Drogheda on the broadband?

I heard this was due to UPC being blocked at Balbriggan from laying further. Dundalk has an ESB fibre optic Exchange not available to residential

MugMugs wrote: »

I heard this was due to UPC being blocked at Balbriggan from laying further. Dundalk has an ESB fibre optic Exchange not available to residential

UPC haven't bothered their asses from investing further north. Blocked indeed! There's UPC cable in Navan sure and that's further north than Balbriggan and nearly as far as Drogheda.

It's a legacy issue, cable was never laid back in the 80s in Dundalk or Drogheda as aerials could pick up the then 6 channels. And when digital TV came along and it became more expensive to build networks from scratch and with the superior service offered by sky all came along, there never was much desire to roll out cable when MMDS would do the job for Chorus.

You missing a decimal place there? 12.99?

pvt wrote: »

so basically, 24 mb package is the fastest one can get in Drogheda? That's not fun...

Who provides 24 MB in Drogheda?

I tried to get 24mb with eircom on both sides of town, couldnt get it. Its not worth it anyway. You will never see 24mb, 16 is the highest ive ever seen anyone get, and thats pretty good.

sarahbro wrote: »

Possibly slightly off topic but i read somewhere that there was free wifi now available on west st and Laurence st??
It's to do with the local heroes project?
Can't find it anywhere while on town? (and i work in the middle of west st!)

That was ment to be launched the other day. It will prop take a while before its up and running.

Can anyone advise on decent BB for Grange Rath? I moved in a month ago, ordered digiweb before I moved in, still haven't got it, so im considering cancelling the order in a favour of eircom. 8mb NGB. works out about the same price i was going to pay digiweb, plus i might get better service.

Anyone got any advise?

The speed any house can get is dependant on the cables installed and the distance from the exchange. Eircoms next gen 8mb nonsense doesn't mean you will get 8mb just that you 'could' get it IF it's available which in most parts of the country it isn't.

Replacing cables and exchanges is a supremely expensive business and no one can really afford it except in city centres.

Other factors that can affect your speed are spliter you use for the phone and internet, these cancel out interference and better ones can make a difference.

As all people say, even IF you were within 1m of an exchange you'd never get 8mb all other things being perfect. It would be 6-7.5mb at best subject to interference and cabling issues.

I think the average is about 2.6mb which is what I get around Drogheda and to be honest we are lucky to get that. Further down the road your limited to 1mb or less as you enter the wilds of the country.

delly wrote: »

I have the Eircom 8mb NGB pack and it is bulletproof as the estate more or less sits on the exchange. Download speeds are around 700kb or so and I have never had slow downs. I would not touch Digiweb unless a decent fixed line option was unavailable, which in your case it should be.

Why would digiweb be no good for up here? Would eircom be worth the extra few quid?

No its DSL (phone line) with digiweb. Cant get the metro (wireles) signal up here.

Darksaga87 wrote: »

Can anyone advise on decent BB for Grange Rath? I moved in a month ago, ordered digiweb before I moved in, still haven't got it, so im considering cancelling the order in a favour of eircom. 8mb NGB. works out about the same price i was going to pay digiweb, plus i might get better service.

Anyone got any advise?

I had ADSL with UTV but decided to change to Vodafone...it has been a disaster.....If you can get ADSL with UTV take it. I was with Digiweb afew years ago in Grange Rath...it was rubbish then (2007)

I see Digiweb are doing 30mb now for €30/month...

anyone use this? any good?

What always turned me off digiweb was the caps.

The 30mb digiweb product is with Metro and the cap is lamentable.

The Digiweb in 2007 in Grange Rath were supplying broadband with wireless technology with far less spectrum (i.e. wireless broadcasting space) than Metro. And as half the estate wanted broadband, it was heavily oversubscribed and worked poorly. I suffered from the same thing in Monasterboice at the time as so much of rural south Louth couldn't get DSL at the time.

Lantus is wide of the mark. With nearly every line I've seen with attenuation under 30 (i.e. less than 2km-ish long) the 8 mbps speed is reached. Which is 7 mbps in reality thanks to extra data used up for connection purposes etc.

Also, city centres are often more expensive to work in due to age of ducting, limited capacity of ducting and it being more difficult to arrange digging on roads and so on. There's other technical reasons too. All it requires is space in the ducting to the roadside cabinets from the exchange, electricity supply, and 100 or 200 served lines in the vicinity. A big housing estate in Bettystown would qualify for that kind of service as much as one in Blanchardstown would.

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

All it requires is space in the ducting to the roadside cabinets from the exchange, electricity supply, and 100 or 200 served lines in the vicinity.

Is going all the way with a hard-line not a bit pre historic these days? I ask because I am currently with Irishbroadband (now Imagine) and I have 3mb Breeze (3mb up and down) for €49/m. No phone line needed, just a small box on the roof. I would think it's a much cheaper way to provide broadband to a region than digging up roads? Though a line of sight is needed.

Scotty # wrote: »

Is going all the way with a hard-line not a bit pre historic these days? I ask because I am currently with Irishbroadband (now Imagine) and I have 3mb Breeze (3mb up and down) for €49/m. No phone line needed, just a small box on the roof. I would think it's a much cheaper way to provide broadband to a region than digging up roads? Though a line of sight is needed.

International experience and looking at the likes of UPC in Irelandsuggests the opposite. It's far cheaper to build a cable network with 100 Mb speeds than develop a wireless service throughout dublin (for example) which could serve all possible customers with 100 mb speeds simultaneously.

Wireless service is fine in smaller villages or generally rural areas where the needed capacity isn't so high and the amount of road to be dug is comparatively much higher per house served. Also, fibre optic cabling has ever-increasing capacity while wireless has a finite amount of space for broadcasting, in competition with mobile phone use, TV and Radio, Wifi, Military, RADAR etc.

I don't think you can get breeze anymore, just their wimax stuff which doesn't work as well.

SachaJ wrote: »

Is Digiweb still the best bet for Drogheda?

I'm moving up this month from Dublin and trying to ease the loss of my UPC connection. It will be around the Cord Road so hoping it will have line of signt to the Digiweb mast.

Id say metro would be the best. Im with digiweb dsl and have a 350gb traffic limit, so if you want a high DL limit id see about that. Although it could have just been a special offer.

Right, moved up to Drogheda at the weekend so need to get Broadband sorted.

Currently I using an O2 and I'm pretty impressed with it: 8MB down and 1.6MB up but only have a cap of 5GB (on Prepay) or 15GB (on Bill pay).

Am I correct in thinking that Broadband over the phone line is is the same between companies speed wise and probably the only difference is the download limits? Eircom use the phrase "unlimited" for €55 but I'm always wary of that term. Also do Eircom block the likes of Piratebay and downloading torrents etc?

Any preferences for a fixed line provider? I'm around the Cord Road area.