This is the 373 page thread of complaints about Three on boards.ie
This is a cataclysmic failure. eircom would have been better to give the tender to as they have way more experience in rolling out broadband, wireless and satellite. Of the two that were in it, eircom certainly could have offered more. Best of a bad lot for sure. Remember Three outsource everything with BT building the network for them and that network was a piece of shit for months after they first starting selling broadband.
People who use the Three service right now get dialup rates a lot of the time in Dublin, not broadband, so you can be sure those few people who can actually avail of broadband under this scheme will getting nothing close to event he loosest definition of broadband. A giant FAIL by Eamon Ryan and his Department over this.
There is also the huge, monstrous irony that some people will not be allowed to avail of broadband under the National Broadband Scheme in their area because they’d be classed as being in areas where they can already get Three Broadband, yet obviously they can’t.
Photo owned by gonzalemario (cc)
FAILorama.
The only slight bright spot is that if Hutchinson Whampoa do buy Eircom, as is rumored, Eircom and 3 would effectively be merged.
After all Meteor don’t have a 3G service. 3 do.
Could be a shotgun marriage?
There goes any shred of hope for the greens.:(
Had a 3 bored-band dongle a while ago on trial as I live 5km from Wexford town and can’t get broadband. The fecker was slower than dial up. Likewise a 3 pre-pay phone I have as a backup when commuting doesn’t work around my home area. 3 admitted that they had problems in the area and didn’t actually have full coverage unless you were “up a hill”.
3’s website proudly shows the area my house is in as having full 3G broadband coverage. ehhhhhhh…… no.
The only good news is that 3 very promptly gave me back my money (unlike a local fixed wireless operator who had overcharged me for a year and is still sitting on my rebate).
Vodafone dongle works fine and has me kind of in the 21st century (although it very frequently drops down to 2.5g which is a pain).
And eircom are busy upgrading my local exchange (200 yards from the house). In fact, they’ve installed a new cabinet and doo-hickeys so I’m looking forward to decent BB in a short while.
Oops… seemed to miss a closing tag on that last comment Sorry. 🙁
Fixed
The problem is many many ordinary people will think that the 3 wireless service is broadband. They think internet that doesnt involve disconnecting your house phone is broadband. They just dont understand broadband. Only two weeks ago I was home in Clonmel trying to convince my father that the little 3 dongle getting speeds slower than my mobile phone was not broadband. He shrugged and said “it’ll do what I want”. That “t’will do” attitude will keep Ireland in the dial up era for years to come.
There is definitely an argument here for tightening up what can be described as ‘broadband’. People have general expectations that it means speeds where you can reliably stream video from youtube etc Mobile broadband so frequently falls short of even this simple expectation that I think we need some regulation here to police the claims made by providers. Even adding the phrase ‘Speeds quoted are under ideal conditions’ might help consumers realise that what is advertised may not be what you actually get.
The sad fact is that even for traditional fixed line broadband there is no regulation here. How can we realistically expect to have a great broadband system when the providers write the rulebook?
I have Three mobile “broadband” Its cheap but it needs to be cheap because it is pretty poor. The strongest signal is in Dublin where I can only get about 500kb/s. Anywhere else its at 150 – 200.
I agree with Damien- Its a disaster giving the license to Three.
I’m shocked that Three have got the tender. I was a customer of their broadband for a year and it was unspeakably awful. At peak times, web pages frequently didn’t load, my email timed out and I couldn’t download files without the aid of a downloading program.
How a company that got away with providing a shockingly substandard product should be rewarded with this is beyond belief. I think a lot of people are going to learn how bad this company is.
While I’ve nothing nice to say about 3 (except that I’ve, er, never had a problem with their actual PHONE service), and slightly off topic as it may be… but you should certainly have access to 3G speeds on Meteor now as they apparently finished upgrading their network this summer just gone.
And slightly more off topic, I wonder just how accurate this is…?
[…] the National Dialup Scheme Three Ireland now are getting Government money to expand their mobile broadband market into areas […]
All I can say is LOLZ to 3 getting this.
Free cash to “upgrade” their network.
God help us all.
Thank God I’m with irkem..they screw you on price, but at least I get my 1.5Mb (supposed to be 4Mb)..and it nevers changes.
[…] revolution, this unparalleled new iteration of Irish society? That’s right, it’s a rickety 3 modem that only works if you’ve appeared on a recent Prime Time or live somewhere that begins with […]
Hutchison 3G Ireland. Have removed their H/O address from their website. For those of you who need he Head Office address, in Ireland, here it is.
Hutchison 3G Ireland Ltd,
3rd Floor,
6-10, Suffolk Street,
Dublin 2.
Spread it around. It is my opinion that they have a most dreadful and appalling customer service. The staff seemingly have no ears to listen with and seemed to ignore my requests and persisted in talking over me. Rude and bad mannered in the extreme. I had literally had to shout at them in order to get them to shut up and listen. NO JOKING! 6 calls later and no joy! The worst of the worst and these days that says a lot. Good luck.
F.B.