Damien Mulley

290 Responses to “Broadband choices and options in Ireland (Updated Oct 2009)”

1. Tom says:

   August 2, 2007 at 10:51 am

   Hi,

   Like the site, vg etc etc.

   Whilst accepting that you have to be balanced and fair to all in your synopsis, can you advise what you recommend as the best option for a light web user.. (email, surfing not much download). Just moved into an apt without a landline (at the moment) and don’t have option of a roof antena. Don’t want to use cable either.. Would consider connecting a landline or preferably wireless.. In the dublin area.. what do you reckon.. was leaning towards BT but heard that their support was shocking

   any one north Dublin city centre have any recommendations.

2. Colin says:

   August 3, 2007 at 11:55 am

   Damien quick question – I’m debating between getting the Digiweb wireless broadband or one of the o2/3/vodafone usb thingys – just wondering what your opinion is on the mobile phone broadband suppliers’ products?

   Cheers

3. dhomi says:

   August 7, 2007 at 3:43 pm

   I’m wondering which of these provider could be considered as reliable : Digiweb, Irish Broadband and Imag!ne.
   As for O2/3/Vodafone, I very much doubt one can call them Broadband, it’s more 3G. It’s ok, if you’re constantly on the road and need to check your emails, but that’s about it. Sounds like businessman offers to me.

4. Podge says:

   August 7, 2007 at 5:55 pm

   I unfortunately joined up with vodafone broadband. My girlfriend is with O2 and gets 10GB a month for less money. I rang vodafone and explained I am a customer and would they be increasing the cap to match O2. They said they have no intention of increasing the cap from 5GB and the customer service guy told me that O2 had a better offer and to change when my contract expires…. So I DEFINITELY DO NOT recommend vodafone 3G broadband…

5. Padraic Noone says:

   August 21, 2007 at 9:45 am

   I live 8 miles from Ballinasloe and while broadband is available in Ballinasloe i have no coverage
   what i need is a good reliable satalite system reasonably priced
   so i am checking different companies
   so if you could email me with your package i will look at it
   my phone no is 0872835149

6. cjmc says:

   August 21, 2007 at 2:44 pm

   do i need 3g covererage for the vodafone broadband?? will it work without 3g coverage?? will it be faster than dial-up??

7. Enda Madden says:

   August 28, 2007 at 7:15 pm

   >
   http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=53848732#post53848732

   Hi there,

   just to let other Boardsters know about my experience with Lastmile broadband.

   I’m setting up my business from home in Leitrim, early days so I went for the residential package rather than the Business since bandwidth requirement is not huge yet.

   I contacted LM from the US to arrange for a Line of site test. Sent the cheque for a full years subscription since I was anxious to get tested asap to know whether I would have to go with the more expensive Satellite option.

   Cheque was cashed within a couple of weeks. Fine. Lastmile did also make it known in the ir T & C’s that there was a 6 week lead time after payment, again fair enough.

   I was making these arrangements from the US and subsequently china so I explained that I needed to be contacted by email to give an approximate date when they would be out in order to give notice for somebody to be at the house in Leitrim.

   The one time they tried to contact me was by phone even though I’d explained that I was in China and was not reachable, not listening to exactly what the customer says is a constant with the call centre.

   The customer service department is totally unhelpful, time and time again I asked could they tell me where I was on the list for their engineers, they did not have the information and would only “pass a note” onto the engineers and promise that an email would be sent. Never happened.

   Eventually asked to speak to a supervisor, I was either stonewalled or told “they’re in a meeting”.

   After calling numerous occassions and after the 6 weeks were almost up and no sign of any date I requested the package to be cancelled.

   I cc’d the company directors and customer service for confirmation that my cancellation was received and was being processed as well as briefly outlining the problems I experienced. Again silence.

   I called again this morning, stonewalled, no supervisors available and was told to contact the directors who seemingly are the supervisors.

   This isn’t the end of the world, thankfully Ciaracom has started in Leitrim.

   I’m pretty sure I’ll get my refund as well but in my opinion the companies attitude to customers stinks to high heaven and I found they very difficult to deal with. In the end I was left feeling like a crank having to constantly call them but when they won’t make any concessions that you’re out of the country notwithstanding the fact that I paid them upfront.

   Hopefully this provides some insight, lastly I gave Lastmile plenty of time to reply to me before posting this.

   BTW I work as a Software consultant and its so annoying to see Ireland shoot itself in the foot with lack of decent broadband outside of urban areas. But thats another story.

8. Joe Garde says:

   August 30, 2007 at 1:02 pm

   Hi Damien – I didnt see a mention of broadband speed tests but I find this very useful http://www.speedtest.net I have broadband providers – at two locations Irish Broadband and BT at one and NTL at another. BT of course are using eircoms copper and the service provided is reasonable in terms of speed and continuity – Irish broadband is totally over subscribed in Killiney so I would not recommend them to anyone – also I have tried cancelling the account about 4 times now to no avail – NTL broadband 6mb down and 512 out almost 99% uptime and super in terms of performance (latency) I would totally recommend them if you can get it in your area – customer care not great by some accounts but to be hosnest I never need to call them – well her indoors does the odd time the tv signal goes and she misses cory 🙂 Anyway thats my two cents worth – btw my business partner in Copenhagen has fiber to his door – cost a 1K for the box in his house and 20 euros monthly…. now there’s a deal!

9. aresgirl says:

   August 31, 2007 at 3:46 pm

   Considering getting the irish broadband ripwave 1mb, BUT does anyone know if it allows file sharing programmes such as ares/limewire??

10. dhomi says:

    September 1, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Went for BT 3 weeks ago. I did a mistake in sending them a postal order of 125€ for the nonsense deposit they asked.
    After 2 weeks, I rang them to find out about my activation and they told me, my order in “on hold” till they get my deposit.
    As you might have read elsewhere, BT is really bad concerning bills. I have to confirm that.
    You could always ring to pay the deposit via the phone, I don’t have a credit card and I read somewhere they don’t bother sending you a receipt for the deposit !
    I heard a lot of people are pleased with Digiweb, it could be considering them.

11. adrian says:

    September 2, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    great site damian, i live outside of hollywood in wicklow no eircom, no torque, at mo using vodafone which is slower than dialup as we dont get 3g coverage but we can across the road which is quite annoying, do u know of any alternative

12. Ross says:

    September 3, 2007 at 8:36 pm

    Hi, you seem to missing the faster Smart Broadband packages. I have an 8Mb down/ 512Kb up connection for €55 a month and can download as much as I want. I did sign up with them in the beginning so I have free line rental. But I don’t think that makes a difference any more. Apart from when they almost went bust I don’t think we ever had any downtime.

    My router reports download speed as 9212900 and upload as 605200. So it’s seems more like 9Mb down and 600Kb up, maybe that’s just overhead for lost packets, I don’t know. I do live less than 100 feet from the exchange though.

13. Fergus Geffney says:

    September 24, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    hi i have clearwire and the contention for all clearwire options is 10:1

14. lexia says:

    September 25, 2007 at 11:04 am

    Ferges, please don’t have a laugh… I have ClearWire also and I’ve termed it UnClearWire as the speed & connectivity are cat.

    When I got it at first it was fairly decent. Before all of the marketing campaigns and crass American accents. Before it courted the media. Before everyone else decided to join the party. The contention ratio was 10:1 then, it’s certainly not at that level now.

    When I signed up, I remember asking the salesman how they were going to scale. He mentioned Irish Broadband and told me how ClearWire was different and wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Hey presto, two years later and they have made every single one of them.

15. Catherine says:

    September 27, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    Hi,

    I was wondering could someone tell me if the O2 broadband is any good? I was looking to use it in the north east.

16. nickey says:

    October 10, 2007 at 6:30 pm

    hi damien very helpful indeed thank you. im thinkin bout switching from eircom broadband (2mb) to BT (3mb) and i am doing so because most of the time i am only getting download speeds of only 50 kbps. can you tell me would it be a wise move to switch to bt. (NOTE: the BT 3mb package contention ratio is 24:1) how can people be sure that the contention ratio they tell you is correct?

17. Shelly says:

    October 12, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    Hey Damien,

    Need wireless for my mac to run Skype for four months in South Dublin. It Looks like Irish Broadnand are the best option would you say? Is there a 12 month contact with that? Any ideas?
    Cheers.

18. sheldon says:

    October 17, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    Hey Damien, Fantastic post…. I will be moving to tralee, any ideas on what is the best option there.

    thanks.

    sheldon

19. Spikey700 says:

    October 31, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    Hey,

    i was scanning for internet connections all over ratoath with my psp and i came across an internet connection called damos broadband or somethin was it urs?

    and if u wanna no the most popular and the safest its has to be eircom
    other internet connections without security such as wep can be easily hacked and used by other people even with a psp!

    see ye!

20. DooReg says:

    November 9, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    If a neighbour has satellite broadband, can i tap into it with a wireless router (note: i am an IT idiot and couldnt manage to do this link up but would get a fried to do it for me!!). The neighbour (by the way) wouldnt mind!!

21. Stephen says:

    November 14, 2007 at 11:03 pm

    I’m in clare (10km for kilrush) and looknig at getting 150hours eircom for 29.99 and mediasat.ie for 9.99. Will I be able to disconnect from the upload (dial-up) when using Orbit Downloader (rapidshare) and the Allofmp3 music downloader. Also, Europe Online, http://www.europeonline.com, as mentioned somewhere in the article, is this broadband?

22. dhomi says:

    November 28, 2007 at 6:12 pm

    I’m with BT, I live in Oranmore (10km from Galway). BT is definitely the best alternative to Eircom. I pay 56€/month for a 3Mb speed and 30Gb download allowance AND I don’t have to pay line rental with Eircom. So that’s like paying 31€/month for internet, which is not too bad, considering the broadband situation in Ireland.
    I’m looking forward to get the 8Mbs with BT (available around Dublin), although they didn’t raise the download allowance! which is a bit dumb…

23. Barry says:

    December 5, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    In castleknock D15. Had digiwebs mobile broadband the last few months but the bandwidth was averaging just over 100K so had to give it back. Their metro is unavailable and IBB Breeze cant take any more people at the minute. From what I can make out ICE is brutal (as well as more expensive) so I am snookered for reasonably priced wireless in my area. Years of grief with NTL and Eircom have given left me detesting both of them. Anybody know of any other providers in my area.

24. Pangaea says:

    December 11, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Is this a wireless modem internet only forum?

    I was with clearwire on their business 2.5mg/ 512k 40gig per/month
    Steer a wide path around clearwire`s wireless options.
    First of all, they sold me a modem where the previous owner was on a 1mg option… after many many many phone calls to clearwire it was discovered that my account was not upgraded to the 2.5mg option….. Of course i woulnt have been any the wiser if I hadent of perused them., Anyway after they upgraded my connection, it was if anything slower (borderline dial up speeds)
    Paying 80euro a month, i quickly decided to cancel the contract… I relise that its 100& their fault, but rather the position of my modem and strength of signal coming into my place… Though when they came to set it up, they said i was in optimum range (bull)..
    Anyway, after canceling.. i started to pack up all the gear.. then i noticed on the modem box, that it said this modem can take upto (but not over) 1.5mb speeds….. So basically even with my connection upgraded, i would have never got the full 2.5mg with the modem they gave me… what a mess, unprofessional, a disgrace.

    Anyway, went ahead and got a phone line in via eircom, and ive just this morning ordered Irish Broadband 3mb dsl connection.. 39euro a month… half the price of clear wire, and double the speed of clearwire, with unlimited up and down…. .. so theres no compitision really..

    Anyway, ive been reading some reviews on irish broadband here, and have noticed one fundamental thing… All the bad reports ive heard from IBB is with their “wireless option” such as Breeze, Ripwave..etc … The problem with those wireless things is they are always going to be hassle, no matter what area u are in… I have not heard one person here commenting on IBB`s dsl options.

    So basically, if theres anyone that has experienced IBB via a dsl line… ide love to know how you got on with them, and were the speeds constant enough?

    Kind regards,
    Pangaea

25. Leitrim Lad says:

    December 21, 2007 at 8:35 pm

    Broadband here in ireland is a perfect reflection of our Government. Slow to react….costs a fortune….and be glad your getting it at all!!!
    I got so pissed with the infamous broadband scheme I rang noel dempseys offices at the time to try and see why they put it on hold..and it was said to me that they were doing a review of the last review to see if it was successfull. Well I can sympathise with some of the small ISPs, I went out door to door in my community to try to drum up some interest in getting broadband into probably one of the remotest parts of the north west and it was lkie you were trying to sell some people a bomb.. it was going to cost €150 to install per house and €35 per month from then on….an all ya got was its to dear…maybe when it comes in….(that answer killed me altogether i am trying to get names here)… So i got 40 names for ths guy and sure enough he went out their and got broadband, speeds were great in the beginging 2mb down 1 mb up….then it got slower and slower im lucky to see 1mb anymore maybe after 12 midnight, As for the customer service ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!! leave a message…i cant blame this guy…well i can …im paying for a shit service now…..but hey there is no choice ….none…Im not gonna name the company either…its hard graft…but its simply the government and eircom to blame for this mess….we are heading into the future with a country not geared to cope with new advancements in web technology……makes my blood boil
    F**k you ahern and anyone who voted ye back in

26. naz says:

    December 22, 2007 at 5:07 am

    Damien a few of them are missing
    like utv, smart telecom, o2 and vodafone the new broadband out similar to 3 g ones, theres also another new one completely have forgotten their name something mayb updates needed? oh yeah blueface.ie

27. naz says:

    December 22, 2007 at 5:42 am

    utv is so good i was with them for a while in a bundled package but you can get it without bundle as well, and for a mimal charge 5 euros youcan go unlimited on caps so here you go good to know i guess as i’m thinking to go back with them once my contract with bt ends, bt are ok speed ok but customer service is a bit lagging behind i guess reading from peoples reviews its no good 3g o2 or vodafone, so will cut them out of my list no point if cant get good speed as i’m think of changing again from bt to a faster speed, though i do think bt is the best value for money compared any of the other options

28. Luke says:

    December 28, 2007 at 11:05 am

    Hi Damian/gauys,
    Thanks for this great list of broadband providers.
    I’m thinking of subscribing to IB Breeze 2MB. Could anyone tell or show me what this antenna that needs to be installed looks like? Does it have to be directed to some specific point or just anywhere on the roof? Could anyone who has it describe it to me?

29. Colm says:

    January 5, 2008 at 7:56 pm

    eircom connection fee now back
    2008/01/05
    http://eircom.ie/cgi-bin/bvsm/bveircom/bladerunner/showContent.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2142695296.1199562892@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccfaddmlmlhgjfcefeceiedfgodfik.0&cid=BroadbandBundlesRes&site=Res&chanId=-536889714

30. Jess McArdle says:

    January 15, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    Thanks for the great site Damien – I chose eircom last year and it’s fine. However, I’m moving to London later this year – can anyone reccommend a good UK broadband comparison site. I like Top 10 Broadband – but is there any other good ones out there? Thanks, Jess.

31. Fergus says:

    January 28, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Damien, well done for your efforts in trying to promulgate awareness of the importance of quality broadband access for all. Despite the best efforts of yourself and a few others, the current state of play is an unmitigated disaster. Forget about charges; forget about contention; forget about customer (non-)service for a (milli)second. The LIE that has been peddled in Ireland for the last year or two by all of the telecoms/ISP operators is that “broadband” is some kind of fixed quantifiable product. What is “broad-band”? A reasonable answer would be that it’s a band that is broad – which is fine. The question then is: ‘what is broad?’ – Cliché alert: ‘How long is a piece of string?’ Of course the telcos/ISPs will come out and say that according to the 2001 directive from such and such an EU body and such an such a world forum on this, that and the other, such and such is considered to be broadband for all intents and purposes. B****x! In 2008, 1-2 mbps is woefully not broad enough. Take a look at the attached link. Why are we still accepting this?

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-survey-average-broadband-speed-in-us-is-1-9mbps.html

32. Pete says:

    February 8, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    Hi wish I had seen your site earlier.
    Signed up for BT broadband last year and had to pay for modem and connection despite coming from UTV.
    Very usefull info, will bookmark for future ref.
    Many thanks and best wishes.

33. John says:

    February 29, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Just wanted to let you all know that today 3 Mobile Ireland launches its 3 pay (pre pay) broadband. 3 Sell the broadband modem for 149 Euro and Carphone warehouse.ie are selling the same modem for 179 Euro an extra 30 Euro. I think that charging an extra 30 Euro for the exact same modem is complete robbery.
    Can we send this message to as many as possible so they dont get caught out by paying an extra 30 euro for the same product!!
    http://www.3ireland.ie & http://www.carphonewarehouse.ie

34. Jono says:

    March 14, 2008 at 12:52 am

    Hi, I am moving to Dublin from Australia, and have booked an apartment for the first week. i have a laptop and adsl modem, but the apartment does not have an internet connection, so I am hoping for a temporary internet deal for 1 week or 1 month (as cheap as possible). Do you know of any deals or providers that I could look at? Most of the ones I have looked at are either too expensive or have a fixed term contract. I am looking to find long term rental accommodation, so buying a mobile modem (ie. 3) wouldnt be ideal because I am hoping the place i eventually rent will have a broadband connection.

    Thanks!

35. Twanglow says:

    March 17, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Based in UK but occasionally working out of Co Cork and looking to install broadband, so thanks for really useful info Damien. Reading the thread, it strikes me that the whole market is shambolic, overpriced and under-resourced. I don’t understand why Sky hasn’t jumped in with the broadband offer we get over here. It’s not free, but at £10 a month for the top level- 16Mb up (allegedly) and 768Kb down, uncapped – it’s certainly cheap. You’ve got to have Sky, obviously, so it’s not perfect by any means but the competition could push the whole broadband market in Ireland onto another level of service provision. And if I understand the technology right (and it’s quite possible that I don’t), couldn’t it be a solution to lack of coverage in rural areas?

36. Twanglow says:

    March 17, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    sorry, that should have been 16mb down & 768kb up…

37. Kevin says:

    March 21, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    I’ve just signed up for a 3MB connection with U.TV internet. They offer 3MB for 23.99 euro a month with a 20GB download limit but you can pay an extra few euro and get unlimited monthly download usage.

    Does anyone know if U.TV will be increasing their top speeds to 8MB anytime soon? I’ve been searching online but can’t find anything specific and no reply yet from my support question to their helpdesk.

    With all the packages listed I’m honestly surprized more people do not sign up for U.TV when you compare the price and speed they seem to be miles ahead of the competition and much much cheaper. Think I’m also going to change from Eircom to talk talk ie and keep the same phone number to allow free calls to uk/ireland landlines.

    Some of the comments are listed years ago and still not much has changed today in 2008 when you check out the ISP websites. Their all still offering 1MB, 2MB connections and 3MB is considered a top of the line… shocking when you think in the uk people get 8MB broadband for free.

38. Miranda says:

    March 21, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Wonderful news for everyone in West Cork…. the days of having to tolerate the now infamous Digitalforge are finally numbered.

    We were determined to hold out as disgruntled friends and relatives felt they had no choice but to continue paying for the only Broadband ….”service” … they could get up until now . We are in Baltimore and this week we received out O2 mobile broadband service and are up and running without a hitch – wonderful signal, nobody hung up on us, nobody shouted down the phone line at us, nobody overcharged us, nobody blamed us for their own shabby service. Bliss!

    Spread the word – the monopoly of West Cork is finally over !! Welcome to West Cork O2 !!!

    Dan and Miranda

39. John says:

    March 23, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Wonderful news for everyone in West Cork…. the days of having to tolerate the now infamous Digitalforge are finally numbered.

    “the now infamous” ?, first post I have seen anywhere about Digitalforge.

    “We were determined to hold out”, hold out for what?

    “as disgruntled friends and relatives felt they had no choice but to continue paying for the only Broadband ….”service” … they could get up until now .”

    and whose to blame that?, is Digitalforge?, anybody else step up to the plate?

    “We are in Baltimore”, a beautiful place, I envy you, but not exactly the centre of the universe, located in the extreme south west of county Cork, 49 miles as the crow flies from the nearest available internet backhaul, located in Cork city, with some major topographical challenges to getting a wireless signal across country to Baltimore.

    “and this week we received out O2 mobile broadband service and are up and running without a hitch – wonderful signal, nobody hung up on us, nobody shouted down the phone line at us, nobody overcharged us, nobody blamed us for their own shabby service. Bliss!”

    Good for you, so, after years, one of the major telco’s finally stepped up and provided an additional service to their existing mobile service, just an addon, not a dedicated broadband service. about time.

    “Spread the word”, ahh, I would’nt do that if I were you, if another 7 people subscribe to O2 in Baltimore, you are fubared, wait till the summer crowd arrive, then you will find out what O2’s “broadband” service is really like.

    “the monopoly of West Cork is finally over”, monopoly, what monopoly? a monopoly implies that the competition were forced out, is this the case, was there any competition? , would it not be closer to the truth to say nobody else could be bothered to supply a broadband service to Baltimore?.

    In 2005, when the prospects of any provider offering broadband in West Cork were slim and none, Digitalforge, a small locally based company, stepped up to the challenge, and, believe me, it was a challenge, hamstrung by bureaucracy and indifference, they invested countless thousands of hours and euros to bring broadband to West Cork, and, while it may not meet your exacting standards, they will continue to do so.

    To compare Digitalforge to O2, or any major telco,is to compare your local grocery shop to Tesco or Dunnes, apples and oranges, is there a Tesco store in Baltimore? I doubt it, will you start a campaign to demand Tesco open a store in Baltimore, I doubt it, spare a thought for you neighbours in West Cork, who cannot get O2 or any other provider except Digitalforge, should Digitalforge cease operations, where are they to go..? back to dialup?, because, that is exactly where they will have to go.

    I have no connection with Digitalforge, other than to know the principals behind the company, I operate a rural WISP in County Limerick, and, would be aware of the challenges faced by Digitalforge and all other rural WISP’s, while you watch the duck serenely travel down the river, are you aware of the amount of paddling that goes on beneath the surface? we are daily challenged by the indifference of the
    Department of Communications
    ComReg the Communications Regulator
    State Agencies
    Local Authorities
    we do the best we can with the regulatory regime and resources available to us, we deliver in spite of them, not because of them.

    Last week we enabled a VoIP service (Blueface) for one of our repeater site hosts, because he and his business were without a landline telephony service for 7 days due to storm damage, and his O2 coverage is patchy at best.

    So finally, Dan and Miranda, welcome to the 20th century, yes, 20th century, hopefully some day soon rural WISP’s will be allowed and assisted to bring rural Ireland into the 21st century.

    John

40. Ken Astill says:

    April 3, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    We have just put down a deposit on a house in Stranamorth, Blacklion, Co Cavan, and hope to move there from England later this year.
    I currently rely on my broadband connection, and your information has given me some food for thought.
    Any tips or further help would be very much appreciated.
    Many thanks,
    Ken.
    (P.S. webpage not fully functional yet).

41. Kerryview says:

    April 3, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    We use Permanet for our broadband here in Kerry. As we are half way up a mountain, about 200 metres from the road and with no landline, we find Permanet to be excellent, fast and economical. I wonder why there seem to be so few of their subscribers here? btw they are http://www.permanet.ie and no, I am not connected to them

42. Kerryview says:

    April 3, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    oops I mean I am not AFFILLIATED to permanet, I certainly am connected to their service!!

43. Kelly says:

    April 15, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    I am moving from France to Moyvore, just outside Mullingar and as I work from home, I urgently need a reliable broadband solution. I cant seem to find any provider other than National Broadband via satellite – however after seeing so many poor reviews on boards.ie I would rather find a different solution if at all possible. Can anyone suggest anything please?
    Thanks a million
    Kelly

44. Fran says:

    April 25, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    Hi there, I recently got Perlico broadband and I live in the Harold’s Cross/Rathgar are of Dublin and boy am I sorry. Its rubbish. I’m on the 1mb always broadband and it can’t even send an 8mb file as an attachment through Gmail! I also tried sending through yousendit.com and the page freezes after only sending 12%! I’m bloody losing it! I’m working from home as a freelancer and this simply won’t cut it. I told their tech support about it and they’re going to try sort it out over the next 3 days or so. If they don’t make their broadband work to an acceptable standard I will view this as a violation of their 1 year contract and I will switch to a better provider. I’m not paying any their fees for this crap. I can’t even play 2 songs in a row on myspace.com without it freezing or cutting off for a bit. What the hell is this a joke?
    I’ve been looking at http://www.speedtest.net and see for the dublin region Magnet are quite fast. Does anyone have any advice? I need good uploading speeds aswell as download speed. Thanks

    F

    *PS – this is my second attempt in sending this comment! Perlico broadband is so slow it can’t even send text comments to blogs!

45. walls says:

    April 30, 2008 at 1:02 am

    empathise with fran – i’m also living in rathgar and fighting my internet connection on a daily basis. i’m using 3’s 3g wireless service and it’s about 28.8k most of the time. it gets up to about 1mb when i’m around dublin 2 but it’s never gotten remotely close to the advertised best of 3.6mb. considering i’m a freelance photographer i’ve pretty much given up on being able to work from home. previous complaints have merely led to a merry go round of chats with people in their call center and no improvement. stuck on a 12 month contract with them and very fed up. in general, i think rathgar’s a bit of a blackspot for broadband :/

46. Morgan says:

    May 6, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    I’m also freelance telecommuting and have to upload about 300-400MB a day and I can’t find anything decent in Rathmines. I’m desperate to find a solution asap – any suggestions? I can’t believe NTL doesn’t have cable broadband here, and I don’t want to work with the Eircom land line hassle.

47. Fran says:

    May 6, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Perlico came out and sorted the line last week, must have been a fault on it. At least now I can email 10mb files, the service doesn’t break up the way it used to. I rang up all sorts of technicians from different companies who say that the Rathgar/Rathmines/Terenure area is never going to be fast broadband-wise unless they lay new fibre optic cables under the roads because currently the area is using old fashioned lines and there’s too many houses logging into them. So don’t waste your money on what you think is 3mb broadbband in these areas, no matter what they say, its not, line contention and ancient wiring is holding it back around here.

48. Chris says:

    May 13, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    Just to echo warnings about Clearwire. My recent experience with them has confirmed to me that the service is unreliable, the customer service is ineffective and deceptive, their finance team are unscrupulous and their sales team is just ignorant. I suffered twenty rounds of back and forth, (being told I needed to fill out this form and email it to X address, wait for a reply and then contact them again, etc…) and still ended up being retroactively charged for two months of service, three months after cancelling!

    This was despite the fact they agreed my connection never attained the minimum bandwidth that my 49.99 euro/month plan supposedly guaranteed. I will take this matter up with various consumer rights organisations in due course.

    My main reason for posting is to tip you off about a practice they employ with testing bandwidth. Basically, they send you to http://www.irishisptest.com to test your connection speed. Everytime you run a test you get stellar results within the minimum guaranteed by your Clearwire plan. I got suspicious though and tested the connection using lots of different sites and always got poor results. I challenged Clearwire on this and they said other sites were unreliable since they weren’t based in Ireland. This is a complete lie.

    Bandwidth is measured by sending packets of information back and forth from your computer to the speed testing server. Geographic distance (at least between 1st world nations) only adds milliseconds to the time, which amounts to very, very little difference in bandwidth measurement. I have now switched to NTL, because I don’t want to pay a standing charge for a phone line. NTL have equally terrible customer service, but at least the bandwidth is satisfactory.

49. molie says:

    May 15, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Hi anyone heard of nbb.ie re satellite broadband. We also live in an area where phone lines are so bad we dont use it. We currently have vodafone 3g modem but cant get 3g signal gprs only and it is very slow. The 12 month contract is almost up so Im wondering where to go. Have been looking at satellite for a while now 2way and digiweb look very expensive so the nbb was around 500 euro to connect up and about 40 – 50 per month. Would love some advice. cheers

50. molie says:

    May 18, 2008 at 1:21 am

    Hi again, another question if anyone has the answer. Were interested in the nbb option together with the phone deal. However suddenly thought if we decide not to take the triple option for b/band phone and tv, and just had b/band and phone does this mean we would have to keep our phone line just for sky? Someone probably thinking why not have the tv option too but there wasn’t too much info on the site on what channels you would receive. Also would we have to pay to have the phone disconnected? Probably will. Anyone out there with any answers. Cheers