followers' we've seen bickering. Including mods getting their knickers in a twist yesterday saying how us plebs are all narrow minded idiots.

Well it's going brilliant. Been running tests on Thursday and Friday, mornings and all evenings, in between work.
Averaging 80-90M down, 7 up. Latency averaging 20ms.
The first night was ropey. But Thursday I was getting a steady 90M except for the odd 30M drop.
Yesterday, it never dipped below 60M in the evening. Mostly getting 85M.
Test were mostly on wired, bar the odd few times I was testing the wifi in various parts of the house.
I did get a few low dip moments, at weird times, like 6.45am I was getting 1.5meg. But then after 7am it was back up to 90meg.
Which I mentioned on the phone to tech support when they gave me a courtesy call yesterday to see how I was getting on. I'll let him know again when he calls me Monday to see how the speed monitoring went over this weekend. He seemed genuinely interested in making sure the service was performing well.

Here's a test I just did now...
http://www.speedtest.net/result/5395635727.png

Jack Killian

jcd5971 wrote: »

Someone made a point as an insult in a previous post, but on reflection he was correct.

People do have a self interest based outlook in these matters, Eir may be spending billions on upgrading the network. Kudos to them, and I get that the likes of imagine are not future proof.

However places like kerry and clare have had to deal with speeds of at most 2mb download for over 10 years, and even giving Eir all the benefits of any doubt, we're still several years from fibre.

Now the point has been made imagine is not the first fixed wireless operator to come along, and this is Also true

The difference appears to be in speed they have promised to deliver a high speed and not oversaturate a mast so speed plummets..... And so far they are staying true to this.

If they continue to do this, alot of people will indeed see them as the saviours of irish broadband.

People are giving regular speedtests here of over 60mb down speed. Moving from less than 2mb to that is game changing.

Again is it fibre.. No
Is it furureproof.. No
Is it ideal.....no
We all know this but that increase in speed is moving from pony and trap to a car.

Sorry for length of post, but trying to be positive and giving a reasonable point of view.

Happy to hear anyone's view who disagree as well, just let's try to keep the your stupid talk out of this thread, its been a very friendly atmosphere in here let's not derail it into bickering and name calling

Exactly! I don't know who exactly reworded "thank **** for decent broadband at last, with a company that won't oversaturated a mast and won't even install if it's under 30mb" into "ye dopes are saying they're the saviours of broadband" but if you go from pony & trap to car, there's nothing stopping you upgrading later.

Similarly, imagine won't install if the signal is under 30; when they test here they may find it's 28, and if so I'll be gutted, because I'd love to have that! 20mb is plenty for one person.

If I ever had a partner and/or kids in the house then I'd need more.

But you don't go from pony & trap to a people carrier; you can get that later IF you need it.

jd

Jack Killian wrote: »

Absolutely no visible effort or action whatsoever in terms of cabs being installed to shorten the 3 mile run, despite other areas further out and all around appearing on their map at regular intervals.

Now that Imagine have announced their arrival, the eircom vans have been seen regularly over the past 2 months.

Not familiar enough with the area, but I looked at open eir map and there are blue lines coming from the exchange out beyond the motorway. I'd surmise that the lines all go back directly to the exchange, and/or split off in small bundles that make serving with a vdsl cab not feasible, so that is why they are going directly to ftth. I think they announced some parts of Crossagalla for ftth by end of year early March http://www.openeir.ie/news/First-rural-FTTH-locations-announced/

I didn't realise this was actually the imagine lte thread when I first reposnded, so I won't derail it any further.

jcd5971

jd wrote:

I didn't realise this was actually the imagine lte thread when I first reposnded, so I won't derail it any further.

No debate is good, a good discussion is always welcome, the reason a few of us got a bit narky is mods coming into a imagine thread calling us all stupid.

Maybe saying Eir are doing nothing is incorrect but point that out, don't be rude about it, and in a fairly chilled thread as well, just seemed the wrong tone to take and did derail the thread a bit.

Jack Killian

jd wrote: »

Not familiar enough with the area, but I looked at open eir map and there are blue lines coming from the exchange out beyond the motorway. I'd surmise that the lines all go back directly to the exchange, and/or split off in small bundles that make serving with a vdsl cab not feasible, so that is why they are going directly to ftth. I think they announced some parts of Crossagalla for ftth by end of year early March http://www.openeir.ie/news/First-rural-FTTH-locations-announced/

I didn't realise this was actually the imagine lte thread when I first reposnded, so I won't derail it any further.

Don't want to give any personal stuff away but there's a massive 2 mile circumference circle completely blank on the map.

I'm in that.

No blue green or anything - just the map's own route.

Ironically the backbone to Dooradoyle runs straight through it