Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

mr_edge_to_you

I'm with imagine 3 and a half years. I have to say it has been brilliant. I'd say have I called customer support no more than 5 times. Once was becausey speed was chopped because my credit card was never updated.

2 young kids who spend most of their free time on tablets. Sometimes have issues streaming but can be resolved with quick router reset.

I still reckon it's pricey for what is, especially when you compare it to Starling at the new rate.

HerrKapitan

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coolaboola1357

Hi All. I live in an area with poor DSL, speeds of 10MB at best and very intermittent. My heart is broken from ringing the ISP and ready to move on at this stage. Imagine is in my area and they say my local mast is not heavily subscribed. Can anyone give some recent reviews of their service and should it be ok for me ?

rodge123

Completely depends on your mast…mine can be fairy crap some evenings. Others have no issues. Mine is Cappagh, North Kildare.

You'll have to give your location and ideally which mast you’re on and hope someone here is also on it to give feedback.

coolaboola1357

What do you mean by crap, what speeds ?

I would be on the ballyhooly mast in north cork

coolaboola1357

I'm wondering if I'd be better off with starlink

rodge123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120601081#Comment_120601081

Might get 4 or 5Mb in evenings sometimes which would be useless if kids were few years older and streaming or gaming. Uploading any sorts of large files makes the network near unusable at any time of the day also

coolaboola1357

Ok but it still sounds better than what I have at present. My dsl resynches all day long and is 10mb at best when working

ItHurtsWhenIP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120601182#Comment_120601182

If you can handle the install cost, you might find it's a more reliable service with better speeds all day, every day.

coolaboola1357

Aren't there issues with latency and ping drops ?

ItHurtsWhenIP

When I first got it, ~16 months ago, there would have been regular enough little outages (1 - 3 seconds), but coverage has improved such that it doesn't happen any more. As to latency, it runs between 25-50ms. There are some on the Starlink thread that game and say it's OK, some say it's not good. I don't game, so I don't notice it. I used to notice the ~1000ms latency of geo-satellites when I had that type of connection years ago.

As you can see I get fairly consistent speeds: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120496225#Comment_120496225

Here I show what my coverage is now, which includes a link to my previous coverage: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120554094/#Comment_120554094

coolaboola1357

So would you recommend it for working from home with zoom etc

wotzgoingon

You are lucky with your 10Mb connection. I am on a 2Mb DSL connection shared with two other people. Two are heavy users(one is me) and we some how get by. Our connection does go down from time to time but for a minute or two at most. But not as frequently as you said yours does.( you with a 10 Mb connection it should be more stable than mine but maybe mine is down as much as yours but I'm more generous at saying the amount of drop outs I get)

coolaboola1357

Ours drops about ten times a day at this stage. Disconnects while on zoom meetings and when son is using iPad. It's not worth the 40 euro a month at the mo ment. At least with starlink at 65 I may have more reliability

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604495#Comment_120604495

What about a mobile connection. 4G or 5G?

coolaboola1357

Yeah but isn't starlink better than that ?

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604540#Comment_120604540

I game and use my phones hotspot to download games at far greater speeds than I would with my DSL connection. I also hook it up to my computer to watch stuff other times at far better resolutions than I would with the shared 2Mb DSL connection. That is a 4G connection and a 5G with the external antennae would be even better again.

wotzgoingon

Just to add. Surely you have a phone and can try out a hotspot just to see if you like the service. As it would be cheaper than starlink. (Do not do this if you are bill pay as they would screw you over)

coolaboola1357

We don't have 5g, just 4g and reception is poor. Would a 4g antennae be better than starlink ?

coolaboola1357

Hotspot is unusable with my 4g reception. Gets about one bar and 2mb

coolaboola1357

I dont mind paying for starlink, I just want something decent

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604616#Comment_120604616

I just assumed you would have a good 4G connection with the 10Mb DSL as to get that speed you must be near a town or village with a box to get that speed above my 2Mb. I'm far from a village along the road but as the crow flies I am two miles from two different mobile phone masts in different locations. I'm in the middle. Well if you cannot get a mobile connection then unfortunately you may have to fork up the cash for starlink.

coolaboola1357

I used have 26mb dsl but switched provider and now the line isn't working. I have been calling them countless times and 3 engineers came out to check the line but they can't fix it

I used have great broadband, and now it's rubbish . I just can't let this go on much longer as we are all going crazy and I need to WFH

ItHurtsWhenIP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604176#Comment_120604176

I run a small online training business over it. Everything turned up to the maximum quality and the link has been fairly rock solid, whether it's Google Meet, Teams, Zoom or Webex, I've not had any connection issues in the longest time now. Yes there have been outages, but not many at all and none have impacted me during the working day so far.

I used to have a very stable Fixed Wireless connection with 10 down, 5 up, which I bonded with a 4G connection to give me a little extra capacity. Before 3pm on school days I could get 25-30 down and 20 up on the two connections. After 3pm, the 4G was effectively worthless. I would have probably stayed on that setup, except the FWA provider shut down their service last year, so I had to get something that was reliable and it turns out Starlink is that.

Gonzo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604628#Comment_120604628

Go for Starlink, at least you'll know it will work. Some people have managed to get a decent service from Imagine but many haven't, Imagine is not in any way a reliable service especially after 2pm to midnight the network can be extremely congested depending on the mast your on. IF my only option was 10meg DSL, I would stay with that over Imagine, at least the DSL connection would not drop regularly.

For a reliable connection with Imagine you need to be either on a brand new mast (where quality will become worse as more customers subscribe) or in an area where there is plenty of FTTH where the majority of Imagine customers have jumped to FTTH as soon as it became available.

coolaboola1357

Yep I was uld stay on the 10mb dsl if it was eked but it goes down 20 times a day so isn't reliable

Yeah I think starlink is my next step, thanks

bennyineire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120604701#Comment_120604701

I switched to Starlink 2 months ago from Imagine, night and day.

I get between 120 to 200 mb download from Starlink even at peak times. 4 of us in the house streaming/gaming and we have had now issue. Very happy with the product. Starlink is now gone down to €65 per mount and you can now rent the equipment for €15 per month. It's a no brainer for me.

coolaboola1357

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120607308#Comment_120607308

Great- thanks for this. What kind of gaming do ye do ? My son does ipad gaming, minecraft and roblox etc would it be ok for this ?

coolaboola1357

does starlink get affected by clouds ?

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120607940#Comment_120607940

No, I'm pretty sure the signal can penetrate through clouds.