Last Mile BB becoming a joke

Seanie M

Seriously, they are. I have recently found out that in my area that landline BB is now available. But, Last Mile sys I have to buy out the remainder of my contract term (1 year span, 5 months left). This, which I daid sign-up to, is fair enough.

But their poor quality of service of late is not. I want out, but apparently it cannot be.

Poor connections over the past few days, late return of calls, and when they got busy yesterday afternoon until 5pm (when they finish up), the phone was off the hook.

Also, I have heard of their recent launch in areas of Westmeath, pipping connections 20+ times faster than dial-up - yeah, if you pay €130 a month (plus connection) for the 1Mbit option. Their base package is 512kbit, at €40 per month - but they told me their contention ratio is 38:1 - a bad landline onnection as a result. so far, I have endured perhaps a 7 or 8:1 ratio at the worst of times (considering its already a slow BB option).

In a nutshell, where possible, I would not recommend them.

Can the contract agreement be contested EVEN IF one was signed?

Seanie.

chopperbyrne

Do you have any idea what contention ratio actually means?

Seanie M

I figured it means that on one 'line', up to a fixed amount of users can avail of that one line. So, on my connection, another 37 users can use it simultaneously.

No?

chopperbyrne

So then why do you say you have "endured" a 7 or 8:1 ratio? Most people would be very happy with this ratio.

todd10k

I can see our friend here has never used 1 meg at 8:1 before.

Tell you what, "chopper", try using 8:1 1 meg eircom at any time between 6 pm and 11pm, then come back here and act all lordy.

As for last mile, ask them for a compromise. if they refuse, seek legal advice.

aaronc

chopperbyrne wrote:

Do you have any idea what contention ratio actually means?

Does anyone except the ISP themselves?

Does a contention ratio of 20:1 on a 2Mbps connection mean:

1. The link from your house to the ISP's closest point of presence (POP) or concentrator is shared with a maximum of 19 other users? In this case no guarantee of bandwidth is provided and the ratio merely means the access channel will only be shared with a maximum of 19 other users. This is only relevant to delivery mechanisms that use a shared channel, certain wireless protocols for example.

2. On the ISP's connection to the internet each customer's connection will always be guaranteed access to 100kbps of Tier 1 bandwidth?

3. The backhaul from the ISP's POP to their data center is guaranteed to always provide cusomters with 2Mbps/20 = 100kbps? Note that this is different to point 2 due to the increasing amount of information that is now accessed thorugh INEX and other non-internet routes. An ISP is more likely to have close to unlimited capacity into these sort of exchanges so their backhaul can become a bottleneck.

4. The guaranteed bandwidth from a customer's customer premisis equipment to Tier 1bandwidth on the internet and to other available network routes such as INEX is guaranteed to never be below 100kbps?

Option 4 is the ideal scenario since it's a combination of all of the first 3 options.

I'd love to know the answer if you have it.

Aaron

AgainTheTime

Last Mile will have one base station in each area of coverage, if they say their contention ratio is 38:1 then that would mean that the maximum number of users per base station would be 38 wouldn't it? If so, when there are 38 subscribers on a base station they should look at installing a second base station for the next 38 users?

If you have signed a contract to stay with Last Mile for a minimum of 12 months then you will have to honour it. Regarding your QoS, have you done an online speed test to see what you are getting?

If a user is lucky enough to have the choice between Last Mile and DSL, then DSL will win out every time. 1MB BT DSL entry product is €35 (inc. line rental), Last Mile will charge you €40 per month for 512k.

Not even eircom offer 512k BB anymore, time for an update to Last Mile's offerings I think...

Seanie M

tod10k,
thanks for that rebuttal in chopperbyrnes direction, I guess he must be in some 10 Meg connection somewhere and thinks everyone else is too.

So, I guess I do know what contention ratio means...

I have endured an 8:1 connection on my 512kbit line, and it gets to be like a strong dial-up. As users will increase on this line, I will have to endure a poor level of service from a provider taking advantage of an area (or areas) that do not have hardline broadband. It thus feels like I'm being fleeced when I hear that my only option is a 512K connection, with up to 38 feckin' users on it, for the same price of a competitors 2Mb connection, with 26 users on it... Do the math byrne!

Its on this I would not recommend Last Mile to people if the speed at which landline BB is rolling out can be patiently waited upon. I only got it because Eircom said it could have been September 2006 when BB was available here. Nows its April, 5 months ahead of schedule.

Line tests show my average to be between 460kb and 505kb. I am about 1/2 mile line of sight away from the source, with no trees etc in between.

Unless Last Mile can become competitive with similar connection speeds, they will falter so fast, and founder.

Seanie.

OHP

I have been with LMWBB for over a year now (only BB available to me). I sent them several e-mails about their lack of service and only got an automated response until now. The sort of stuff I was complaining about was this:

C:\>tracert www.lastmile.ie

Tracing route to www.lastmile.ie [82.195.129.64]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 106 ms 88 ms 280 ms 89.184.32.10
3 73 ms 80 ms 71 ms morph.packetexchange.net [83.245.40.1]
4 144 ms 87 ms 56 ms 80.253.125.1
5 73 ms 144 ms 72 ms ge-10-0.ipcolo1.london1.level3.net [4.68.116.9]

6 201 ms 400 ms 112 ms 80.253.124.21
7 81 ms 80 ms 71 ms bashful.hosting365.ie [82.195.128.11]
8 625 ms 96 ms 577 ms web3.hosting365.ie [82.195.129.64]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert www.boards.ie

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [82.195.136.250]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 158 ms 128 ms 128 ms 89.184.32.10
3 282 ms 56 ms 360 ms morph.packetexchange.net [83.245.40.1]
4 281 ms 640 ms 47 ms 80.253.125.1
5 104 ms 64 ms 80 ms ge-10-0.ipcolo1.london1.level3.net [4.68.116.9]

6 113 ms 184 ms 208 ms 80.253.124.21
7 104 ms 136 ms 120 ms 82.195.143.132
8 112 ms 136 ms 120 ms boards.ie [82.195.136.250]

Trace complete.

And this:

Date Download Speed Upload Speed Qos RTT Maxpause
30/06/2006 23:28 386 kbps (49 KB/s) 469 kbps (59 KB/s) 35 % 91 ms 457 ms
30/06/2006 21:09 462 kbps (58 KB/s) 398 kbps (50 KB/s) 84 % 87 ms 369 ms
08/06/2006 00:45 487 kbps (61 KB/s) 126 kbps (16 KB/s) 97 % 77 ms 88 ms
06/06/2006 00:33 409 kbps (52 KB/s) 130 kbps (17 KB/s) 47 % 60 ms 618 ms
06/06/2006 00:32 353 kbps (45 KB/s) 124 kbps (16 KB/s) 27 % 67 ms 593 ms
02/06/2006 00:38 487 kbps (61 KB/s) 135 kbps (17 KB/s) 98 % 75 ms 56 ms
03/05/2006 19:43 142 kbps (18 KB/s) 123 kbps (16 KB/s) 24 % 102 ms 1156 ms
03/05/2006 19:40 233 kbps (30 KB/s) 122 kbps (16 KB/s) 32 % 93 ms 484 ms
18/04/2006 22:32 390 kbps (49 KB/s) 86 kbps (11 KB/s) 78 % 97 ms 650 ms
18/04/2006 22:30 489 kbps (62 KB/s) 130 kbps (17 KB/s) 91 % 82 ms 361 ms
Total Averages:
384 kbps (48 KB/s) 184kbps (23KB/s) 62 % 84 ms 484 ms

Eventually their reply was:

Dear *******,

I must first apologise to you for our delay in sending you a response to your emails but we have been extremely busy in upgrading our network to provide our customers with a better service. All our customers and their comments are very important to us in continuing our improvement in services provided.

Latency is affected by the network traffic at any given time and at peak times you may experience fluxuations in service. This is out of our control but we are reveiwing our network at all times and looking for new ways to improve our network which should help you with your problem. Contention is however beyond our control and is experienced by all service providers, even us.

Thank you very much for your correspondence and I hope that I was able to help.

Regards,

Last Mile.

To me (and it is only my opinion) last mile have become like Eircon... a Monoply. They will promise to provide you a service and tbh they do, but it is only minimal service and at a huge cost compaired to other WBB ISP's for the same/better service. And their support service is just like Eircon's too. They will contact you whenever "THEY" have nothing else to do.

OHP

PogMoThoin

Posted in other thread & afterwards saw this 1. Heres the link to my post. I certainly wouldnt recommend them.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054919553

Blaster99

OHP wrote:

To me (and it is only my opinion) last mile have become like Eircon... a Monoply. They will promise to provide you a service and tbh they do, but it is only minimal service and at a huge cost compaired to other WBB ISP's for the same/better service. And their support service is just like Eircon's too. They will contact you whenever "THEY" have nothing else to do.

Trust me, they're nothing like eircom.

paddyp

Blaster99 wrote:

Trust me, they're nothing like eircom.

True, eircom actually answer the phone and the occassional e-mail.

[rant]It took me seven months to get my lastmile connection, after three months waiting I called only to be told that my account was in the accounts closed folder. I have yet to receive an answer to an e-mail from them and yes the phones are permanently engaged. The connection drops with the slightest bit of drizzle or fog.[/rant]

Now gripes aside, the airspan box is very expensive last mile won't see any profit in the first year of a residential installation, it would be hard to justify more than one or two people on the end of the phone especially considering the absence of a competitor.

I saw a digiweb sign up in knockcroghery (presumably for dsl) but also a brand new mast went up by the level crossing - it would be great to see a bit of competition in the wireless market up here.

Seanie M

Well where I live (Daingean, Offaly), we now have hardline competitors since late April - my residential line can now service broadband to me by BT, Eircom, Smart, to name a few. So, competition is rife in the area - so I wonder will Last Mile change tactics and up the quota instead of riding me? Otherwise, they will QUICKLY loose existing customers when renewal time come around, and not gain any new ones.