ADSL, and will you keep it.

Boston

I have to say no i wont, not with a limit and not over 70 euros a month. and i have to say allot of other people on the trial must have felt the same way otherwise they wouldnt have droped the cap on this round of trials. its just not worth it, dont lock yourself into a 12 month contract, and half way along wish you hadn't. i used the internet as much as anybody else, and i know some extreme users will be allmost happy to pay that. But id rather take my chances wait another year or year and a half for someone else, rather then have my whole outlook on the net ruined by high prices. some of you may be pissed off with this as you cant even get adsl to decide weather or not you want it.

Yurmasyurda

It's about 130 euro and I think it's outrageous especially with the cap, if they drop the cap and stick it at 100 euro then maybe I would be happy with it.... maybe

dahamsta

Sorry to be picky, but it isn't really anything at the moment. Eircom have set a price, yes, but until the wholesale pricing has been settled with the ODTR, Eircom can't release their ADSL product at any price. (Except on a "trial" basis of course, but that also has to be by agreement.) It's very unlikely Eircom will be allowed to retain their current proposed wholesale price, therefore it's unlikely that the retail price will stay the same, particularly in light of the fact that the OLO's will have six weeks leeway to ready their own bitstream products.

adam

© 2002 adam's picky emails inc.

Dustaz

Well, i signed up after the last round of trials, cant live without it.

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»
and i have to say allot of other people on the trial must have felt the same way otherwise they wouldnt have droped the cap on this round of trials.

There was no cap on any trials

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Yurmasyurda
It's about 130 euro and I think it's outrageous especially with the cap, if they drop the cap and stick it at 100 euro then maybe I would be happy with it.... maybe

There will be those, particularly small businesses, that spend 200 to 300 per month on ISDN for whom even the current (proposed) price is attractive. But I think the ODTR is correct in holding out that bit longer. At the current wholesale price, believed to be EUR 75, it is likely that no OLOs will take up the offer. At this wholesale price and adding in VAT and margin, the retail price would be much the same as Eircom and so it would not sell very well. So why bother.

For Eircom, this is not a problem since they already make good profits from ISDN and dial-up. It suits Eircom, therefore, to price ADSL as high as possible. A highly successfull ADSL program need not the priority for Eircom. For them, the priority is maximising profit accross all their services and therefore they don't want to canabalise revenue from other services.

OLOs, on the other hand, will only be interested in bitstream ADSL if it is going to be successfull.

What we want is a low wholesale price. This will enable competition to emerge and a range of products, capped and uncapped to appear.

Boston

Originally posted by Dustaz
Well, i signed up after the last round of trials, cant live without it.




There was no cap on any trials

well holdon, thats misleading there was a 1 gig cap, it just wasnt inforced; this time theres none.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»


well holdon, thats misleading there was a 1 gig cap, it just wasnt inforced; this time theres none.

Is that the official line? Is there no caps on the current trial not even theoretical ones?

Bard

Sorry Niall, I hit Edit instead of quote. It's too early in the morning for me.

<blush>

adam

Boston

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Is that the official line? Is there no caps on the current trial not even theoretical ones?

yep, "is there a cap" "no"

Dustaz

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»


well holdon, thats misleading there was a 1 gig cap, it just wasnt inforced; this time theres none.

No its not misleading. The last trial is exactly the same as this one. There are no caps.
There will be (according to eircom) a 3 gig cap on the service. On the last trial, there was no cap enforced. On this trial there is no cap enforced. You cant enforce a cap on people who are not paying for it. Its a moot point.

Mountjoy Mugger

I've d/l'ed in excess of 4GB sice 5th January. if there is going to be a cap, I may well opt out after the trial. I can't see myself coughing up the proposed €25 per extra GB.

TrickyKid

to get mine moved at the moment; I'm moving house at the end of the month and to be honest I think it makes my life SO much easier that I'm perpared to pay upto a €700 a year and maybe even up to a €1,000. I suppose I'm lucky in that I might be able to get my company to pay for some.

Boston

Originally posted by Dustaz


No its not misleading. The last trial is exactly the same as this one. There are no caps.
There will be (according to eircom) a 3 gig cap on the service. On the last trial, there was no cap enforced. On this trial there is no cap enforced. You cant enforce a cap on people who are not paying for it. Its a moot point.

question were you told there was a 1 gig cap on the trials, answer yes or you should have because others were

question was i told there was no cap on this trial, yes

enforcement is a moot point, weather there was one or not isnt

viking

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»
I have to say no i wont, not with a limit and not over 70 euros a month.

I second that Boston. I have it, I love it, its gonna kill me to hand it back. But my name is Billy Hunt not Silly C*nt, and you won't see me handing over money for a so called deal* like that.

*Deal: A business transaction. An agreement, especially one that is mutually beneficial.

Boston

Originally posted by viking


I second that Boston. I have it, I love it, its gonna kill me to hand it back. But my name is Billy Hunt not Silly C*nt, and you won't see me handing over money for a so called deal* like that.

*Deal: A business transaction. An agreement, especially one that is mutually beneficial.

exactly what im saying, its been a great help, and its about 5 times better then my ntl connection before that, but i just wont pay that money. how could i go from paying about 20 euros a month to paying probably over 100 euros

Lex_Diamonds

<miley>Daylight robbery! That's all it is!</miley>

I will be handing it back too, as much as it pains me to. They can keep it at that price, and the worst thing is, even if the price gets reduced it will only be by a very small amount and will still be far more expensive than adsl in other countries.

The ODTR are willing to accept what will still be a rip-off price.

Boston

if they drop the cap, it will be a huge victory, either which way im not locking in to pay 1200 a year

dahamsta

The ODTR are willing to accept what will still be a rip-off price.

Do we really know that Lex?

adam

Dustaz

Heres my view.
I went for the deal after the last trial for 3 reasons.

1. Adsl baby, i loved it (as im sure we all do) and found the thought of 56k horrible.

2. I was pretty sure they wouldnt launch the product.

3. I was pretty certain that even if they did, they wouldnt launch it at the price they are still quoting.

I figured, Eircom have been taking me for a ride for years, why not ride them back. fnaar.

Anyway, all three points still hold. Theres no way they can launch the product at the ludicrous price they are charging. They are kidding themselves if they think its commercially viable with that price.
Its been said that they dont care if it works out or not, because ISDN and leased line makes more money BUT Esat are ready to go with thier DSL so they WILL face competition. If they have any cop on at all they will look at the ESB plan and think they better start locking broadband customers into place before that deal arrives. Faced with what the ESB thing looks like being, dsl starts to lose its pallor a little.

Boston

well the speed and ease id imagine you would get of esb would wipe adsls ass. i mean we would have one of the most modern and up todat cable networks in the world, and as its above ground it would be extremely easy(compared to underground) to upgrade. I can allso see esb offering TV over these lines

Manic

I'm perpared to pay upto a €700 a year and maybe even up to a €1,000. I suppose I'm lucky in that I might be able to get my company to pay for some.

This seems to be where Eircom want to go with ADSL. Buisnesses are soo desporate to keep their buisnesses alive that they are willing to pay anything to do just that. Eircom see this and thats why there will be ADSL available to just Buisnesses in the near future. Eircom are leeches and will bleed buisnesses dry first and then when they have no blood left to suck on they will make it available to the every day user so they can bleed them dry too.
This is a wake up call. Ignor it at your own peril. ISDN was only available to buisnessnes becaouse of the cost facter but now its called High-Speed and how many people have it and are being blead to death ?

TrickyKid

Originally posted by Manic


This seems to be where Eircom want to go with ADSL. Buisnesses are soo desporate to keep their buisnesses alive that they are willing to pay anything to do just that. Eircom see this and thats why there will be ADSL available to just Buisnesses in the near future. Eircom are leeches and will bleed buisnesses dry first and then when they have no blood left to suck on they will make it available to the every day user so they can bleed them dry too.
This is a wake up call. Ignor it at your own peril. ISDN was only available to buisnessnes becaouse of the cost facter but now its called High-Speed and how many people have it and are being blead to death ?

The thing is, I simply don't have any option. The reality is, it is worth a significant amount of money to me to have ADSL. For a start before ADSL I was paying IOL around €150 for my account, spending about €30 - €50 Euro on phone calls for Internet (1891 doens't help that much if you ever spend a day online from home!). I also have the most ridiculous up/down crap connection; not being able to connect consistently etc.

I know that Ireland Offline's principle aim is to defeat this; but I can't fail to take the opportunity ADSL provides me in terms of flexibility, service and performance; when the cost is going to be between €2-400.

It's awful but true!

At the same time, I do feel; my God what would it be like if I could just have ADSL for €40-50 per month; that'd be reasonable(ish) value and a huge upgrade over dialup.

I finally got a leased line in work last year, when the price finally became somewhat realistic. I remember the first time I looked into it (1999), crappy sales people from ESAT quoting me stupid figures like 15K per annum for 128k leased lines. This is the simple reason why it is not in the interest of Eircom & ESAT to have a reasonably low cost broadband network; All the small-medium sized businesses that they're currently screwing for leased lines could switch. If you only want email & low level web access for 5-20 people an ADSL line would be fine with a router/unix box and you could get satisfactory performance for €50-60 per month RATHER then the current €500-800 for leased line; firewall and PC....

pencil

Yeah it's sex on a stick - always on - my computer/internet usage has completely changed & still is changing - it's now actually a effortless resource to use.

I reckon that I'm still under the 3 gig limit 1 month later.

But there is no way I'll pay what they are asking for

- maximum I'd go to would be £50-£60punts a month.

Otherwise any big down loads can come home from work on a zip again & it back to dialup for me.

If eircom could stop trying to pull diamonds from their asses, people in this country would have something else to do besides going to the pub.

pete

Originally posted by pencil
I reckon that I'm still under the 3 gig limit 1 month later.

A friend of mine was the lucky recipient of a 1mbps DSL trial line. He went through 2gigs in 24 hours.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Originally posted by TrickyKid
I finally got a leased line in work last year, when the price finally became somewhat realistic. I remember the first time I looked into it (1999), crappy sales people from ESAT quoting me stupid figures like 15K per annum for 128k leased lines.

You can get a 2Mb for about 17k pa from VIA (including the tail - approx 8.5k).

Son of Blam

Just to point out something about caps:

There is no cap on the current ADSL trial.

There was no cap on the last ADSL trial (that a couple of my friends were on, Dustaz was on it too).

There was no cap on the trial before that one. (That was the trial with the video on demand, a friend of mine was on that one and I went around to play with it)

By "cap" I mean "a limit to how much stuff you can download".
(Is it just me or are Boston's posts the most confusing backwards English you've ever read?)

-Son of Blam

PiE

I have to say, it'd be VERY hard for me to give up DSL now, but anything over €60 per month and it would have to go.

What are the chances of the price issue being resolved in the next month? The eircom engineer told me that's when he expected it to be sorted out. And yes I know thats not a very good source

But I could really get used to this free broadband connection!

Some stats from a download meter since 5th January:

Online time: 5 Days 22 Hrs
Downloaded: 5.8GB
Uploaded: 1.12GB

In ten days I've almost doubled the proposed cap. Sigh.

Dustaz

One thing ive found with the download cap is that i can stay under the 3 gigs if i stay away from Kazaa. Otherwise im up to 5 or 6 gb per month.

pencil

PiE
>Some stats from a download meter since 5th January
Were are you gettin your 'download meter'?

Dustaz
Whats Kazaa? a site - i'm off to google.

TrickyKid

Originally posted by The Cigarette Smoking Man

You can get a 2Mb for about 17k pa from VIA (including the tail - approx 8.5k).

Thanks for that tip;

I'm aware that the landscape has changed significantly, but in Dublin City Centre 1999 it was rip off merchant paradise.

PiE

So true Dustaz, but according to AudioGalaxy: "sent: 181.23 MB / recv: 1,834.96 MB" so I can't blame it all on Kazaa/Morpheus

Pencil, I'm using a trial version of DU Meter

Dustaz

yeh pie. Imagine if EVERYONE on the dsl network was downloading constantly. Pings would go to crap, dl speeds would suffer.
Thats why i dont really have a huge problem with the idea of a cap. The problem is that 3 gigs is laughable. 10 gigs would be closer to the mark.

PiE

True, but I reckon I'm only downloading so much because I can. The novelty is already wearing off and the true convenience is starting to be more important than download speeds.

But I'd still like to know how do the... say... Scandinavian ISP's manage to handle thousands of people with 2mb/4mb/10mb/whatever DSL lines? To be honest I think it's the ISP's problem if they cant handle the amount of bandwidth being used. But of course in Ireland it's our problem too, cos we can't exactly switch DSL ISP's too often.

WhiteWashMan

hmm, i have adsl for 40 quid a month and no cap.

kamobe

NOT worth over €70 with a cap.
Perhaps €70 without - but it would be a reluctant exeptance, knowing I'm being ripped off, and that the situation may improve....

Yes It's nice to have high speeds (anyone else have problems uploading?? Limited to aobut 15k, and seems to drop my connection when it stays at 15 k for too long), however i can definately live without it.

Mountjoy Mugger

No probs uploading. Odd thing is, doing a ping to www.eircom.net , I get an average of about 50ms. A mate, over in Manchester on BY gets an average response time of 35ms.

Are these things that us testers should be reporting?

PiE

Well I assumed Upload was affected the same way as Download speeds, i.e. 512k/s will get you between 50-60k/s on average. Therefore an Upload speed of 128k/s will get you between 12-15k/s.

That's what I thought anyway, dunno.

kamobe

NTL have uploads of double that - yeah?
Is there a reason y DSL should be slower? - Or is just another annoying silly limit put there by eircom?

If no problems reaching 15k - just "drops" the connection after a while. Says I'm connected but i cant ping out etc.

Mountjoy Mugger

Yep - there do seem to be pauses (but not drops) in data flow - be it upstream or downstream, here as well. If I could find their support number, I'd give them a bell.

Dustaz

i havent had this problem with the connection pausing? Hmm, come to think of it, I had something similar a good while ago. I traced it to a problem with RASPPPOE - are you using that?

Afaik, NTL's cable service is also 512/128 so uploads would not be any faster.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Originally posted by Mountjoy Mugger
No probs uploading. Odd thing is, doing a ping to www.eircom.net , I get an average of about 50ms. A mate, over in Manchester on BY gets an average response time of 35ms.

Are these things that us testers should be reporting?

Post up a traceroute here, I get a 20ms ping on ISDN.

Mountjoy Mugger

Tracing route to www.eircom.net [159.134.237.56]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 50 ms 40 ms 40 ms r96-1.bas1.srl.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.96.1]
2 40 ms 50 ms 261 ms fa0-1.edge1.srl.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.73]
3 40 ms 50 ms 50 ms pos4-0.btr1.cra.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.129]
4 * 50 ms 40 ms 159.134.125.5
5 40 ms 50 ms 50 ms fa0-0.service2.cra.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.191.71]
6 40 ms 60 ms 50 ms www.eircom.net [159.134.237.56]
Trace complete.

*mutter*

Son of Blam

The reason your ping to www.eircom.net is higher than your friend's in the UK is because on Eircom's ADSL service the latency is quite high.

Everybody I know on the trial has got around the same latency, I'm not sure if a lot of you play any online games but my ping in Counterstrike when using I-Stream was around 80-100, compared to an average of 60-70 with ISDN while dialled up to Eircom. (This was to Irish servers)

This is however the only ADSL service I've ever been on so I can't really compare to to other ones but there's a good article about "latency Vs bandwidth" here: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/faq/all#694 which basically makes the point that just because your download speed is great, that doesn't mean your ping will be great also.

-Son of Blam

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Son of Blam
This is however the only ADSL service I've ever been on so I can't really compare to to other ones but there's a good article about "latency Vs bandwidth" here: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/faq/all#694 which basically makes the point that just because your download speed is great, that doesn't mean your ping will be great also.

According to that article, DSL should, in theory, have less lag than ISDN:

Ethernet .3ms
Analog Modem 100-200ms
ISDN 15-30ms
DSL/Cable 10-20ms
Satellite >100ms
DS1/T1 2-5ms

Son of Blam

Well that article is more of a guide for connections than an actual factsheet, but what *is* an actual fact is that your latency on I-Stream is probably going to be higher than your latency on an Irish ISDN connection. Not very good for people like me trying to get low pings in Counterstrike.....but better than a 56k analogue connection. (And obviously a lot better for downloading large files)

-Son of Blam

Dustaz

After a bit of tweaking, i now get pings of 40-50 on irish cs servers. I dont really trust the pings CS gives you tho.

apiou

I got my ADSL here in France over the Christmas holidays - special rates were going for the modem and I was dying with the bills for our snail pace system - so - I will never turn back - but 75 euros no way - here in France with France Telecom it costs 45 euros for unlimited usage - what is Eircom up to - it is only 1 000 kms from Paris - dont tell me that it costs nearly double the price in Ireland . it is no wonder that you are all unhappy - WITH THE PRICE.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by apiou
I got my ADSL here in France over the Christmas holidays - special rates were going for the modem and I was dying with the bills for our snail pace system - so - I will never turn back - but 75 euros no way.

Where did you hear it was as little as 75 euros. The proposed price (including VAT) is 132 euros. That is almost three times the price in France.

Boston

hey were did this come from, anyway i think hes talking about what the rest of us would agree is exceptable