North West Electronics/BlueBox

schizo1014 · 15-07-2017 1:32pm

I heard recently Bluebox are supposed to be putting a mast up on Barnesmore Gap, not far from me altogether but hopefully it speeds it up. Its been hit and miss with them for speeds lately with any thing between 1/2 mb to 5/6mb at times.

fooker! · 15-07-2017 5:29pm

Antoninus wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback Fkr. What side of Culdaff are you?

We would need the service more during the day - if any is available.

I called Bluebox today and was told by a customer rep that there might be a signal in the Tremone Bay area, but they would need to arrange a line of site check, for which there would be no charge / no commitment, once I completed and signed an application form. After I received the application form, I called back and spoke to another customer rep to express my concerns that the "application form" was a binding 12 month contract, and was then told there is zero chance of a signal in that area!

I then called Beacon Broadband but they said they will not be rolling out their service to that area until the end of the summer.

Im towards the Gleneely side, it might be ok for you if you only need it during the daytime!, I'm going to get Beacon Broadband in as soon as its available here to tide me over till fibre is comes at the end of next year!

NIMAN wrote: »

I'm waiting patiently on Beacon to arrive ... I had Bluebox out a few years back to do an install and the only transmitter they had line of sight to was full up.

I dodged a bullet there.

Waiting patiently on Beacon here too!, they seem to have great reviews so far!

NIMAN · 15-07-2017 5:55pm

Hopefully they will keep up the standard of service.

Will count for nothing if they take on too many customers and their speeds drop off.

cushte · 03-09-2017 10:30pm

made the switch to beacon in april. constantly getting 8-10 mbps, on the 10 mbps plan.
It went down twice for about 1/2 hour in that 4 month. But heres the thing, they email you to let you know that its going down for maintenance! 1 time it was at 9 am for about 20 minutes. the other was after 1 am so it didnt bother me. so far so good.

fooker! · 03-09-2017 11:32pm

cushte wrote: »

made the switch to beacon in april. constantly getting 8-10 mbps, on the 10 mbps plan.
It went down twice for about 1/2 hour in that 4 month. But heres the thing, they email you to let you know that its going down for maintenance! 1 time it was at 9 am for about 20 minutes. the other was after 1 am so it didnt bother me. so far so good.

The reviews I've seen so far have been great!, bit slow with the roll out though unfortunately!:(

schizo1014 · 26-09-2017 5:51pm

Anyone elses Bluebox acting up the last few days? I'm on the mast in Barnes here and it's been off most of the day

thebo · 02-11-2017 8:22pm

Seems bluebox (blue lightning) are finally doing some upgrades. Getting decent consistent 8mb speeds for once.

Has anyone tried any IPTV streaming services with bluebox? How does it fair with HD services.

Wondering do they throttle on usage or anything?

Beacon getting good rave reviews maybe that's why bluebox had to step up their game.

fooker! · 11-11-2017 9:38pm

yeah I've seen downloads speeds are better but ping etc.. is stil pretty high!
Beacon sounds good so far but they are really slow at expanding their coverage!

fooker! · 24-11-2017 7:35pm

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42079941

I wonder will we see advertised speeds changed in may

schizo1014 · 25-11-2017 12:22pm

fooker! wrote: »

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42079941

I wonder will we see advertised speeds changed in may

Rather they just gave us actual advertised speeds. How have your speeds been recently? Mine have been inconsistent to say they least.

fooker! · 02-12-2017 5:17pm

Yeah same here. CRAP!

MuddyDog · 26-01-2018 1:30pm

In a valley in Lurgy Letterkenny and wondering what the best WiMax broadband option is? Bluebox, Imagine and Beacon are the only ones I've heard of (Beacon being the best for the price you pay it seems). Unless anyone else can point me in another direction?

thebo · 18-12-2018 11:12pm

Have speeds improved much with this company since?

Hamill92 · 18-12-2018 11:23pm

thebo wrote: »

Have speeds improved much with this company since?

No.

I’m a ex customer of Bluebox and their customer service is shocking.

Contact the company call Beacon.
Currently paying £25 for 10MB and that’s enough for us. Speed is never under 5Mb

TireeTerror · 18-12-2018 11:31pm

Beacon are very expensive for the speeds you get and absolutely are affected by congestion like every other service. They are better than Bluebox. 5G will be with us next year. Vodafone are trialling it in the South of the country right now and as always, 3 Ireland are about to do the same. 5G is where its at, you can be 100% assured that the NBP will be quashed as 5G fills that slot.

oscarBravo · 19-12-2018 9:17pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

5G is where its at, you can be 100% assured that the NBP will be quashed as 5G fills that slot.

No doubt about it: the laws of physics are no match for marketing hype.

TireeTerror · 20-12-2018 3:08am

oscarBravo wrote: »

No doubt about it: the laws of physics are no match for marketing hype.

You dont believe in 5G? I cannot wait for it. Im 300-400 metres from the 3 mast. FTTH stopped at my neighbours house which is not line of sight or Id be sorting something out there.

I tried Beacon and its fine for general web use, but no good for gaming. Packet loss and severe warping in game made it unplayable.

Its bad when Im having a better gaming experience tethered to 4G on my mobile over 3 network, but thats where I am at until 5G launches with low latency and faster speeds. Bring It On!

Marlow · 20-12-2018 10:26am

The potential of the current 4G rollout can't be maxed out, because..... they don't have the capacity at the mast to do so.

How do you think, that will change with 5G?

It won't.. there is still only the same capacity TO THE mast.

Need to bring fibre to the mast before that changes. 5G doesn't change a darn thing there.

It's like having a Ferrari, but only being able to drive it at half speed because you can't get the proper fuel for it.

/M

oscarBravo · 20-12-2018 1:02pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

You dont believe in 5G?

You make it sound like Santa Claus. It's not a question of belief; it's a question of hype.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. 3G was supposed to be the cure-all for rural broadband; it wasn't. 4G was supposed to be the cure-all for rural broadband; it wasn't. Now 5G is supposed to be the cure-all for rural broadband. I guess this time it's different.

TireeTerror · 20-12-2018 4:26pm

Maybe its hype, maybe it isnt. From what I have read 3g/4g was not designed as an alternative to landline broadband, whereas 5G is, and in many cases surpasses it.

Why would they need to send fibre to the mast? They would surely just send everything over the air.

It will be awesome for a good while as hardly anyone will have 5g enabled devices.

oscarBravo · 20-12-2018 4:43pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

Maybe its hype, maybe it isnt.

It's hype.

From what I have read 3g/4g was not designed as an alternative to landline broadband, whereas 5G is, and in many cases surpasses it.

5G was designed as an incremental improvement to 4G/LTE. It is being sold as an alternative to fibre broadband. Those are different things.

Why would they need to send fibre to the mast? They would surely just send everything over the air.

Using the totally unlimited and not at all congested microwave spectrum? I wonder why nobody has ever thought of that?

It will be awesome for a good while as hardly anyone will have 5g enabled devices.

Yeah, 3G was amazing for a couple of months too.

TireeTerror · 20-12-2018 4:56pm

So much negativity young man. Youve become cynical.

As I said, I have 4G, the main issue is the speed isnt as fast as Id like, but much more importantly Id like a better quality of connection with less packet loss and lower latency. 5G does provide that the same way that 4G provides an improvement over the same using 3G.

fooker! · 20-12-2018 5:12pm

thebo wrote: »

Have speeds improved much with this company since?

I got upgraded to the newest rooftop antenna they supply back in September for free, other than a bit of bother with the internet disconnecting every 5-10 minutes for the first few weeks due to a badly fitted rj45 connector that they did fix in the end, speeds have been ok the last 2 or so months! usually always around the 8-10mb range, though ping can be a bit higher than usual at peak times and a tiny bit of packet loss if that matters to you

customer service is still pretty crap. I had an outage on monday the first in a long time, it did come back online that evening but as is the usual for them they had their phone off the hook and dont reply to emails when things go wrong!

FTTH just went live here and I will be moving to that in the new year as even though things are going ok at the minute with bluebox that could change in an instant going by past experiences!

oscarBravo · 20-12-2018 5:46pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

So much negativity young man. Youve become cynical.

That's one way of looking at it. I'm not sure what you're basing your optimism on other than hype - your remark about being able to achieve better-than-fibre service without fibre to the mast indicates that it's not based on an informed understanding of the technical issues - but I'll stop being cynical when people stop claiming that the laws of physics have been repealed.

As I said, I have 4G, the main issue is the speed isnt as fast as Id like, but much more importantly Id like a better quality of connection with less packet loss and lower latency. 5G does provide that the same way that 4G provides an improvement over the same using 3G.

Most of 5G's improvements will be apparent in urban environments, by the nature of how those improvements work. But you keep hanging in there for your better-than-fibre service.

TireeTerror · 20-12-2018 5:51pm

oscarBravo wrote: »

That's one way of looking at it. I'm not sure what you're basing your optimism on other than hype - your remark about being able to achieve better-than-fibre service without fibre to the mast indicates that it's not based on an informed understanding of the technical issues - but I'll stop being cynical when people stop claiming that the laws of physics have been repealed. Most of 5G's improvements will be apparent in urban environments, by the nature of how those improvements work. But you keep hanging in there for your better-than-fibre service.

I'm looking outside my window right now, I am staring at the mast only a few hundred metres away. I will be fine.

oscarBravo · 20-12-2018 7:20pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

I'm looking outside my window right now, I am staring at the mast only a few hundred metres away. I will be fine.

OK, but you personally being fine isn't the same thing as not needing the NBP anymore.

Marlow · 20-12-2018 10:46pm

TireeTerror wrote: »

As I said, I have 4G, the main issue is the speed isnt as fast as Id like, but much more importantly Id like a better quality of connection with less packet loss and lower latency. 5G does provide that the same way that 4G provides an improvement over the same using 3G.

See .. here is your problem: 4G technology is not even max'd in Ireland ...

The problem is NOT 4G .. The problem is the bandwidth to the mast. If there was more bandwidth 4G would perform better.

And that issue isn't going away with 5G. It's staying the exact same. 5G supposedly performs better on the last mile. But that doesn't matter when everything else is maxed out.

/M

NIMAN · 27-12-2018 10:56am

Hamill92 wrote: »

No.

I’m a ex customer of Bluebox and their customer service is shocking.

Contact the company call Beacon.
Currently paying £25 for 10MB and that’s enough for us. Speed is never under 5Mb

Beacon customer here, and I have to admit that recently I have been disappointed with the speeds I get.

I have emailed them on a few occasions and got quick replies and usually the slow speeds were short lived, but over the last few weeks my speed tests are showing an increasing amount of poor download speeds.

Emailed them again last night as only getting 2mb. Paying for 20mb.

This morning it's 2.5mb.

Worrying too, sometimes Speedtest app shows Bluebox as the service provider!

Penfailed · 27-12-2018 2:34pm

I just did a speed check (Beacon here too) - Ping 31, Download 9.15, Upload 1.83. I'm paying for the 10mb so I can't complain

NIMAN · 28-12-2018 7:57pm

Just ran another, getting 12.5/4.

Better but not what I'm paying for.

Marlow · 28-12-2018 10:54pm

NIMAN wrote: »

Just ran another, getting 12.5/4.

Better but not what I'm paying for.

What's the contention ratio for your service? No residential is uncontended. Can't be.

Because unconteded service would be 10s of times the price.

Even your provider pays more per Mbit at the point where they buy their upstream. Also .. how did you test your speed?

A lot of speed test servers are unreliable. And it's important to test with a computer connected by cable to your router. Wi-Fi results in an unreliable result.

If you tested for example using Wi-Fi to any odd server at peak time and got 12 Mbit then that sounds pretty good for a connection spec'd at 20 Mbit residential .

/M

Penfailed · 29-12-2018 12:01pm

Penfailed wrote: »

I just did a speed check (Beacon here too) - Ping 31, Download 9.15, Upload 1.83. I'm paying for the 10mb so I can't complain

Our internet was sh1te last night. Just tried another speed test - Ping 37, Download 6.46, Upload 1.77.

NIMAN · 02-01-2019 3:22am

Marlow wrote: »

What's the contention ratio for your service? No residential is uncontended. Can't be.

Because unconteded service would be 10s of times the price.

Even your provider pays more per Mbit at the point where they buy their upstream. Also .. how did you test your speed?

A lot of speed test servers are unreliable. And it's important to test with a computer connected by cable to your router. Wi-Fi results in an unreliable result.

If you tested for example using Wi-Fi to any odd server at peak time and got 12 Mbit then that sounds pretty good for a connection spec'd at 20 Mbit residential .

/M

Not sure what the contention ratio is, must try to find out.

I use Speedtest.net for all my tests. I also got feedback from Beacon asking me to connect a laptop wired and see what I was getting. This was a few days ago and not 100% sure, but think it was around 14mb.

I appreciate with wifi you won't get the 20mb they are selling (in fact I did get 20mb all the time for the 1st few months on their service, I guess they added more customers since and hence the drop off), but at the same time they can't expect people to use a wired service in this day and age.

Marlow · 02-01-2019 11:53am

That has nothing to do with this day in age at all.

When you have a problem and want a reliable result, then you have to follow a strict procedure. If you don't do that, then you are the only one to blame for the results.

Wi-Fi adds uncertain elements to the test. It operates in unlicensed frequencies and other devices can interfere with it causing bad speeds. Even your baby monitor or microwave oven. With a cabled connection you at least know nothing interferes with that.

Also. Speedtest.net all well and good. But always test to more than one server. Not all servers are equally good.

And then remember, that when you do a speedtest nothing else in your house can be using the internet connection at the same time. The Speedtest works by filling up your internet connection and measuring that. If your daughter or son is on youtube at the same time as you testing, then the result will be 3-6 Mbit lower. And that's not the fault of your provider, but your own fault for not testing right.

/M

North West Electronics/BlueBox

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