Irish Broadband Ripwave

jrey1981

Apparently works wirelessly without using the phone line.

Anyone knows if it is available in county Wicklow?

Macker1

Take my advice and do not consider joing up with IBB both their ripwave & breeze products are a joke. The service is crap and the customer support is non-existent.

I'm currently in the process of dumping them after 3 months of unreliable & unprofessional service.

To help make up your mind do a search for IBB threads on the forums, you will find that most if not all are complaints.

You have been warned !!!

Gazza22

If any other broadband option is available to you, then take it.

Seriously, stay away from IBB

Don't believe us? Just browse this forum, it's full of IBB horror stories

Dellarocca

Just got connected with IBB is weekend. I'm close to 3 of their masts though. No problems so far. I got Breeze. I did hear that Ripwave was crap but Breeze was ok.

Admitidly, the installation team hadn't a clue how to set my PC up to recieve it but I figured it out after about 10 minutes.

Sparky

Ive heard nothing but complaints about IBB and there ripwave service is a joke.
tbh, ibb only realy works if your a buisness customer, because residential customers have to put up with slow speeds at whatever time ibb want.

jrey1981

Yep I see that people are not happy with IBB...I wish I had an alternative

jonny68

Macker1 wrote:

Take my advice and do not consider joing up with IBB both their ripwave & breeze products are a joke. The service is crap and the customer support is non-existent.

I'm currently in the process of dumping them after 3 months of unreliable & unprofessional service.

To help make up your mind do a search for IBB threads on the forums, you will find that most if not all are complaints.

You have been warned !!!

Ill second that,i too am in the process of dumping IBB after a few months,ill go back to Esat BT or whatever it is they are called thesedays.

jrey1981

My only hope is that 60 local home users or 30 local business register their interest with Digiweb who also have a wireless offering.

Bit of a longshot though.

Might look into getting an office somwhere where it is easier to get Broadband...

Wex1

I'm on my 8th day of wireless broadband in a very rural wexford area and it's great, have no complaints yet. Line of sight, with 100mbps up and down. Installed in a few minutes. There are loads of smaller wireless providers around, you just have to find them and get a few people in your area interested, of course funding under the CGBS might help too!!! I spent most of the past year getting to this stage

beller b

Wex1 wrote:

I'm on my 8th day of wireless broadband in a very rural wexford area and it's great, have no complaints yet. Line of sight, with 100mbps up and down. Installed in a few minutes. There are loads of smaller wireless providers around, you just have to find them and get a few people in your area interested, of course funding under the CGBS might help too!!! I spent most of the past year getting to this stage

Give them time!!!!
BTW 100mbps up & down?????????? I dont think so!!!!!!!!

Wex1

beller b wrote:

Give them time!!!!

Do you mean give them time mess up my good connection, cause if you do I have a plan b - all the mobile numbers of the guys who own and have built the network.... like I said it took nearly a year but we'll see...

beller b

There are plenty of users on the broadband forum who would be very gratfull if you were to post those numbers...

amacachi

Wex1 wrote:

I'm on my 8th day of wireless broadband in a very rural wexford area and it's great, have no complaints yet. Line of sight, with 100mbps up and down. Installed in a few minutes. There are loads of smaller wireless providers around, you just have to find them and get a few people in your area interested, of course funding under the CGBS might help too!!! I spent most of the past year getting to this stage

really? id move down to wexford for a 100mpbs service! :rolleyes:

Wex1

I know, but they wouldn't be very much use to anyone outside of a few areas in rural wexford and rural waterford. My advice to those in rural/small urban areas is get personal with these tech guys...make friends, this won't really work with the bigger companies but the small ones are big on customer service. Takes a bit of looking for - but worth it...

Blaster99

May I ask what equipment you're using that gives you 100Mbps wirelessly over a longer distance? That would require some pretty pricey equipment, probably using licensed frequencies.

beller b

How friendly do you have to get with these GUYS to get speeds of 100mbps??

jrey1981

If I knew of any smaller wireless providers I might approach them, so I would be grateful for any company names. The problem is that I am just too far from my local Eircom exchange as far as I know, in a rural area, villages up and down the road are ok for Eircom, etc. so my options are very limited. I am not sure if there would be enough people who want broadband near me to make it viable.

Perhaps the first thing I should do is talk to Eircom or someone and just make sure that we absolutely cannot get one of the mainstream BB providers on this phone line.

Blaster99

Are you sure that your exchange is enabled? How far from it are you? Do you know anyone in the vicinity with ADSL or who can get it?

zuma

Wex1 wrote:

Line of sight, with 100mbps up and down.

I hope your not getting confused with the ethernet connection to your computer as it would make you look rather foolish.

Give some proof then if your sure of 100m/100m by downloading a file from heanet or something as its one of the few servers which can easily max out a 100mbit connection.

jrey1981

Blaster99 wrote:

Are you sure that your exchange is enabled? How far from it are you? Do you know anyone in the vicinity with ADSL or who can get it?

Dont think any of the neighbours have ADSL. I know my local exchange is enabled because the nearest town to me (Rathdrum) recently became broadband enabled.

We are about 2.5 miles from there and I guess that is where the nearest exchange is.

Is there a max. distance you can be from an exchange and get broadband?
If you are not sure, I will start a new thread asking this as someone must know.

beller b

zuma wrote:

I hope your not getting confused with the ethernet connection to your computer as it would make you look rather foolish.

Give some proof then if your sure of 100m/100m by downloading a file from heanet or something as its one of the few servers which can easily max out a 100mbit connection.

Either that or he is really friendly with those guys

TimTim

Its about 4.5ish km. But it all depends on the copper to your house etc...

If eircom would bite the bullet and upgrade to adsl2+ the distance and tolerance for crappy lines would increase.

Although I doubt they'll ever do it.

Blaster99

Eircom has something called the Amber Programme where they will ensure* that anyone within 5km's of an enabled exchange will get broadband no matter what the line tester says. The line test is completely and utterly useless and it's quite likely that you can get broadband. The Amber Programme is available to their resellers too, like BT Ireland. They send out engineers to sort it out, basically. The problem is that Eircom seems to deny this thing exists and I'm not sure about the resellers. BT has advertised its existence so they should bloody well know about it. So, call BT and get them on the case. It will help immensely if you can find somebody in the vicinity that either has or can have ADSL because then you say "they can have it, so why can't I?" Normally that cuts through a lot of the bull**** that you're likely to encounter. If there are any businesses in your vicinity you can look up their phone numbers and run them through the line checker, for instance.

*I don't think they remove line splitters that are sometimes installed to save Eircom money when installing mostly rural telephone lines. Broadband will not work through a line-splitter.

Sparky

id say the person who said 100mbps meant 100kB/sec as in 1mb

sisyphus

id say the person who said 100mbps meant 100kB/sec as in 1mb

Sounds like the speed of his ethernet card, but I could be wrong! As far as I know though, the quickest wireless link available at the moment is WiMax, and that maxes out at 74 Mbps. IBB use it for some corporate customers, but they normally give out 10 Mbps connections. Also, most wireless cards run at a max of 54 Mbps.

Sparky

sisyphus wrote:

Sounds like the speed of his ethernet card, but I could be wrong! As far as I know though, the quickest wireless link available at the moment is WiMax, and that maxes out at 74 Mbps. IBB use it for some corporate customers, but they normally give out 10 Mbps connections. Also, most wireless cards run at a max of 54 Mbps.

yeah id say off the NIC, but in ireland 100mbps on wireless id expect to see in 2010

jrey1981

Thanks for the info...sounds vaguely promising. I will talk to Eircom and BT tomorrow to see if I can get someone out here or something.

Blaster99 wrote:

Eircom has something called the Amber Programme where they will ensure* that anyone within 5km's of an enabled exchange will get broadband no matter what the line tester says. The line test is completely and utterly useless and it's quite likely that you can get broadband. The Amber Programme is available to their resellers too, like BT Ireland. They send out engineers to sort it out, basically. The problem is that Eircom seems to deny this thing exists and I'm not sure about the resellers. BT has advertised its existence so they should bloody well know about it. So, call BT and get them on the case. It will help immensely if you can find somebody in the vicinity that either has or can have ADSL because then you say "they can have it, so why can't I?" Normally that cuts through a lot of the bull**** that you're likely to encounter. If there are any businesses in your vicinity you can look up their phone numbers and run them through the line checker, for instance.

*I don't think they remove line splitters that are sometimes installed to save Eircom money when installing mostly rural telephone lines. Broadband will not work through a line-splitter.

jrey1981

I spoke to Eircom, BT Ireland and Digiweb today...no joy.

I have just emailed BT Ireland regarding the Amber Programme...will be talking to Clearwire tomorrow.

Blaster99

When you say "no joy", what did they say?

vibe666

i think wex1 just figured out the difference between the speed of his network card and the speed of his broadband and has slunk off somehwere.

either that or he's busy keeping 'friendly' with those engineers. 100mbit is a whole load of 'friendly'.

beller b

Question is How much friendly would you be willing to do for 100 megs up & down???????

jrey1981

Blaster99 wrote:

When you say "no joy", what did they say?

Well they did a line test and it failed. So then I asked is there no way I can get an engineer out here to rectify the situation?

The digiweb guy asked how far I was from the exchange and as I am about 4km, he said he thought I still should be able to get it...then he said well your only alternative is satellite, gave me the cost and I politely said I couldnt afford that, especially when he said it is €790 for installation.

I asked Eircom and BT if their was any plans to provide bb here and they said no and that I was either too far from exchange, the line was split, or there wasnt enough copper wire in our line. Again they seemed to be able to offer no means of altering/rectifying the situation.

A pain in the arse really.

Blaster99

I don't know what it is with Irish ISP's and their useless websites, but I don't seem to be able to link to a BT press release that promises that they will send out an engineer.

Do this: Go to btireland.com. At the bottom of the home page, click on Media Centre. On that page you'll see a press release from 1st June 2005 entitled "BT Increases Broadband Availability". Read that.

Then call up BT and don't take **** from them.

jrey1981

Only just saw your post, Blaster99. I will do that when I get a chance and report back.

I called Clearwire out of interest and they arent available in my area either...

jrey1981

Rang BT today and spoke to someone, (finally after waiting for 15mins) mentioning the press release.

All he did was pass the buck, saying I need an Eircom engineer as they own the line, etc. He has given me a no. for Eircom Wholesale to ask if they have plans to upgrade it or if they can come out at all...

Its a bloody joke really...

Blaster99

So that BT press release was just hot air then. Goodie.

Unfortunately, Eircom has never stated in a press release that they will fix lines. But there's an interview with David McRedmond of Eircom here: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4824. And he mentions the amber programme. I would say you will have a struggle to get Eircom to do this because my understanding is that their sales staff have no idea about this stuff. There have been people here who have been transferred to some kind of complaints dept after shouting down the phone and they have seemingly gotten an engineer involved.

jrey1981

Thanks for that. I had a read of that article and notice it mentions "4pc-5pc of lines from an exchange cannot receive broadband. On the line-splitting issue, he said that this was a problem that only ComReg could solve because currently Eircom has no economic incentive to replace the split line."

I mean it isnt f***ing rocket science is it Comreg? If someone places a broadband order, get the line upgraded, and just put a clause in the contract they sign with whichever provider that a) They agree to stay with that provider for a period of time such that it gives both Eircom and the provider an economic return and b) if necessary incorporating a commission for Eircom to cover their having upgraded the line in the first place, followed by c) a marketing campaign to all other customers who are able to get broadband as a result of that upgrade, with some promotional offer if necessary.

I will see how I get on with Eircom Wholesale and will complain if I have to.

Blaster99

Those 4-5% are beyond 4.5km's. The upshot of that article is that David McRedmond guarantees that anyone who's not on a pair-gained line within 4.5km's of an exchange can get broadband. And in reality, there's no reason why you couldn't get it. It's just a matter of getting Eircom off their arses, and unfortunately it's not an easy task. It shouldn't be this difficult.

jrey1981

So...Eircom Wholesale passed me on to Eircom Broadband sales who said I had to be within 3km of the exchange.

The good Mr McRedmond was obviously talking bollocks. No bb for me...

Blaster99

Did you have any luck finding somebody else in the vicinity with ADSL or with a line that passes? Try the phone numbers of nearby pubs for instance. 3km's is complete bollocks.

jrey1981

Nearest pub is The Meetings. Tried their no. and failed. Tried the neighbours numbers and failed.