EIR FTTH intro offer up - where to move to?

witnessmenow

Hello,

I have EIR FTTH 1GB/s service for the last year an in fairness it has been rock solid. But the intro offer is coming to an end next month and it starts getting pretty expensive, so I'm looking for advice for where to move to next?

I am currently using my own Mikrotik modem connected directly to the optical box thing (sorry don't know the lingo, but I'm not using Eir's modem in bridge mode) and I would like to continue to do this. Does this rule Vodafone out? I've read mixed reports online about this.

It seems like Pure might be a good option as it seems like people have successfully done similar already. I have absolutely no experience with them, but it seems other than a few porting hiccups, people seem happy enough with them? (I would be ok with a short amount of down time as we have very strong phone signal that we could work off for a few days if needed)

We have the phone service from Eir but literally do not have a phone, it was just cheaper to have it so I don't mind if the new service comes with phone or not. Also don't care about TV.

Probably don't need 1GB/s, but I'm working from home full time and we use streaming services for our main TV so I don't mind paying the little extra for it.

Thanks for any advice!

hurikane

Continue with eir? I moved to another package that was on offer this year. €29.99 per month, including eir tv and an Apple TV. BB speed was dropped to 300 megs, no issues though.

witnessmenow

hurikane wrote: »

Continue with eir? I moved to another package that was on offer this year. €29.99 per month, including eir tv and an Apple TV. BB speed was dropped to 300 megs, no issues though.

I'd be happy to stay with Eir, but I assumed any offers would be for new customers only, did you have to do anything special to get these offers?

Darando

Vodafone has FTTH offer of 30€ p/m (if you go through Onebigswitch you get an extra 5€ per month off for first 4 months -same vodafone rep calls you so a no brainer really)

https://onebigswitch.ie/offers/broadband

https://n.vodafone.ie/shop/broadband.html#linechecker

hurikane

witnessmenow wrote: »

I'd be happy to stay with Eir, but I assumed any offers would be for new customers only, did you have to do anything special to get these offers?

No I just called and asked to move to the new offer.

KeRbDoG

witnessmenow wrote: »

Hello,

I have EIR FTTH 1GB/s service for the last year an in fairness it has been rock solid. But the intro offer is coming to an end next month and it starts getting pretty expensive, so I'm looking for advice for where to move to next?

I am currently using my own Mikrotik modem connected directly to the optical box thing (sorry don't know the lingo, but I'm not using Eir's modem in bridge mode) and I would like to continue to do this. Does this rule Vodafone out? I've read mixed reports online about this.

It seems like Pure might be a good option as it seems like people have successfully done similar already. I have absolutely no experience with them, but it seems other than a few porting hiccups, people seem happy enough with them? (I would be ok with a short amount of down time as we have very strong phone signal that we could work off for a few days if needed)

We have the phone service from Eir but literally do not have a phone, it was just cheaper to have it so I don't mind if the new service comes with phone or not. Also don't care about TV.

Probably don't need 1GB/s, but I'm working from home full time and we use streaming services for our main TV so I don't mind paying the little extra for it.

Thanks for any advice!

I was with Eir on their 1GB FTTH product and like you it was a little expensive - the phone service I never really used was at least another €20 on top of the FTTH service.
I've just moved to Pure Telecom "1GB with Calls" for €40 - tbh, no real issues encountered I could have avoided (in this thread**). The €40 offer is just for the first year, but then I see myself bouncing to another provider to keep on riding the new customer offer wave

**The downtime was kinda my own doing and theirs - I asked to get moved asap and they suggested they would get their modem to me asap. They get it to me until a few day after the switch. I didn't use the Eir router anyway and I thought that as it was FTTH I'd not need to do anything on my router configuration wise. I was wrong a few settings change (PPPoE) and boom, back up and running.
I asked to keep my POTS line for the old analog phone, I think the offered to move it to VoIP but I wasn't interested. They suggested if the POTS line and FTTH had different account numbers it might be a little messy but luckily that wasn't the case for me and if it was, I'd put that down to Eir initially buggering up the FTTH account

aken

witnessmenow wrote: »

I am currently using my own Mikrotik modem connected directly to the optical box thing (sorry don't know the lingo, but I'm not using Eir's modem in bridge mode) and I would like to continue to do this. Does this rule Vodafone out? I've read mixed reports online about this.

Pretty sure you will be able to do so.
At the moment I have Vodafone 1Gb/s and using my MikroTik router connected to GPON terminal HG8010H

Tweaky

witnessmenow wrote: »

I'd be happy to stay with Eir, but I assumed any offers would be for new customers only, did you have to do anything special to get these offers?

@witnessmenow - did you manage to stay with Eir and get a better offer or did you have to move ?

hurikane

Wondering how you got on with this? Were you able to sign up for another eir package, or did I get lucky with this? My parents contract will be up in a few months so looking at options for them.

Wolftown

I recently renewed a 12 month contract for 1GB FTTH with Eir. Called them a month before the contract was up and got another 12 months at €50/month, down from €55.

If I let it auto renew it would have been up in the 70's or 80's from memory.

Just did the usual and mentioned cheaper offers with competitors and they brought it down pretty quickly.

witnessmenow

I ended up starting the porting to Pure today. €40 a month for 1GB broadband, I was currently paying Eir €85 for the same service. So €540 for the year for making a phone call. I'm just really hoping the service level is the same. As mentioned in the OP, I will be keeping the same modem so hopefully it's all seamless

Will update to let you know how it goes. Does anyone know what the cut over process is? Do you ring them to say you have the modem or whatever?

First thing I would say is the process is kind of strange, you basically either call them or request a call back and do everything over the phone, I would imagine most crowds do the majority of this digitally.

hurikane

witnessmenow wrote: »

I ended up starting the porting to Pure today. €40 a month for 1GB broadband, I was currently paying Eir €85 for the same service. So €540 for the year for making a phone call. I'm just really hoping the service level is the same. As mentioned in the OP, I will be keeping the same modem so hopefully it's all seamless

Will update to let you know how it goes. Does anyone know what the cut over process is? Do you ring them to say you have the modem or whatever?

First thing I would say is the process is kind of strange, you basically either call them or request a call back and do everything over the phone, I would imagine most crowds do the majority of this digitally.

Did you try move to another package from eir?

witnessmenow

hurikane wrote: »

Did you try move to another package from eir?

Didn't bother, I just didn't want to have to deal with ringing them and going through the retention team. Even If I did their price for the same service is more expensive so we'll see how it goes.

witnessmenow

Swapped over this morning.

They text me last week a cut over window of half a day, so in fairness they stuck to that. I did only receive my modem this morning though (from DPD and much earlier than they would normally deliver around here, so I thought that was strange).

Modem they sent was the F200 in a unlabeled box. I'm guessing its old Eir stock, it looks fairly new but even the Wifi access points are "eir-1234634". Weird that it seems like the Wifi password and the admin password of the router are the same? I'm sure you can change 1 or both but that seems like a weird choice security wise.

I've configured my Mikrotik with the applicable settings and after a bit of faffing around it's now up and running.

Settings (although read below as I can't guarantee I haven't done anything wrong):

VLAN (this was left over from the eir config):
MTU: 1500
VLAN ID: 10
attached to my wan port (ether1 in my case)

(I don't think this is needed)
PPPOE
User: puretelecom@puretel.ie
password: broandband1
attached to VLAN interface


DHCP Client
attached to to VLAN interface

Some comments:
- Fast.com is awful on it for some reason. I'm getting 47Mb I used to constantly get 1Gb when testing on it with eir, this had me really worried.
- broadbandspeedtest.ie was 450Mb, no idea what this would normally be on eir
- the speed test when you google "speed test" was 845Mb (again no idea what eir would be for this)
- Downloaded a steam game and got at least 110MB (880Mb) so the bandwidth seems to be there, so really no idea what is up with fast.com.
- After everything was configured and was working for a while to run these tests, it did stop working. I bounced the PPPOE interface and it started working again, need to keep an eye on this.

I should still be covered by cooling off periods so will put it through its paces for a day or two and see what its like

pre-submit edit: went down again, I must have something configured wrong.

Post-submit edit: I think the PPPOE part is not needed. I was wondering why I couldnt find my old eir config for pppoe, apparently it's not needed for eir and presumably pure. I have disabled the PPPOE interface and it seems to be working fine, we'll see does it stay that way!

witnessmenow

A few hours later and its been solid since so the issue of it going down was clearly related to the PPPOE being configured when it should not have been.

BArra

thought it was only eir that didnt require pppoe, ive read reports on here of ftth pure customers having to input those details in order to connect

KeRbDoG

witnessmenow wrote: »

A few hours later and its been solid since so the issue of it going down was clearly related to the PPPOE being configured when it should not have been.

BArra wrote: »

thought it was only eir that didnt require pppoe, ive read reports on here of ftth pure customers having to input those details in order to connect

Curious myself, my PureTelecom didn't come up until I configured PPPoE - do tell what your setup is

witnessmenow

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Curious myself, my PureTelecom didn't come up until I configured PPPoE - do tell what your setup is

Mikrotik RB4011 plugged directly into the ONT, I have disabled the PPPOE and just have the vlan and DHCP set up as per my other post

I haven't been sitting here testing it all day or anything but I'm pretty certain there have been no issues since I disabled the PPPOE. Is there anything else I can check? To confirm, I'm FTTH

KeRbDoG

Really interesting, I just tried my connection without PPPoE and it wouldn't gain a WAN IP. Bounced the interface and still nothing. Turned on PPPoE and within seconds a WAN IP was assigned.
Great to hear its all working, paying only 40e instead of over double that with Eir for basically the same service (albeit different routing) is grand isn't it?