Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

Tommy Lagahan

Still bucked tonight for anyone else? Games are unplayable. Will have to give them a call tomorrow.

mossie

It's dropping the connection continuously. Trying speed tests and keep getting told I have no Internet connection. Sky box the same. Been like that for a week.

homewardbound11

Central mayo and no broadband for 2 days now . Weird as when I check my usage it seems to think I’ve used 8G of broadband . I can’t even open boards.ie . What’s up imagine . ? If this carries on I’ll have to give Elon a call .

whelan2

Last 2 evenings after 7.30pm service has been really bad

mossie

They are completely overloading their connections. When I joined it was great but after 18 months it hit a slippery slope and has been getting worse ever since. I'm trying to hold out until October when NBI is due but I may have to give Starlink a go in the meantime.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766203#Comment_121766203

If anything you'd expect the connections to be reducing with NBI rolling out. It doesn't make sense that they are gaining more sales...

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766219#Comment_121766219

Imagine blitzed our area just before OpenEir fibre started to rollout to the houses without VDSL. Not a peep of advertising or promotion from them since.

The other half's homeplace which had zero broadband options got absolutely blitzed by Imagine a few months before NBI went live to order - posters, door-to-door and letterbox flyers. Similarly, not a peep now it has gone live.

Reports on here too of existing customers being offered exclusive offers to recontract for another 18 months when their area was similarly due to go live in the near future.

I'm sure that's all completely coincidental timing of course!

Stewball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766282#Comment_121766282

I almost got caught by them.

I ordered before Xmas on a €50pm, 18 month contract with half price installation offer. I put off the installation until after Xmas. They came and installed - a few days later Starlink dropped to €50pm - Luckily I was able to cancel Imagine within the 14 days cooling off period.

I have Starlink up and running now and it's excellent. I'd have been sick if I was stuck in a new 18 month contract with them.

mossie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766219#Comment_121766219

Yes, but NBI isn't available around here, Oct to Dec of this year is the word from NBI, yet so nobody leaving Imagine just yet. I'm hoping they can't add anymore at this stage.

I was on to them last week about an issue I had and they asked if I wanted to speak to someone about a new contract at reduced price but I declined.

mossie

I've just ordered Starlink to tide me over until NBI. My landline is with Imagine, can I port the number to a VOIP provider?

pizzahead77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766975#Comment_121766975

Yes, you can port it.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121766349#Comment_121766349

Yeah but isn't the starlink gear still like 500 euro... so it's 500 euro plus 50pm ?

mossie

10 euro rental per month. Don't have to buy.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121767559#Comment_121767559

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121767559#Comment_121767559

My brother purchased refurbished kit maybe 2 weeks ago, direct from starlink, €225 plus €24 shipping.

Kit in excellent condition.

Stewball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121767559#Comment_121767559

I went with the €225 refurb kit. Imagine were charging €75 for installation.

So it's basically costing me €150 more to have a better more reliable service until Fiber becomes available in my area which is estimated to be 2026/27.

Tommy Lagahan

Was on the phone to them earlier anyway, yer man was saying there is some kind of wider network issue going on since last Friday.

We did a bit of futering with my modem - taking it in and out of bridge mode & he ran some tests and said the connection to it was fine. Still getting 5%+ packet loss in games here this evening, not as much as that in a command prompt ping I've had running logging out to a file for a few hours.

Will be back on to them tomorrow, but I'd say it's something wrong on their end.

The Cush

https://m.independent.ie/business/irish/strategic-review-underway-and-job-cuts-planned-at-broadband-firm-imagine/a111642010.html

A business in decline.

ItHurtsWhenIP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121773533#Comment_121773533

😬 I think Starlink might get a surge of sign-ups if things go bad here.

Tommy Lagahan

When I was on the phone to them again yesterday they said they had tried to fix the backend issue on wednesday night but it hadnt worked. They said there was going to be another attempt to fix it last night. Yer man put a ticket in for me and said I should get a text if it was fixed, no text so far so probably no gaming tonight either lol.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121773533#Comment_121773533

Paywalled, whats the TL;DR?

ciotog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121774667#Comment_121774667

It's a disaster here (Co. Roscommon) today with the connection up and down every couple of minutes. So I guess you're definitely not getting any gaming in tonight

mossie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121776365#Comment_121776365

Same here in North Cork. My starlink can't come soon enough

dam099

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121774667#Comment_121774667

Loss of €12m on revenue of €33m in 2022, negative cashflow of nearly €9m and accumulated losses of €195m.

Looking at a restructuring plan and possible redundancies.

Got to wonder how long they can sustain that and if the investors will continue to fund losses when its prospects must be declining as NBI rolls out more and more.

rodge123

Ive been having issues with work related teams calls over the last few weeks, wonder is it related to same network wide issue some people here are reporting.

A quick ping when it happenes shows very high numbers and some dropped packets.

Its head wrecking, especially when trying to share my screen and people are seeing things 20 seconds behind time!

The thoughts of calling imagine and going through the circus of disconnect everything, bla bla bla when I know it’s nothing on my network!

Wouldn’t be too confident problems will get resolved based on the companies finances and who in their right mind would invest further into a product that is going to rapidly die over next few years with NBI. They would need a complete change in strategy to survive, like becoming a reseller on the NBI network and even then you’d imagine they will reduce resources working on the lte area.

Tommy Lagahan

Mine seems to be fixed the past 2 nights, no packet loss - but now my brother's connection is banjaxed and he lives next door!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121776677#Comment_121776677

Oof thats even worse than I thought. Cheers for the summary, you'd wonder if theyll survive NBI at all. I've been really lucky and had few issues but I'll still be immediately switching to fiber when its available.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121777736#Comment_121777736

FWIW the lads I was on to were very sound about it, the 2nd day yer man said right away it wasn't on my end. Might still be worth giving them a shout to get a ticket in their system.

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121774667#Comment_121774667

the article

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785847#Comment_121785847

Reads like a company saddled with debt to pay off its acquisition cost. Classic 'investment funds' behaviour.

The Cush

What's the future for WISPs, in competition with FTTH, Starlink, 4G/5G MBB?

Spocker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121773666#Comment_121773666

Would now be a good time to mention I have a boxed Gen1 Starlink dish for sale? If anyone is interested, just drop me a PM

ItHurtsWhenIP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121786170#Comment_121786170

I was a satellite hater for a long time, due to my previous experience with the really expensive crap of yesteryear.

I became a WISP advocate when I was able to replace the shyte satellite with the services of a fairly robust and extremely reliable FWA provider for more than a decade. I enhanced this 5/1 service by bonding a 3 4G MBB solution to it in my router, so I could get ~30/~20 mon-fri until 3pm when the local children got home from school and effectively killed the 4G for me ... but my FWA was always bang on 5/1, so I could still do work.

Then COVID rocked up and 3's 4G was effectively useless all day every day, so I paid my FWA provider to increase the service to 10/5. I did continue using the 3 router, but instead of the €30pm contract, I went with the €20 AYCE instead and just had it for whatever bit of extra bandwidth I could get from it.

My FWA provider then shut down in 2022. In fairness to them they gave everyone a year's notice and if you cancelled your account before the end, they closed it pretty much there and then, with no messing around.

So that pushed me to the only alternative available to me ... Starlink.

I am now a satellite advocate, because Starlink now is an absolute game changer.

When I got it 2 years ago, it was very expensive. €500 once off for equipment and €99pm. Because I needed good connectivity for my business, it was the only option as MBB was too unstable.

Now with the refurbed option at half price and €50pm, WISPs and MBB operators should not stand a chance against Starlink.

Don't get me wrong. When NBI comes calling to me in, hopefully, 16 months time, I will be "lighting" up my home, but I may be keeping my dishy and using it for backup connectivity, as it has been superbly reliable, with consistent speeds and service.

mossie

Hopefully this is my last morning with Imagine. My Starlink should be arriving today.