What is (or would be) the most important factor for your broadband choice

STaN

Soz if this has been done before, was just wondering...

BoneCollector

Price!
combine that with some ridiculous! Cap
(should the title be "What WOULD! be most important factor for your broadband choice!) since we dont actual have a real product to choose from

El_MUERkO

I think I'd have to go with all of the above.

I'd probably go for a 512/512 connection with a fixed IPs if I could get it, as to what I'd pay for it, if someone was offering it for 50 euros a month I'd jump on it. However I'd much rather get it from a company other than Eircom or Esat.

/hint hint UTV

theciscokid

well we all know were going to get broadband at a reasonable price , its just a matter of when..that aside,

i hate this yearly contract ****.. i mean seriously if you have a genuine reason for canceling ~ i.e. moving home or something unforseen, you have to pay them a cancellation fee/fine or what have you, good service ethics i don't think so!

Boston

Price is the single most imporatant factor, espcialy if yo uahve used broadband before. Ask anybody who has been kicked off snl if they would take esat adsl over eircom, all of them(except some freaks) would say yes, because its far cheaper. That doesnt mean its cheap though.

sceptre

(threads merged (with part of the original) - changed thread title slightly too STaN - I assume you want feedback from those who might get BB depending on various factors (and availability))

Voted price btw. Pretty much all of the list would be important to me; however unless the price drops to about half (or less) of the current price I couldn't justify getting it.

pete

Availability.

ando

2 things that's not on the list:

availability and latency

TitanFire

I'd have to say Price and Installation Cost. I think it's unfair that anyone on ISDN has to downgrade first, be charged, then install, be charged, buy equipment, be charged, then pay per month, etc.
I think a reasonable introductory installation charge woud be good. Something like what BT did. ie, the Free installation and equipment if you pre-sign up before a certain date.

sceptre

Originally posted by ando
2 things that's not on the list:

availability and latency

Added the two to the poll.

Could make the case that latency would be part of "extra features" but it's important enough to gamers that it probably warrants its own place.

strat

by speed i assume u mean bancwidth ?

anyway i put down latency - hey i like meh online gaming
bandwidth a close second

jonski

price 1
instalation cost 2
company 1&2

those 3 would be most important

i want it mainly for gaming but anything would be better than what i have now

PiE

Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price. Price.

Btw, "Availability" is a given as it has to be available before you have the choice.

DonegalMan

Originally posted by PiE
Btw, "Availability" is a given as it has to be available before you have the choice.

You're being a little pedantic here, PIE

It's important that availability is recognised as a separate issue; in my case as a business user, I would immediately sign up for the Eircom offering. Even though I agree with everything everyone else has said about its price and limitations, broadband is so important to my business that I'd have to put my feelings aside.

The major issue for me and other businesses in many areas is that broadband availability doesn't even seem to be on the agenda

Martin Harran

Lemming

The most important factor (to me anyway) is having a price (& installation) that doesn't require me to bend over the nearest table with my trousers around my ankles so eircom and their smelly little rodent can have their way.

Xithus

Availability.. At this stage I dont care how much its gonna cost me

zynaps

Price!
But I think in general a combination of all of them with some weighting towards price, speed and quality/consistency of service (latency, uptime and contention) would be what most people would be looking for if there were any realistic broadband options available to us (obviously!).

The availability of DSL is -awful-, and it's priced as if it was sex.
Satellite is expensive and has big, big latency...
Wireless looks great so far, but has obvious availability problems.
ntl's cable offering is like something you'd get in another country, ie. fast and affordable, but its availability is almost zero, and not set to increase at all.

That's it, innit?
Wasn't esb supposed to be looking into some kind of connection to the fibre ring?

zynaps

pork99

Something like what BT did. ie, the Free installation and equipment if you pre-sign up before a certain date.

yes but they were facing competitive pressure from other providers, eircom are in the postion that they are doing you such a big personal favour, you should thank them for the privilege of paying 3 times the going rate (bit incoherent not fully awake yet)

my criteria in descending order; price & installation cost, cap, speed

if there was a genuine free market in broadband here speed might move up the list

I would probably only consider getting it from Esat BT or UTVip, if eircom were offering something cheaper, faster etc I might consider them but pigs might fly

feel I have a "duty" to spend my money in a way that encourages competition

SkepticOne

Originally posted by zynaps
Wasn't esb supposed to be looking into some kind of connection to the fibre ring?

I think about 3 years ago, there was some press reporting that esb were investigating this, but there is no evidence that anything actually happened. It could just have been some guy at a desk looking through brochures at the esb. The esb are involved with regional fibre but, of course, there is no means of accessing it apart from the existing last-mile methods. You would have no way of knowing if you were using it.

JohnK

I'd have to go for price but if there is a cap on the service I would be very slow to get it.

spongebob

The ESB is installing its own National Fibre ring in a crude figure of 8 crossing in Longford. This will be complete around April.

The ESB are quite a bit away from actually getting any traffic on this ring but are the closest in Ireland to a Carriers Carrier.....meaning that they will make bandwidth available to other carriers for a wholesale price....soon. This entity is known as Fiberco.

The ESB also has Towerco which is busy installing masts in every transformer station in the country (it seems). They host Meteor almost in its entirity and host infill O2 elements and possibly even Voodoofone cells as well. Again they have no exclusivity agreements. A delightfully promiscous bunch are the ESB

The ESB, co-incidentally, is owned by the state. Their fibres and towers may be used as instruments of national policy if required, like now for example!

All our other Telcos are owned by New York and London pension and investment funds. Needless to say these people do not give a damn about Ireland save to suck money out of it as dast as possible. This is helped along nicely by the Regulator Who has 0 power aka the REGWHOP

REGWHOP could also be an instrument of state policy if it weren't such a dithery mush.

M[

STaN

Even if the throughput wasnt that great, but the ping was good, youd still buy it (depending on price?)

koneko

Latency/ping, but more important:
UNCAPPED

I wouldn't go for any capped products at the moment, tbh.

leeroybrown

Availability (At least if it was available it would give me the chance to do something about it [Galway - Shantallow exchange])

Price (& Installation) top.

Uncapped (probably wouldn't pay for a capped service)

Latency

ando

Originally posted by Muck
The ESB, co-incidentally, is owned by the state

how long will that last? I remember about 6 months ago some polititons were trying to sell the esb

SkepticOne

Originally posted by ando
how long will that last? I remember about 6 months ago some politions were trying to sell the esb

If they are clever, they will retain the distribution side under state control and only privatise the generation side. Otherwise well have the same fiasco we are currently staring at with Eircom.

pork99

If they are clever, they will retain the distribution side under state control and only privatise the generation side.

isn't a limited version of that already in place? i.e. if you have a couple of windmills in your back garden for your own use you can sell the surplus to the national grid?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by pork99
isn't a limited version of that already in place? i.e. if you have a couple of windmills in your back garden for your own use you can sell the surplus to the national grid?

Yes. But if they privatised ESB i.e., grid + generating stations, then the tendency would be for the combined company to attempt to squeze out competitors. One option would be to separate out the grid company and place it under heavy regulaton, but even here, you would have the situation of a regulator being influenced by a monopoly. The monopolist will always have greater access to information about it's own network and will use this against the regulator in disputes in the court.

spongebob

Originally posted by pork99
if you have a couple of windmills in your back garden for your own use you can sell the surplus to the national grid?

No. The ESB doesn't own those windmills but have an obligation to buy electricity from them...up to a point....

The cannot be privatised like Ardnacrusha or Ringsend could.

While I take a benign view of such part privatisation I would not be in favour of privatising the National Grid or any of the Distribution system. The consumer in the UK has failed to benefit from the the privatisation of monopoly suppliers because of the constraints at the distribution end......despite the low cost of generation there. Twould be another fiasco like Eircom to name an obvious turnip.

M

ednwireland

The ESB nationwide network is i beleive almost complete this network is only for providing backbone bandwidth to service providers so they will not be providing your average jo with any bandwidth.saw a presentation on this 18 months ago not seen or heard anything since until someone i know mentioned that this was unlit at the moment ( suprise suprise). the network was supposed to run down from letterkenny down the west coast to cork along the south coast and up the east coast linking up to bundoran or somewhere also a midlands link across the country (very bad slide)
basically a 48 core fibre wrap round existing infrastructure its actually a seperate company called ESB telecoms sorry have no more info except 6 powerpoint slides.

zynaps

Sorry if this is steering the topic further off, but I didn't want to start a new thread if it was going to be completely irrelevant and I'd look even worse, but on the subject of ESB and their efforts to set up their carrier's carrier, I was watching some programme on TV ages ago (like 7 or 8 years...), like beyond 2000 or something, which mentioned what I was thinking about when I mentioned ESB.
Basically, some school (I think, I was like.. 12) in the UK had set up their own internal network through their power supply, because apparently it gave them a large amount of bandwidth compared to using phone lines and existing network tech.

I've been having a look through yahoo for anything remotely resembling this approach, but haven't turned up a potato...
Does anyone know if I'm just wasting thread space, or is it possible a last mile thing could be researched and implemented like this?

Again, sorry if it's OT and hot air, just curious.

[afterthought]I'd certainly love the prospect of getting my broadband (or even just piddlyband) from ESB, we've never been ripped off by them. Eircom and esat, however...[/afterspam]
zynaps