Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

18-03-2016 6:46pm

morgana wrote: »

Yes it has been very good - no complains, overall speed has gone down somewhat but not so you notice. Usually around 45 - 58 with spikes of 60+. Pings to nearest out of network point around 25 - 40, in-game pings (MMO, server in Amsterdam around 47 - 69). Very steady, no noticeable packet loss.
Once or twice small outages lasting no more than a few minutes and once a massive speed drop easily fixed by a router reboot.

You should get a SamKnows box if you are interested in monitoring the connection more closely.

http://www.samknows.ie

Oafley Jones · 18-03-2016 9:43pm

Interested in this as well. I'm with Nova broadband in Whitechurch in Cork and their product is awful. Was great for the first 8 or 9 months ( 8ms, 19 down, 1 up at peak times) but it's been completely unreliable since. Currently looking at 0.4 down on my 20mb package. Some of their support staff are simply dreadful, although the last guy I dealt with was really excellent. Seems he's moved on though. It's not just us, it's a very common story from people I've spoken to in area. It'll be years before we get fibre here.

19-03-2016 5:40pm

I see under the "Legal Bit" section there is the following quote:

"A €100 activation fee applies and if your in outdoor coverage, there’s a €50 charge for the engineer installation." [sic]

*If* you are in outdoor coverage. They are hardly using a mobile/nomadic system like they did with their Wimax product?

ED E · 19-03-2016 6:03pm

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

I see under the "Legal Bit" section there is the following quote:

"A €100 activation fee applies and if your in outdoor coverage, there’s a €50 charge for the engineer installation." [sic]

*If* you are in outdoor coverage. They are hardly using a mobile/nomadic system like they did with their Wimax product?

Its TDD LTE, so very similar to a cellular systems used in the US/Asia/Aus. They're using fixed antennas for improved performance but in stationary positions.

19-03-2016 6:13pm

ED E wrote: »

Its TDD LTE, so very similar to a cellular systems used in the US/Asia/Aus. They're using fixed antennas for improved performance but in stationary positions.

Ok thanks, from the wording of the terms it could be implied that they were also doing indoor self-installs. That didn't work well with Wimax though so hopefully they have learned.

I guess they just resued the Wimax T&C's on the site.

irishfeen · 20-03-2016 10:17pm

This LTE Fibre is now available to us here in Cork, we currently have Nova but we are finding online streaming almost impossible... we have to use the tethering on the Vodafone 4G network to get us out of a hole.

Anyone know what LTE is like for streaming live events and IPTV?

digiman · 20-03-2016 10:44pm

Sounds like a solid enough alternative to FTTC but in no way should the word fibre be mentioned in any of the marketing promotion for this. I'm surprised companies like Eir and Siro aren't complaining about this. Mind you Eir are hardly innocent in such marketing terms either!!

Oafley Jones · 20-03-2016 11:21pm

irishfeen wrote: »

This LTE Fibre is now available to us here in Cork, we currently have Nova but we are finding online streaming almost impossible... we have to use the tethering on the Vodafone 4G network to get us out of a hole.

Anyone know what LTE is like for streaming live events and IPTV?

Had to give up on Netflix again tonight. Speeds completely in the toilet, Pings approaching 1000ms. I'm guessing that new radio transmitter on the Nagle mast is causing interference again. Would be nice if Nova actually engaged with their customers. You'll notice that they no longer respond to individual cases on their Facebook. Too many questions from too many angry people. They've taken the customer care approach of a major ISP ie contempt.

morgana · 21-03-2016 2:35am

Streaming is absolutely fine, we are using Netflix and streaming HD is no problem. Only thing, if you are watching a lot in HD, you need to keep the 20 gig/day limit in mind. But that's really a lot of streaming :P. Cant say I've reached it yet so i don't know what their throttling is like.

irishfeen · 21-03-2016 9:30pm

morgana wrote: »

Streaming is absolutely fine, we are using Netflix and streaming HD is no problem. Only thing, if you are watching a lot in HD, you need to keep the 20 gig/day limit in mind. But that's really a lot of streaming :P. Cant say I've reached it yet so i don't know what their throttling is like.

Very good to hear this, we left Ripplecom for Nova and tbh they are exactly the same... constant streaming is impossible with 4G remarkably better.

We have 1 month left on our Nova contract but I think we'll chance imagine - exactly the same price too!

irishfeen · 21-03-2016 9:32pm

Oafley Jones wrote: »

Had to give up on Netflix again tonight. Speeds completely in the toilet, Pings approaching 1000ms. I'm guessing that new radio transmitter on the Nagle mast is causing interference again. Would be nice if Nova actually engaged with their customers. You'll notice that they no longer respond to individual cases on their Facebook. Too many questions from too many angry people. They've taken the customer care approach of a major ISP ie contempt.

I presume you are talking about Nova? ... we are taking it from the mast in Mourneabbey and I must say we have been disappointed overall with the service.... certainly don't seem like the highest rated ISP in Ireland.

Quiksilver · 26-03-2016 7:12pm

Hi All,
I'm living out in the country and broadband has been limited to BBNet, €50 for 4Meg Down and 1 Meg Up and with a 12:1 contention ration i'm getting less than 1 Meg Down most of the time lately. We used to get 4 Meg Down and Up but they changed their plan and the quality has gotten very bad, we get a lot of micro disconnects which wrecks havoc with online games. The new imagine Fibre Connect seems too good to be true but if its half as good as they advertise its's well worth it. The 20GB daily limit is pretty great but their are times when i would need to download more than 20GB (Some steam games are pretty big) I know that BBNet only monitor traffic between 08:00 and 24:00, imagine say on their page
"If you go over your daily usage limit of 20Gb, we will simply slow your broadband speed down until midnight of that same day. At the beginning of the next day, your speed and usage will be reset."
Does anyone know if this is similar what BBNet have with their traffic management, Does imagine allow for full speed downloads between midnight and some point in the morning that does not add to your new daily cap? Would be nice to let large games download overnight.

Also has anyone tried Twitch streaming with imagine? On paper is should work pretty well.

morgana · 27-03-2016 9:49am

I am not sure how they monitor it the info they gave re the daily cap is what is on the website. I asked if they had a monitoring tool but none yet. I make do with my routers monitoring capabilities rudimentary as they are and have yet to reach it.
And I worked larger game downloads by starting them late so the majority is downloaded in the end of that days cap with the rest moving into the next days at midnight

I haven't streamed twitch myself (I could try it one night to test lol) but watching while playing and Netflix streaming in another room works fine.

Quiksilver · 28-03-2016 10:15pm

@morgana, thanks for the info, it will be interesting to know how slow it will get, i know my 4Meg download goes down to 0.3-0.5 Meg a lot. Wonder what the slowest speeds people have gotten.

morgana · 29-03-2016 10:29am

http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=ea8f1e9c6d1da05f431f9ddbbabebe23&ria=0

My sporadic testing when I remember ^^ - It has very rarely gone down below 30. Any significant drops could be weather related (heavy rain) - peak times are pretty good, time doesn't seem to make much difference. There was an outage of a few hours last week - phoned CS (apparently this plan is considered premium service) and they went through the usual trouble shooting steps (to rule out stupid mistakes, fair enough, at least the guy didn't talk down to me when he noticed I knew what he was talking about), and it was a network issue, as suspected. He didn't seem to have access to that info straight away.
Anyhow, service was back after a few hours, and, to-date, I had two calls from customer service (one on the same day shortly after service as resumed) explaining the outage (problem/work carried out at Bweeng mast) and making sure my service had resumed and I had no problems. Consider me impressed (hoping this level of service will last).

Johnboy1951 · 29-03-2016 10:53am

Just checked the site, and broadband without phone is
€40 per month ....... BUT has a 30GB monthly cap!!!!!

To get the higher cap of 20GB per day, you must take the
€60 per month package which includes phone.

Then I find I am not in a coverage area anyway

leex · 29-03-2016 11:53am

What is the phone service like? VOIP service? Guessing existing landline number can be ported etc? At 60euro pm I'd need to be getting rid of my landline and existing 2.5mbps DSL connection to make it cost effective.

ED E · 29-03-2016 1:55pm

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Just checked the site, and broadband without phone is
€40 per month ....... BUT has a 30GB monthly cap!!!!!

To get the higher cap of 20GB per day, you must take the
€60 per month package which includes phone.

Assuming they dont oversell it down the road €60/mo for such a product in less than central locations is a steal. For those lucky to be in a catchment area it really is a no brainer as it currently stands.

morgana · 29-03-2016 4:20pm

ED E wrote: »

Assuming they dont oversell it down the road €60/mo for such a product in less than central locations is a steal. For those lucky to be in a catchment area it really is a no brainer as it currently stands.

Fully agree

(obviously!).
Phone is VOIP, I got a Cork prefix (021) number, no idea if you can port your existing one. Works fine, in fairness, never had any problems with VOIP phone lines. Only disadvantage is if your net goes down so does the phone line. Doesn't bother me as we haven't had a land (VOIP) line for years and use mobiles all the way :P

fitzie79 · 29-03-2016 8:40pm

you can port across the number from landline - takes about 3 days to complete

Quiksilver · 29-03-2016 8:45pm

Dang, apparently not available at my address, They really need to put up a map showing the available areas. Saying available County Limerick had gotten my hopes up.

Anyone in West Limerick been able to get it?

irishchris · 30-03-2016 9:11am

Quiksilver wrote: »

Dang, apparently not available at my address, They really need to put up a map showing the available areas. Saying available County Limerick had gotten my hopes up.

Anyone in West Limerick been able to get it?

Yes quite annoyed myself as they rang me few weeks ago to say would be available in my area in Galway. Then I rang them last week only to find out is not available at my address.
I'm sure plenty more have done same. Hope they put map up soon

JR6 · 11-04-2016 10:09am

irishchris wrote: »

Yes quite annoyed myself as they rang me few weeks ago to say would be available in my area in Galway. Then I rang them last week only to find out is not available at my address.
I'm sure plenty more have done same. Hope they put map up soon

Where about in Galway are you? I am in the Turloughmore area and hope to get it soon. I just emailed them to see is it available in my area as I see lots of signs around here.

dashoonage · 11-04-2016 2:43pm

Quiksilver wrote: »

Hi All,
I'm living out in the country and broadband has been limited to BBNet, €50 for 4Meg Down and 1 Meg Up and with a 12:1 contention ration i'm getting less than 1 Meg Down most of the time lately. We used to get 4 Meg Down and Up but they changed their plan and the quality has gotten very bad, we get a lot of micro disconnects which wrecks havoc with online games. The new imagine Fibre Connect seems too good to be true but if its half as good as they advertise its's well worth it. The 20GB daily limit is pretty great but their are times when i would need to download more than 20GB (Some steam games are pretty big) I know that BBNet only monitor traffic between 08:00 and 24:00, imagine say on their page
"If you go over your daily usage limit of 20Gb, we will simply slow your broadband speed down until midnight of that same day. At the beginning of the next day, your speed and usage will be reset."
Does anyone know if this is similar what BBNet have with their traffic management, Does imagine allow for full speed downloads between midnight and some point in the morning that does not add to your new daily cap? Would be nice to let large games download overnight.

Also has anyone tried Twitch streaming with imagine? On paper is should work pretty well.

Do you know what areas of limerick are covered by this?

Quiksilver · 12-04-2016 3:04pm

I had talked to the support chat and they said it is only available in Kilmallock. While it might not be false advertising it is deceiving to say "available in Co.Limerick", but only if you live in the Kilmallock area.

irishchris · 13-04-2016 8:55am

JR6 wrote: »

Where about in Galway are you? I am in the Turloughmore area and hope to get it soon. I just emailed them to see is it available in my area as I see lots of signs around here.

Did you hear if yours was available? Are you in the village of turlough?

leex · 13-04-2016 4:41pm

After getting another call from them today to confirm I had coverage (11 miles from mast) I am very tempted to sign up.

How "safe" is one of these receivers on the wall of your house? Any issues with radio waves etc?

morgana · 13-04-2016 4:50pm

Did not notice any interference. Have had all sorts of receivers outside either on my roof or wall over the years and never had any issues.

Pious14 · 13-04-2016 10:00pm

Quiksilver wrote: »

Dang, apparently not available at my address, They really need to put up a map showing the available areas. Saying available County Limerick had gotten my hopes up.

Anyone in West Limerick been able to get it?

Enquired earlier in the week for patrickswell, Limerick. Not yet available, said that one mast will supply only 400. First come first serve - how will connection work with 400 working off one mast I wonder?

ED E · 13-04-2016 11:45pm

Pious14 wrote: »

Enquired earlier in the week for patrickswell, Limerick. Not yet available, said that one mast will supply only 400. First come first serve - how will connection work with 400 working off one mast I wonder?

One mast could.have 6 cells.

Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

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