Irish Broadband Drop Prices

Jokah

From the Irish Times.

"Dublin households will be able to obtain high speed wireless internet access at nearly half the cost of existing DSL (digital subscriber line) services following price cuts by wireless internet provider Irish Broadband, writes Karlin Lillington."


"In a move likely to spur further competition in the home internet access market, Irish Broadband will offer a wireless service that matches DSL download speeds for €30 a month including VAT."

"Business packages now start at €75 excluding VAT.The company said it had dropped installation charges by 61 per cent as well, to €149 and under depending on the package, which includes the cost of a modem-like receiving device."

Good bad or indifferent?

Is there any other way of getting a Line test done? Eircom told me to call them on Monday and they will give me a test for DSL. I want to go with Netsource but have to wait for a line test. Of course today, there is a problem with the equipment so I have to wait. BLOODY EIRCOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

damnyanks

Are they any good ? Doesnt the service go to the pits if it rains ? (Good thing we live in a sunny country!!!)

Jokah

"Are they any good ? "

Don't know about the service, but let see if there are any other responses to this.

DaithiSurfer

If you are thinking about Netsource, don't.
Check this thread.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1084138#post1084138

Mutant_Fruit

WOO WOO WOOOO. This is great news. I am an existing IBB user. There have been problems in the past with interference, which involved **** download speeds (isdn like) and ******* pings, (like 33k modem) but thats all fixed for at least 2 weeks now. All in all, they're a great service once the new towers are given a few weeks to get fully sorted out and all the previously unknown problems sorted. Go for it.

I've used this in rain and there hasn;t been a noticeable drop in performance...

Is there any other way of getting a Line test done?

Ring IBB up if you think you might even have a slim possibility that you might be within range of a tower. I thought i was out of range, but i wasn't I'm running off the Tallaght highsite from ballyroan, and still getting a strong signal

Jokah

I mean im in blackrock and not sure whether or not I can see the Dublin Mountains or any other Node. You see I live in a rented house so i have to wait from Eircom to see if the Line test is ok. If it is then Ill go with Netsource or whoever. If the line fails (im hoping not cos the house is only a year old), Ill have to go with IBB. If i cannot get a LOS where the f!ck am I to go?

Mutant_Fruit

they will be releasing Ripwave a non-los option shortly. You could always try that. but pings on that can either be good or terrible, no in-between.

Jokah

Sorry. Just rang Eircom. Cos my account is new and the account number and phone number are not "merging yet" I might have to wait up to 3 WEEKS for them to get back to me to say my line is compatible or not for DSL.

I mean come on......I'm not even going to use Eircom as my DSL operator... F!ck them anyway....

HATE!!!!!

Do you have to be present while they are doing a LOS test for IBB?

Señor Juárez

i ordered this thinger last thursday.... no word from IBB to me yet

Jokah

Marclar did you need to be present when someone came to do the LOS test? Or did you just tell them where you lived?

Señor Juárez

erm it is not a LOS test, the Ripwave product is a non line of sight product. I should be able to get it, so i presume they will just be dropping in the modem to me and checking that i get a signal

Jokah

Oh I know about Ripwave, I thought you had ordered their other product, the one that has now gone down in price. Out of interest Marclar what area you live in if you are getting Ripwave?

THanks

Mutant_Fruit

the LOS is a LOT better ping wise if you can get it. The lowest i've seen ripwave get to boards is 30, which equals the LOS product, but mostly its been in the low 100's. It really depends on how many walls the signal has to go through and where you're placed.

And i don;t think you /have/ to be there while they do the test, but i'd advise it.

If you;re feeling courageous, if they report no signal, ask them to bring up an antenne and test with that, rather than binoculars, "because a friend initally was told he had no signal, but when the brought up an antenne he had a strong signal". (that happened to me).

JustHalf

My business has an IBB connection (residential, strangely enough - didn't need the contention). Soon after we got ours installed, the IBB guys were testing out Ripwave. Mounted on the roof of a car. The guy who installed our kit came around to show it off.

They got a 2 meg connection from our parking lot (White's Cross, near Stillorgan). Apparently they were getting a decent connection WHILE DRIVING THROUGH RANELAGH.

Seems like a good idea for those without LOS. Can't comment on pings.

Mutant_Fruit

hmmm... its not supposed to work well in a moving object due to "doppler effect" or something.... but that sounds pretty cool. ripwave max is 10mbps i think, quite nice.

anyway, just wonmdering if contention has been increased from 8-1 due to the price drop... does any1 know?

ripwave's is 20-1 i think, maybe the los has been made 20-1 to match this:(

IDM

Am really interested in getting IBB but live in a rented apartment in central Dublin. I face onto a central courtyard, and even though I'm obviously quite close to one of the broadcasting towers, there's no way there'd be line of sight.

I've however been getting the impression that it still might be possible to be eligible for the service (from reading peoples posts here). Anybody an expert on them ? I'd love to know if it'd be possible for me to get it. Especially considering the drop in price !

-Ian

Dingo

The LOS €35 offer is at a contention ratio of 20:1. My existing LOS €48.40 connection is 8:1.

That's a 27% drop in price, for a contention ratio 60% worse.

gsand

waiting for a line test???why?u can do it online with instant results-thats how i tested mine...netsource use eircoms lines so u can test for both through this link:

http://www.eircom.ie/cgi-bin/bvsm/bveircom/bladerunner/showContentSubPage.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1173808014.1062510148@@@@&BV_EngineID=hadciegkejeibedcfjgchgcghk.0&cid=GettingItRes&site=Res&chanId=536889214&clickIdAction=addClickID_vert&clickFrom=/bveircom/bladerunner/showContentSubPage.jsp&clickTo=/bveircom/bladerunner/showContentSubPage.jsp

regards,gsand

Señor Juárez

Originally posted by Dingo
The LOS €35 offer is at a contention ratio of 20:1. My existing LOS €48.40 connection is 8:1.

That's a 27% drop in price, for a contention ratio 60% worse.

cant you count? 8:1 compared to 20:1 is two and a half times worse

Señor Juárez

and as for gsand...... its wireless, not DSL. and it is possible to eb able to get Eircom and not NetSource as Netsource is RADSL and afaik eircom is not...

gsand

'Sorry. Just rang Eircom. Cos my account is new and the account number and phone number are not "merging yet" I might have to wait up to 3 WEEKS for them to get back to me to say my line is compatible or not for DSL.'

sorry i shudve directed my reply a little better-that mite help xpthink, but as u mention wireless is not based on that sorta test-its the line of site etc thing.but they do have a map with coverage on the website which shud be accurate ish.

IDM

Anyone know what the deal is with the 2 meter antenna ? I'm definitely within 1 km of one of the IBB towers but am in a rented apartment w/o line of sight.

Some of the posters gave me the impression that neither the enormous antenna or line of sight were always necessary. Any response would be appreciated.

-Ian

IDM

Just poked around the Irish Broadband site, a little more carefully ... Came across their June 1st press release regarding "Ripwave." I assume this is what a bunch of the posters were discussing ... Is this actually available in the Dublin city centre yet or is it still in the startup process ?

When do you think the IBB site will actually update to reflect their most recent price cuts ? I get the impression that it hasn't been updated for quite some time.

-IDM

gandalf

The pricing is actually for Ripwave. I'm currently trialing it at the moment. Unfortunately not having a great connection to it but there is apparently a high gain antenna that may improve my connection so I'm waiting for them to supply me with one.

IDM Ripwave is non line of sight if your that close to the tower you should be ok. I would reckon they will launch towards the end of the month (depending on all the trials).

Gandalf.

IDM

How "not great" is your connection ? =P I reckon I'm about .8 km north of the Stephen's Green tower. How far away are you from the nearest tower ? Is the high gain antenna just an improved clip on or is it a massive outdoor one ?

Appreciate the help !

Jokah

I have to stick with 56k until Eircom get back to me about the line Test. I would normally do it online yes, but like i said earlier my number and account haven't merged yet.

Why don't Eircom train their staff better. Do they know they are hated?

Anywho I just have to wait.....and wait.........

Mutant_Fruit

ive been speaking to a guy who has Ripwave (for testing purposes) and in his house about 1.5km for a tower he gets pings of 70ish in game, and stable fast downloads. However when he moves the box to his friends house (which you are allowed do with ripwave) pings are over 150-200 in game and download speeds are lower, about 350-400kbps. It really depends on how clear the line of sight is to the tower, and how far it is.

If you're uncertain just ask them to send out a ripwave thing, and just run a few pings while the box is in different places in the room and run a few 20mb+ downloads to test speed.

IDM

Wow, I'd definitely be happy with pings of 70 !

I'm definitely within 1.5 kms of a tower, but am worried about the line of sight issue. In the press release, they say specifically that LOS isnt necessary.

What do you think is the more important factor: LOS or distance from the tower ?

How would I go about getting them to come test it out near me ? Shall I just give em a ring ?

Fidelis

There was a mention of IBB's '60% price drop' in the Indo today. Good old Indo, 2 days behind the Times.

vibe666

OMMFG!

sorry, had to get that out of my system.

seriously though, this is just what Ireland needs.

imagine what the directors of eircom are doing now, about to roll out flat rate (150 hours 56k or isdn) for 30 quid a month, and the competition is rolling out uncapped broadband for the same price.

yet again eircom is delivering an obsolete product at way too high a price :rolleyes:

gonna be calling IBB tomorrow morning and see how quick i can be up and running.

Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, Navini Networks offers patented wide-area wireless broadband technology delivering multi-megabit speeds to customers up to 8 miles from the base station. Navini provides nomadic, zero-install™, non-line-of-sight infrastructure to allow for anytime, anywhere Web access. Navini Networks' Ripwave™ products consist of a desktop modem or PCMCIA card, base station, and element management system (EMS) and run in licensed and unlicensed frequencies. Navini's solution results in a price/performance combination that is superior to other broadband offerings - wired or wireless - in the marketplace. To date, Navini has received $91.5 million in funding from top-tier investors such as Austin Ventures, Granite Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sternhill Partners, as well as Alcatel, Intel and Sanmina. For more information on Navini, please visit www.navini.com.

woohoo! me and my laptop will be going all over the fecking place downloading stuff, for no other reason than I can .

vibe666

some links:

www.navini.com - people who make the hardware and developed the technology.

www.irishbroadband.ie - the guys selling it here.

http://www.navini.com/pages/press/2003/pr05.27.03.htm - artical on navini website about ireland rolling out ripwave.

http://www.navini.com/downloads/Unwiring%20Broadband.pdf - whitepaper on ripwave (for the geeks, i know you're there!:D)

have fun thinking about it, and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Mutant_Fruit

maybe i didn't make my last post clear enough... only ONE person so far has had good pings that i know of. Most other people are averaging 150's+ to boards, so ingame will be higher again i believe. It will probably end of unplayable for games.

Jokah

So pings are only good for gaming.

What about dowload speeds. With DSL shouldn't one average about 50-60kb?

I take it pings are important if you have an xbox with LIVE enabled.(not yet in Ireland of course)

vibe666

ideally as a gamer you'd want pings below 100 for them to be playable, and for a really fast response you'd want 40-50 msec pings to be up there with the best of them.:D

doesn't make any real difference for downloading or surfing web pages.

download speeds are a whole other story. with a 512kbps line you should be getting 64kbit download speeds (at full whack).

don't forget the difference between bits and bytes though, it always used to confuse the crap out of me.

BTW, just called Irish Broadband and they only have ripwave in somewhere called three rocks (if i heard her right) at the moment, but it's coming to the rest of dublin in 2 or 3 months apparently.

IDM

Originally posted by vibe666
BTW, just called Irish Broadband and they only have ripwave in somewhere called three rocks (if i heard her right) at the moment, but it's coming to the rest of dublin in 2 or 3 months apparently.

Yeah, I was told the same thing. Sent them an e-mail at like midnight GMT and got a respone before 10 in the morning ! Pretty impressive, eh ?

If their service is as good as their response times, I know who I'm getting broadband from !

Mutant_Fruit

On a 512kbps line, you will never see a download go at 64kb's. The reason for this is about 4kb's will be used up for overheads etc.

However, if you do a quick check through the forums, you'll see some people have gotten great speeds from Ripwave, and others only mediocore. Also, the range limit is not 8 miles, its 5km (at least thats what IBB say).

If possibly, i would definately recommend trying to get the LOS package, but if it ain;t possible, get ripwave to test first. Don't sign anything until you see it working in your house. Thats my advice.

IDM

Since a bunch of us are interestied in ripwave ...

Could anyone that's testing Ripwave around the 3 rocks tower, post up some details/opinions on the service, along with specs like approx. distance from the tower & how LOS you are or aren't ?

For example:

Pros:
Cons:
Avg. ping:
Avg dl speed:
Reliability:

Anything else that might be of interest to prospective customers. Thanks to anyone who can help !

Señor Juárez

there is also going to be a new product: a 20:1 512k line for 35 euro (as opposed to 8:1 for 48.40 euro). i think ill start out on that, and if i really feel the need i can always upgrade to the 8:1 deal

Mutant_Fruit

there is also going to be a new product: a 20:1 512k line for 35 euro (as opposed to 8:1 for 48.40 euro). i think ill start out on that, and if i really feel the need i can always upgrade to the 8:1 deal

Do that, and let me know how pings/download speeds are. if they;re good, i'll downgrade my connection

vibe666

i got the 8 mile thing from navini who developed ripwave.

i guess they are talking 8 miles if there are no obstructions. i know it doesn't have the same problems with buildings that traditional wifi does, but ti would have to take some kind of a hit in distance/quality going through a 6 storey office full of people

cmdrpaddy

maybe my figures are a little off but a guy in my class built his own antenna out of an old baked bean tin and could get it to work over 1.5km and get download speeds of 20-30Kb/s, and that was with a baked bean tin! he can now connect to the school network and use their ADSL connection... if that can be done with a baked bean tin i don't think it should be too hard to get everyone in Dublin online wirelessly with some proper hardware and a proper backbone for the network...

Mutant_Fruit

anyone here heard of IrishWAN. it's aim is to connect everyone together using wireless. go to www.irishwan.org or www.dublinwan.org for more info. Its very interesting.

Cal

IBB SITE UPDATED

I see that the newer service structure and pricing are now updated on the IBB site.

Cal

vibe666

the dublin/irish wan thing is a great idea, but i don't think it will be overly sucessful until we can get more people using the net the way it should be (i.e. a lot) i think that now we have BB at a more competitive price internet useage will pick up a lot and people will start to think about using it all in new ways.

fiar fvcks to them though for having a go.

fingers crossed ripwave takes off the way it deserves to and we'll all be happier for it.

also has anyone thought about the idea of mesh networks to help expand the dublin/irish wan thing? i.e. you don't need to be in range of a node directly, as long as you are in range of someone who is connected, be it through another user who is directly connected, or linked to another person closer to a node.

Mutant_Fruit

the mesh idea was talked about, but the price put it out of range of most people. it was just too expensive to set up. It was decided that that was the best way forward.

BUT, i have an ingenious idea. THe IrishWAN people could use the Ripwave technology to connect people to the hosts, if IBB can do it, so can they. That would bring a lot more poeple in range of IrishWAN, and its cheaper too!

Señor Juárez

had that idea, dismissed it in seconds. The server side of things costs an absolute fortune to set up, thousands of euros. which isnt exactly worthwhile.... To be honest, the setup cost for dublinWAN is not that much, 200 euro or less in many cases.

(sometimes it is worth paying 30 euro or so for an antenna rather than a bean can yagi. you get far better ranges/speeds, and a lot less hassle)

Mutant_Fruit

not neccesarily

he server side of things costs an absolute fortune to set up, thousands of euros

You just set up each person with 2 nics, and two antenne's. Ideally both would be omni-directional. Then each antenne auto searches for a nearby antenne, and attaches itself to it automatically. That way, each person has connectiuons to 2 other people (providing t2 others are in range).

This means each person is a server AND a client. Also, if one person goes down, a link still exists by a differnt route.

E.g.

4 people live as follows
...........b
a.....................d
...........c

A conects to b and c, which both connect to D. If any one of those goes down, the other 3 still have a working link to each other. Scale it up and the mdel still holds.

EDIT: i had to use dots to space out the letters

machalla

Anyone know if ripwave is available?

I notice theres no download cap on IBB. Given recent events with Netsource I wonder will they revise that policy? Not that I'd blame them. At least they might inform their customers up front which seems reasonable.

Would it be more useful for gaming than Netsources poor pings? I know wireless is not exactly supposed to be ideal for gaming but perhaps it might be better than NS of late. Otherwise it would be massively cheaper than Netsources offering at €30 rather than €66.

Update
--
I just gave them a ring to check on availability of ripwave but unfortunately its still only available from the threerock transmitter. Nice price if you can get it.

vibe666

will ripwave be available at the 30e price point still? if so that would be great. I can't wait till they get it rolled out across dublin, I'm only just down the road from the merrion sq. antenna

IDM

Originally posted by vibe666
will ripwave be available at the 30e price point still? if so that would be great. I can't wait till they get it rolled out across dublin, I'm only just down the road from the merrion sq. antenna

The whole restructuring of the price system was probably due to the introduction of ripwave. So yes, it is going to be 30 euro.

Mutant_Fruit

Yup, and ripwave is on the horrible 40-1 contention :-(

Ripwave is dodgy as comes to pings, check out previous posts.

However technically speaking wireless offers better pings than any other type of technology, cos the info goes straight from your comp to thier gateway server, not from your comp to an exchange, where it gets piled in with up to 48 others and then to the gateway of your ISP. Also, line quality isn;t really a problem, either you have a signal or you don't. so either you get full speeds or you get no speed.

And yes, the pricing structure did change because of ripwave.