CH:300 Mbits/sec i-net, 80 HD TV channels, free calls to f/mobile EU/CH and US/CDN

Impetus · 19-07-2014 07:33PM #1

Swisscom has announced an XL package which provides 300 Mbits/sec internet, 80 HD and 250 TV channels in total, and free unlimited calls to mobile and fixed numbers in Switzerland, EU and USA/Canada.

While it is expensive at 139 € a month, mainly due to Switzerland’s inflated exchange rate with the rest of the world, one wonders why isn’t a similar service available in Ireland to those who can pay for it? Together with lower tier service options at lower prices. Mobile and international calls can quickly run up a large bill for those who are on pay by use billing.

France's free.fr offers free calls to about 50 countries. http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html as well as 1 GB/sec down and 200 Mbits/sec up internet. http://www.free.fr/adsl/internet.html for around 30€. They also provide mobile phone services at €15,99 per month providing free calls to 100 countries, unlimited duration, and 20 GB of internet a month. http://mobile.free.fr Free/Iliad made €541 million profit (EBIT) for 2013… http://www.iliad.fr/en/finances/2014/Slideshow_2013_100314.pdf

While Eircom seems to have copied Swisscom’s name, that is about all they copied. Ireland has probably the cheapest international internet connectivity on the planet. There is no reason why speed should be rationed to appallingly slow levels by the bi-nopolists – UPC and eircom who control close to 100% of the market together.

UPC is quickly taking over the market, offering crap service in terms of contention ratios – ie the speed at which a web page fills the screen – among the worst in Europe. Meanwhile the incompetent telecoms regulator does nothing to create a competitive market in terms of service quality and price. They call it “preiswert” in German – value for money with respect to product quality, an unfamiliar item in most Irish marketplaces.

And Herb Hribar waits for his next mega bonus to be credited to his IBAN, while eircom delivers appalling contention ratios, especially on the VDSL2 service. It seems to me that he has no compunction about the impact of his decisions on the long term value of Ireland’s telecommunications service......

Mr Hribar and Eircom should be invited to consider their position, together with their opposite numbers at UPC & Co. And if they fail to perform, open up their monopolies to any service provider interested in using their “last km” of access to the customer.

Basically Ireland needs a single fiber platform, open to all comers (in terms of providers and customers). Just like the road outside your house. Cars, bicycles, vans etc.

http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/offers/vivo-xl.html

murphaph · 19-07-2014 08:31PM

Free phone calls are a red herring once you have broadband. You are almost always better off just using a dedicated VOIP provider who offers the rates you want to places you call. I put €10 credit on freevoipdeal.com some time last year and I still have a fiver left!

murphaph · 19-07-2014 08:35PM

Impetus wrote: »

Basically Ireland needs a single fiber platform, open to all comers (in terms of providers and customers). Just like the road outside your house. Cars, bicycles, vans etc.

I don't think CH has a single fibre network, does it? I agree that there should never need to be more than one fibre into a property but as long as there is open access then the networks can be owned by different companies AFAIC. It's actually the only way we'll get a fibre network built at all.

Impetus · 20-07-2014 07:19AM

murphaph wrote: »

Free phone calls are a red herring once you have broadband. You are almost always better off just using a dedicated VOIP provider who offers the rates you want to places you call. I put €10 credit on freevoipdeal.com some time last year and I still have a fiver left!

I use VoIP myself, but I know of no VoIP operator that provides free unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles in Europe, USA etc. I use a continental based VoIP service that charges typically about 2c per minute and has excellent call quality - as good as ISDN. I use phones with HD sound. I also use Blueface, and while OK for calls to Ireland, their call quality to many countries is like the Dept of P&T call quality on many international routes when I was a child. In addition, when you call a number in France or Spain, Blueface overrides the ITU-T standard ringing tone and one confusingly hears a British ringing tone for a French number etc.

I suspect if you often made calls to others on their mobile phone which in my case go on for 40 minutes or more each, you would not exist within your less than €10 a year budget!

Anyway the services operated by Swisscom and Free are probably VoIP based themselves.

Impetus · 20-07-2014 07:25AM

murphaph wrote: »

I don't think CH has a single fibre network, does it? I agree that there should never need to be more than one fibre into a property but as long as there is open access then the networks can be owned by different companies AFAIC. It's actually the only way we'll get a fibre network built at all.

No they don't yet. But the quality of broadband connections provided by the Swiss networks seems to me to be the best in the world. Low contention ratios etc. The Swiss are very demanding customers, and as a result virtually everything in Switzerland is of good quality - including government services, public transport etc.

One might say the reverse about the Irish consumer, and one can see that reflected in the quality of services generally - especially the way the government treats the customer!

murphaph · 20-07-2014 08:58AM

"Free" calls to mobiles if you pay 140 quid a month. Horses for courses but I wouldn't be interested in that product.

It's gonna take a few more years but Ireland is going to have superb broadband. The hard work is being done.

ED E · 20-07-2014 11:34AM

More fanboyism.

AlanS181824 · 21-07-2014 02:39AM

Pretty interesting opinions OP.

Nonoperational · 22-07-2014 04:59PM

Impetus wrote: »

Swisscom has announced an XL package which provides 300 Mbits/sec internet, 80 HD and 250 TV channels in total, and free unlimited calls to mobile and fixed numbers in Switzerland, EU and USA/Canada.

While it is expensive at 139 € a month, mainly due to Switzerland’s inflated exchange rate with the rest of the world, one wonders why isn’t a similar service available in Ireland to those who can pay for it? Together with lower tier service options at lower prices. Mobile and international calls can quickly run up a large bill for those who are on pay by use billing.

France's free.fr offers free calls to about 50 countries. http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html as well as 1 GB/sec down and 200 Mbits/sec up internet. http://www.free.fr/adsl/internet.html for around 30€. They also provide mobile phone services at €15,99 per month providing free calls to 100 countries, unlimited duration, and 20 GB of internet a month. http://mobile.free.fr Free/Iliad made €541 million profit (EBIT) for 2013… http://www.iliad.fr/en/finances/2014/Slideshow_2013_100314.pdf

While Eircom seems to have copied Swisscom’s name, that is about all they copied. Ireland has probably the cheapest international internet connectivity on the planet. There is no reason why speed should be rationed to appallingly slow levels by the bi-nopolists – UPC and eircom who control close to 100% of the market together.

UPC is quickly taking over the market, offering crap service in terms of contention ratios – ie the speed at which a web page fills the screen – among the worst in Europe. Meanwhile the incompetent telecoms regulator does nothing to create a competitive market in terms of service quality and price. They call it “preiswert” in German – value for money with respect to product quality, an unfamiliar item in most Irish marketplaces.

And Herb Hribar waits for his next mega bonus to be credited to his IBAN, while eircom delivers appalling contention ratios, especially on the VDSL2 service. It seems to me that he has no compunction about the impact of his decisions on the long term value of Ireland’s telecommunications service......

Mr Hribar and Eircom should be invited to consider their position, together with their opposite numbers at UPC & Co. And if they fail to perform, open up their monopolies to any service provider interested in using their “last km” of access to the customer.

Basically Ireland needs a single fiber platform, open to all comers (in terms of providers and customers). Just like the road outside your house. Cars, bicycles, vans etc.

http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/offers/vivo-xl.html

Am, regardless of what the contention ratio is UPC will not be slow loading web pages. 1Mbit would load heavy pages instantly.

I don't find that Swiss package at all impressive to be honest.

Impetus · 22-07-2014 05:29PM

Nonoperational wrote: »

Am, regardless of what the contention ratio is UPC will not be slow loading web pages. 1Mbit would load heavy pages instantly.

I don't find that Swiss package at all impressive to be honest.

Well I have a portable workstation and move around the place, with SSD etc. Many page fills take ages on UPC. The same pages, using the same machine are instant in CH and some other countries. They are very slow in Accor hotels in France that purport of offer free Wi-Fi. Yuk. Many people don't know how slow their PC or connection is and are just "getting by" and happy as Larry. Aside from the network fiddles and high contention ratios, PCs can become full of crud which slows everything down. I have no problem with that. That is their problem.

I do have problems with people trying to impose their second-rate standards on everybody - because they can get away with it or their customers don't know the difference.

The Swisscom package I referred to is now available with 1GB/sec down. That combined with a low contention ratio (assuming you have a good PC to process the bits and deliver them to your screen and don't use WiFi at your end) will be ultra fast.

murphaph · 22-07-2014 07:49PM

What % of the premises in CH can avail of 1Gbps?

Impetus · 23-07-2014 07:45AM

murphaph wrote: »

What % of the premises in CH can avail of 1Gbps?

I just did a quick check of the French language version of the sites and it is available in 50 towns and cities so far. Swisscom has been laying FTTP projects since 2009.

http://www.swisscom.ch/fr/about/entreprise/reseau.html

There is a web query available where you put in your street and postcode for precise information:

http://www.swisscom.ch/fr/clients-prives/internet/internet-a-domicile/fibreoptique.html

Swisscom is using partner companies to speed the local roll-out - eg http://www.vtx.ch/fr/residential/internet/fiber-turbo/installation-fibre

Competitors like Sunrise and Orange are joining infrastructure with the blessing of ComCom (regulator). Sunrise is will have fibre optic available for example, fibre to the home serving/passing 167'000 households by 2017. In population terms Geneva city is about the same population as greater Cork city and Geneva Canton (Republic of Geneva) is smaller in size and population than Cork county.

http://www.sig-fibreoptique.ch/actualite/index.lbl

If I did the search in German or Italian, I have no doubt that I would find lots more in different parts of the country - but I have work to do just now.

bk · 23-07-2014 09:49AM

Impetus wrote: »

Swisscom has announced an XL package which provides 300 Mbits/sec internet, 80 HD and 250 TV channels in total, and free unlimited calls to mobile and fixed numbers in Switzerland, EU and USA/Canada.

While it is expensive at 139 € a month, mainly due to Switzerland’s inflated exchange rate with the rest of the world, one wonders why isn’t a similar service available in Ireland to those who can pay for it? Together with lower tier service options at lower prices. Mobile and international calls can quickly run up a large bill for those who are on pay by use billing.

To be honest, I'm not particularly impressed.

For €80 from UPC you get:
- 200mb/s BB
- 100 SD 22 HD TV channels
- Unlimited Landline calls to Ireland and 400 minutes to 22 international destinations.

While yes, these are strictly speaking less then the Swisscom package above, I don't think any of the things really matter that much and I don't think if UPC actually offered the same package (they can) if anyone would actually take it up.

- Yes 200Mb/s is 100mb/s slower then swisscom, but in the real world you would notice almost no difference between these speeds. Once you go above 50mb/s the truth is there is little real world difference between speeds. BTW UPC offer 500mb/s to business customers, so they could offer it the residential customers too if they thought there was any actual demand for it.

- Less channels is down to simply less channels being available in the Irish/UK TV market. Swisscom has more channels because it is taking channels from France, Germany and Italy, as well as Switzerland, due to Swiss people speaking all these languages.

Most Irish people would have no interest in these channels, UPC offers all the English speaking channels people want and expect.

- Phone, to be honest, a total red herring. How many people use home phones any more? I don't even have a phone connected to my UPC.

€15 to Tesco Mobile for unlimited Irish mobile and landline calls (+unlimited texts and 1GB data) is much more useful to me. For international friends better to just use skype/viber.

Personally I prefer if UPC didn't bother with the phone at all and I'm glad they now offer BB + TV only bundles.

So on the whole, very expensive and nothing particularly interesting here. Ireland would be better served by cheaper "good enough" entry level packages, then expensive kitchen sink packages like this.

Also BTW I've had zero issues with page load speed with UPC. Latnecy and bandwidth all look great.

bk · 23-07-2014 09:58AM

Actually stepping back and thinking about it. In the past we have had threads saying look at how much better broadband packages are in Europe and in most cases there really were massive differences.

It just goes to show how far we have come that when you compare our best with other countries best, he differences aren't really that great and most people aren't interested in the differences.

Things are looking very bright with the Irish Broadband market.

Impetus · 23-07-2014 05:21PM

The real issue that concerns me is the monopolisation of the ISP business, especially by cable companies, as is the case in most parts of the US, where regulation seems to be negligent and corruptly driven by $$$ political contributions paid for by cable companies etc – aside from the few cities where Google and others are competing with alternative cable services to the same addresses as Comcast and Verizon.

While Switzerland does not have a single shared fiber, there is some sharing between Swisscom’s rivals, and there is outsourcing of the selling and installation to increase the level of takeup and speed up installation.

UPC is owned by the same US based cable global domination style organisation. Mr UPC recently announced the purchase of a ***** hotel in Dublin. And he or his companies have a chunk of shares in Britain’s ITV, and control cable companies in several mainland European countries, and I’ll refrain from going into his alleged interests in an online porn business. I have no problem with his willingness to spread his wings. I do have a problem with what this might inflict on the country and other European countries down the road – bring the American cable TV disease to Europe.

There is UPC “200 Mbits/sec” broadband in my parents’ house in Ireland. Plug a decent PC – eg Dell M3800 workstation with SSD, lots of memory and high speed graphics and page fill speeds suck. Giga Ethernet wired – no wifi. Take the same PC to other countries – eg Switzerland, and the internet experience is much faster surfing well served websites, even over a 50 Mbits/sec connection (than an Irish 200 Mbits/sec connection) because of sharing – ie excessive contention ratios in Ireland). There is also an eircom VDSL2+ box in the street near my parents’ house (less than 200 m away), and when I approached eircom about doing a speed test, it was only showing 40 Mbits/sec down and about 12 Mbits/sec up. Presumably because the copper loop goes around the world for sport and even though you might be able to see the VDSL2+ cabinet from your bedroom window, the copper pair between it and your home might be 500 to 800 m. Which greatly slows down performance. This issue will be repeated nationwide.

If eircom offered a low contention ratio option (and delivered it) – say 5:1, at a different price point, I and others might be very happy with that as an alternative. But one reads so many stories on boards.ie and other sites about problems with the performance of individual installations, it would take some convincing for me to try VDSL2+.
The subject of cable monopolies and lack of choice (eg open fiber shared by everybody – like NTL and eircom and their competitors) was discussed on This Week in Tech on Sunday (in the American context). Leo who has an IP TV service (www.twit.tv) and is a heavy user of the internet uses Comcast to provide bandwidth. During the show, as often happens on his programs, when someone starts criticising Comcast, the plug gets pulled on several Skype connections which bring some of the interviewees into the programme. Leaving one or two people to finish the programme.

You can download the audio of last Sunday’s show here: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/audio/twit/twit0467/twit0467.mp3
Move to 24min and 53 sec for the start of the discussion on this issue, if you wish to skip the rest of the show.

It is probably better to watch the video of the show which is here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp4/twit.cachefly.net/video/twit/twit0467/twit0467_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4

Here is a map of the Twit studio location in Petaluma, CA. The office is a one minute walk from the local telephone exchange, on a street called Telephone Alley. This is the last place one would expect problems getting adequate bandwidth. Twit is a multi million dollar business, and there is no shortage of cash to pay for bandwidth, and Leo is not stingy when it comes to paying for technology

Map:.

http://tinyurl.com/twitbrickhousetelephonealley

http://twit.tv/shows

Data bring carried by the internet is growing exponentially due to IPTV, Video on demand, online conferencing, Netflix and similar streaming services, etc etc. And more high bandwidth applications are arriving every year. You can’t base the national broadband plan on current use, because you will be always throwing out technology to replace it with something “a bit faster/higher capacity”. Which is incredibly expensive and wasteful, and delivers an inferior service overall.

I think most people who use Netflix will agree that the customer experience is excellent. Call them in California on their European Freephone number and they are very pleasant to talk to. And after each call, you get to vote on how the answering agent dealt with you, using your touch tone keypaid. It just takes one second. I wish I could say the same about the pipeline providers.

Nonoperational · 23-07-2014 10:33PM

I'm sorry, I just cannot buy that you have difficulty quickly loading webpages on a 200Mbit UPC connection. Also, I have never experienced any sort of contention on my Eircom VDSL connection. It speed tests at full speed 100% of the time.

I get that you are pushing for higher standards, but I feel at times you are not completely fair in your representation of the situation here.

bk · 24-07-2014 09:29AM

Impetus, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you are talking a load of nonsense.

Impetus wrote: »

The real issue that concerns me is the monopolisation of the ISP business, especially by cable companies, as is the case in most parts of the US, where regulation seems to be negligent and corruptly driven by $$$ political contributions paid for by cable companies etc – aside from the few cities where Google and others are competing with alternative cable services to the same addresses as Comcast and Verizon.

Yes, all true of the US, but this is Europe and very unlikely to happen.

European politicians don't seem to suffer from the same corporate driven corruption and usually make decisions that favour the consumer and competition.

The same situation doesn't exist here in Ireland.

- You have fast and affordable cable broadband from UPC, much faster and cheaper then you would get in the US.
- You now have Eircom competing very well with UPC with their very nice VDSL products. VDSL tech which for some strange reason isn't been deployed in the US.
- You have a bunch of companies competing and keeping prices low on Eircoms VDSL network.
- You will now have the ESB starting to do FTTH in a few months.

Ireland broadband market (at least in urban areas) couldn't be stronger and healthier. It really is superb at the moment.

And we have UPC to thank for a lot of this. They might be a US company, but they certainly don't act anything like Comcast and Verizon.

They bought the Chorus and NTL Ireland networks back when they were in bits. They then invested 500 million totally rebuilding those networks, with lots of fiber and high quality coax, building a superb network. They then sold ridiculously high speeds at very reasonable prices, finally given Irish people a good alternative choice from Eircom, a choice equivalent to the best in Europe.

Don't kid yourself, Eircom has only now started heavily investing in it's VDSL network because of competition from UPC.

Impetus wrote: »

There is UPC “200 Mbits/sec” broadband in my parents’ house in Ireland. Plug a decent PC – eg Dell M3800 workstation with SSD, lots of memory and high speed graphics and page fill speeds suck. Giga Ethernet wired – no wifi. Take the same PC to other countries – eg Switzerland, and the internet experience is much faster surfing well served websites, even over a 50 Mbits/sec connection (than an Irish 200 Mbits/sec connection) because of sharing – ie excessive contention ratios in Ireland). There is also an eircom VDSL2+ box in the street near my parents’ house (less than 200 m away), and when I approached eircom about doing a speed test, it was only showing 40 Mbits/sec down and about 12 Mbits/sec up. Presumably because the copper loop goes around the world for sport and even though you might be able to see the VDSL2+ cabinet from your bedroom window, the copper pair between it and your home might be 500 to 800 m. Which greatly slows down performance. This issue will be repeated nationwide.

I have UPC 120mb/s and it is super fast and buttery smooth. I've tried out UPC at numerous friends homes (I'm often the one who helps recommend it and set it up) around Dublin and Cork and again it has always been perfect.

As a mod of this forum, I can tell you that I've seen very few complaints about congestion or problems on the UPC network. In fact quiet the opposite, most people rave about it and it is easily the number 1 recommended ISP here. There really aren't any major contention rate issues with UPC.

Of course, perhaps your parents are living on a congested part of the network that needs to be upgraded. That can happen to any ISP anywhere, I'm sure it even happens in many locations on Swisscoms network. But you can't make sweeping generalisations about an entire network based on one experience. It sounds like you need to get your parents to contact UPC support and log a fault report.

The same about Eircoms VDSL, you are making sweeping generalisations again, yes perhaps your parents cable takes a circuitous route and that is unfortunate, other people will have this issue too. But certainly not most people like you are claiming! Eircom report that 70% of the first 700,000 homes connected to the VDSL network can get between 70 and 100mb/s. That is very impressive.

And the vast majority of people here on boards seem to be very happy with this new network and are getting very good, consistent speeds with zero contention.

Impetus wrote: »

If eircom offered a low contention ratio option (and delivered it) – say 5:1, at a different price point, I and others might be very happy with that as an alternative. But one reads so many stories on boards.ie and other sites about problems with the performance of individual installations, it would take some convincing for me to try VDSL2+.

What part of the network do you want 5:1? That would actually be a downgrade on what most people are currently experiencing with VDSL, which is zero contention.

I don't know what stories you are reading about VDSL. Sure there will always be some people with issues and obviously those people will write on boards much more then for the people who it works just fine.

However I have to say the feeling of most people on boards seems to be that the VDSL product is excellent, that the roll out is going very well and that most people are getting their full speed with little or no contention.

Honestly I don't think you have a realistic view of what is really happening on the ground in the Irish Broadband market. It is actually really good and healthy at the moment and improving at a shocking pace. Long may it last.

Impetus · 24-07-2014 03:21PM

bk wrote: »

What part of the network do you want 5:1? That would actually be a downgrade on what most people are currently experiencing with VDSL, which is zero contention.

I mean end to end. ie un-contented internet shared by no more than 5 end users, available as an option to VDSL2+ users at a different tariff.

Way back in the day contention on most networks used to take place near the consumer, which resulted in some cases with a few heavy users slowing down all their neighbours. I suggested that contention take place higher up in the network, so that the heavy user impact would be more diluted in a large "pond".

You reply while interesting depicts a very different story to my experience with UPC IRL. Perhaps they have a problem local to my PoS? However this issue has been pointed out to them on numerous occasions.

Your response is very much focused in today-land. It seems to me that a careful eye needs to be kept on the trend lines of cable and eircom delivered penetration.

Any success that Europe has enjoyed has been based on competitive network infrastructure sharing. The copper loop is not really suitable for this in the 21st century. Traffic on the Irish internet has increased by about 40% since July last year - based on an Inex chart (bottom) covering the past 12 months. There is no co-ax cable unbundling, and it would be difficult to see it working the Irish cable infrastructure is installed on a door to door basis.

Which makes me suspect that Ireland is heading for the same problem as the US. Cable is the only fat pipe available to consumers, and increasing numbers will move in that direction.

https://www.inex.ie/technical/stats

I suspect that there are a lot of UPC cable uses fed by the head end that feeds my parent's home, and as cable just runs from house to house (rather than a separate fiber to each house as with FTTP), the cable system is more likely to melt in heavy penetration areas first. Video buffering etc.

Impetus · 24-07-2014 03:26PM

Nonoperational wrote: »

I have never experienced any sort of contention on my Eircom VDSL connection. It speed tests at full speed 100% of the time.

What are you speedtesting against? Your ISP's own server? I'm sure that the installers are programmed to run speedtest.net pointed to their own server.

Use speedtest.net and point it at a server in France (eg free.fr) or one in California, or Sweden. There is a huge national bottleneck in any Irish ISP networks speeds that I have tried, when it comes to sites located outside of Ireland. Yet another form of insularity.

[/QUOTE]

ED E · 24-07-2014 03:42PM

Huge bottleneck there, huuuuge.

I'd normally attack the post not the poster, but you're clearly delusional Impetuous. If mainland Europe is so infinitely superior move back there. Simples. Ciao. But please stop talking utter horsecrap here.

murphaph · 24-07-2014 07:18PM

ED E wrote: »

Huge bottleneck there, huuuuge.

I'd normally attack the post not the poster, but you're clearly delusional Impetuous. If mainland Europe is so infinitely superior move back there. Simples. Ciao. But please stop talking utter horsecrap here.

Can't get those speeds from any domestic provider here in the capital of Germany! Fastest is 100Mb from Kabel Deutschland. VDSL from Deutsche Telekom tops out at 50Mb. FTTP available in a handful of towns in the country and only at 200Mb.

Impetus · 24-07-2014 07:52PM

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3645052923.png

I've got problems too, since this morning. It is normally close to 250 down and 20 up. There are builders fiddling about my building at the moment. Which may or may not explain the problem.

But the real issue for me is availability of low contention bandwidth as an option. Speed is great when downloading stuff from cachelfy or whoever, but most of the time one spends moving from internet page to page. How fast a page fills - especially when talking on the phone to someone and they ask a question.

Both of you picked the same server location - MRS. Nothing special or un-special about Marseille - but why did you both pick this? Singing from the same hymn sheet? Who supplied the same hymn sheet to both of you? Mr UPC.

murphaph · 24-07-2014 08:07PM

Impetus wrote: »

Both of you picked the same server location - MRS. Nothing special or un-special about Marseille - but why did you both pick this? Singing from the same hymn sheet? Who supplied the same hymn sheet to both of you? Mr UPC.

Both of whom?

Impetus · 24-07-2014 08:37PM

murphaph wrote: »

Both of whom?

murphaph and EDE. The stuff they posted is as irrelevant as the thing I posted in response. There is no contention ratio test online that I know of, aside from my own eyes.

Take some poor unfortunate who is offering customer service from a home office. The customer asks a question on the (usually VoIP) phone, and it takes them ages to answer the question - due largely to the slow page fill - ie high contention ratio of their internet connection (or the poor connectivity the server they are pinging enjoys). I could say the same thing about servers who still rely on spinning hard disks as opposed to SSDs. However the customer can decide to buy a server with SSD. Unlike most broadband customers who have no choice or a rubbish choice between two bi-nopalists.

I ordered a PC the other day. The Dell website didn't allow me to configure the PC with the choice of stuff I required. eg forced me to use Windows 8 rather than Windows 7 pro. So I called them. It took about four hours finding a number and exchanging emails for a configuration that should be available straight from the website. The phone number on their .ie webpage is not in service. I ended up talking with somebody in India or South Africa who I could barely understand - given the poor line and their cheap phone instrument, and the heavy accent - (cheapo broadband thanks to Dell's downmarket purchasing department).

We have the same cheapo attitude towards contention ratios in broadband. No problem offering 200 or 500 Mbits/sec (probably next year) - but the average internet page will still take its time to download. (These are headline rates). Like a 1% inflation rate claim by a government statical agency - when everybody knows that electricity, fuel, water, and even property prices are skyrocketing.

I won't put up with second rate service - and while this might sound arrogant to some people - why should you put up with second rate broadband in your home/business - wherever?

murphaph · 24-07-2014 09:19PM

I didn't post anything involving a speed test to Marseille?

jimmycrackcorm · 24-07-2014 10:27PM

I actually don't think there is such a demand for very high speed broadband and that providers are reluctant to go past a certain level as it wouldn't be profitable

for example, if you were able to get 1gb fiber to the home, weekday use would it be to the go on your laptop.

Also, once most people can watch hd videos on YouTube and get their facebook they'll baulk at the cost of an upgrade without any obvious benefits.

bk · 24-07-2014 11:18PM

Impetus wrote: »

I mean end to end. ie un-contented internet shared by no more than 5 end users, available as an option to VDSL2+ users at a different tariff.

But in my experience there is zero congestion happening in any large scale on any of the Irish ISPs.

Eircom have just upgraded their international link from 400Gb/s to 5Tb/s. UPC and Vodafone also have massive international backhaul. Any slowdown in downloads that I've seen have all been related to the server you are downloading from, which is outside the control of the ISPs.

All the usual suspects, Netflix, Youtube, RTE Player, BBC Player all seem to be working extremely well, with no buffering on both UPC and VDSL IME.

To be honest, what you seem to be thinking is happening in the Irish BB market and what is actually happening are completely opposite.

The Irish BB market is on fire. Eircom and UPC are viciously fighting it out for every customer and now you have the ESB about to enter the market and through the cat amongst the pigeons with a massive FTTH rollout.

The ESB, a company with massive infrastructure on the ground and unparalleled expertise in engineering and building infrastructure, a company which is very much engineering led and who very much thinks about long term investments.

Eircom and UPC most be shaking in their boots. The Irish BB market in the last year has become one of the most exiting and competitive markets in Europe.

In urban areas, our broadband products now surpass the norm for most people in UK and Germany!! Countries we use to trail far behind, a fantastic achievement. Stop and think about that, I never thought I'd see this happening!

And with the launch of the ESB network, we may well be on the way to the very best country in Europe!!

Two years ago I never dreamed all of this would happen!

You accuse me of being stuck in the mindset of today, well I have to say I think you are in fantasy land. What you are describing isn't what we see on the ground.

15 years ago when I joined boards.ie and IOFFL, I had a very clear idea of what a successful Irish BB market would look like:

- At least 2 (preferably 3) quality wired networks in urban areas
- At least 1 (preferably 2) quality wired networks in rural areas

With the above you end up with healthy competition with companies fighting each other.

We are almost there in urban areas, with UPC, Eircom and now even a third entry with the ESB. Yes there are still gaps etc. in even urban areas, but for the most part I believe the Irish urban BB market is pretty much fixed.

I feel the Irish urban BB market will now pretty much look after itself.

What worries me much more is the rural Irish BB market which is still far from being fixed. That is where we now need to be turning our focus on.

ED E · 25-07-2014 12:06AM

Since Cable & Wireless upgraded their submarine fibre in January their really havent been any transit issues internationally.

Impetus wrote: »

The stuff they posted is as irrelevant as the thing I posted in response. There is no contention ratio test online that I know of, aside from my own eyes.

While you cannot test and get a result "your link is congested X:X", that would be ridiculous as the internet is a mesh, you definitely see the effects of congestion(a function of contention). Slow throughput, high latency, high packet loss. Thats it. There's no hidden "quality". Its all bits.

I dont see it. I know plenty of NGA users with the same experience.

Another point is once your packets leave the endpoint of your providers provider, the Tier 1, they have no influence on its routing. They cannot guarantee a transit speed. Thats between all the T1s and the datacenters themselves.

CH:300 Mbits/sec i-net, 80 HD TV channels, free calls to f/mobile EU/CH and US/CDN

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