A new twist to the IBB tail

richardo

I have been singing the praises of IBB here for the last year at least.

I got their service two years ago after a lot of hassle, and after some teething problems, it has been excellent.

I'm on the 2Mb Breeze connection in Bray and have been getting a rock steady 1.8Mb download. Upload is a bit more erratic but is usually between 1Mb and 1.5Mb.

On Tuesday, my download dropped to around 300kb and my upload went to 2 to 3kb [i.e. no upload]. So I rang them and they said they'd send the "engineers" out.

They came yesterday.

First of all they tried to blame trees, so I got out the binoculars and showed them the mast [it was misty at the time].

Then they said there was no signal and they'd have to remove all the equipment!

I refused that option and told them to fix it.

The next bit is a bit lengthy and bizarre but is given in more detail on a blog.

I had some fierce rows with a manager who claimed I had never had good service and that I was only connected out of the goodness of his heart!!!!!

He then blamed a system "upgrade" last Thursday and said that because of this upgrade, signal was no longer available in my area.

I pointed out that I had had good signal since then and that it had only failed since Tuesday.

He is insisting that there is no fault and that I never had good service and that he cannot guarantee anything from now on.

Incidentally, my signal today is not too bad [1.7Mb down, 215kb up] which shows that I'm not completely "out of range".

Please don't post a series of "I told you so" rants.

What I am looking for now is constructive advice.

thefinalstage

Are the engineers even trained any more? I mean it sounds like they made a lot of "What the hell do I do now" phone calls.

richardo

thelastangryman wrote:

Are the engineers even trained any more? I mean it sounds like they made a lot of "What the hell do I do now" phone calls.

One was foreign [Polish, I think]. Herself asked if he had training and he said "yes - on the job training". The other fella only started last Monday [no training].

And I think most of the phonecalls were more on the line of "what can we tell this f*ck*r so we can get out of here"

Blaster99

I had two IBB engineers showing up to my place when I had problems and they pretty much went through the same routine. I wasn't really interested in keeping the service so it didn't bother me. They seemed vaguely competent and were very pleasant about the whole thing. I think they were surprised that I wasn't ranting and raving at them, which I presume is the natural reaction to an IBB field engineer.

I would call Digiweb whom to my knowledge run their service from the same mast but they have longer reach. Maybe ADSL is an option these days as well? I would use every opportunity to get rid of IBB.

Sponge Bob

How far from their mast are you richardo, I have heard a rumour that IBB are chopping customers possibly beyond 5km and probably above 7km and only 'fixing' problems in closer.

So, if you are out there and you call them out becuase its not as advertised you may go from ****e service to no service at all and them off with the gear in the back of the van , be warned !!!

Digiweb work out to as much as 12km (as watty has gleefully stated manys a time ) but maybe not as much on a really busy urban sector with lots of customers .

richardo

Sponge Bob wrote:

How far from their mast are you richardo, I have heard a rumour that IBB are chopping customers possibly beyond 5km and probably above 7km and only 'fixing' problems in closer.

I'm at 6.5Km. After a LOT of arguing with a manager in there, he more or less hinted at this. I will possibly investigate the legality of this 'skimming' of customers.

So, if you are out there and you call them out becuase its not as advertised you may go from ****e service to no service at all and them off with the gear in the back of the van , be warned !!!

They tried to take the stuff away but I stopped them. A neighbour was not so lucky. He came home one evening to find no broadband. His wife had fallen for their story and they had removed everything. I discovered this last night. So much for contracts!!!

Digiweb work out to as much as 12km (as watty has gleefully stated manys a time ) but maybe not as much on a really busy urban sector with lots of customers .

I will possibly investigate Digiweb on Monday, or may go down the Eircom route if all else fails Godhelpme.

Sponge Bob

if digiweb are on the same mast you should have no problems .

I would further email the odca@entemp.ie to find out what their position is on this unilateral breach of contract by IBB and any losses and disruption to you consequent to the sudden termination of service ..while you find another service.

IBB should probably neveUUUr have served you (physics reasons) but should have given you a chance to find another service seeing as it was their mistake and you did come to rely on it

The engineers were there to terminate the contract by removing the equipment , but could not do so Frankly; in the circumstances they should have served you notice they could not guarantee service , give you a month at least to sort an alternative and not pretended to come to fix it and waste your time.

gerryo

Sponge Bob wrote:

How far from their mast are you richardo, I have heard a rumour that IBB are chopping customers possibly beyond 5km and probably above 7km and only 'fixing' problems in closer.

So, if you are out there and you call them out becuase its not as advertised you may go from ****e service to no service at all and them off with the gear in the back of the van , be warned !!!

Is this a "strong" rumour, by that I mean is it a new IBB policy if a customer complains about service degradation & they are greater than X Km from the mast, the immediate fix is to terminate the service?

What is the logic behind chopping customers that have a working service, which then deteriorates after an "upgrade"? Are they hoping to get more customers nearer the mast? If there were people nearer who wanted the service, they would be customers already.

Bizarre! Does not make great business sense to drop paying customers in expectation of potential customers.

JNive

to provide service that far, they had to over pwoer their equipment, which interefered in a cascading-effect with everyone else, as has been stated before.

What it sounds like, is that they are now forced to correctly set power levels on their masts and clients, and as such the signals are not reaching as far and they are trying every trick for you to cancel it ( by showing no desire to continue or hold on to the service ).

Not surprising though, rubbish about trees or leaves is crap too since trees and leaves dont grow that much over night and as such if it did cause an issue would result in a gradual deterioration of your service. Such a sudden change is purely equipment related and since you they legally agreed to provide you a service, i believe they are obligated to attempt everything in their power to provide you with one.

check the terms and conditions if possible to see if there are any circumstances in which the provider is entitled to terminate or withdraw service and if any notice is to be given of such.

Sponge Bob

JNive wrote:

to provide service that far, they had to over power their equipment, which interefered in a cascading-effect with everyone else, as has been stated before.

yep. even the giant IBB marketing department eventually had to concede advantage to the laws of physics

JNive wrote:

What it sounds like, is that they are now forced to correctly set power levels on their masts and clients, and as such the signals are not reaching as far and they are trying every trick for you to cancel it ( by showing no desire to continue or hold on to the service ).

Diminishing marginal returns as its known .

JNive wrote:

Not surprising though, rubbish about trees or leaves is crap too since trees and leaves dont grow that much over night and as such if it did cause an issue would result in a gradual deterioration of your service. Such a sudden change is purely equipment related and since you they legally agreed to provide you a service, i believe they are obligated to attempt everything in their power to provide you with one.

leaves are irrelevant in THIS case , the 'problem' occured after they were blown off the trees.

The tragedy is that IBB are doing the right thing, arguably for the first time ever , and that they are handling it in a totally cack handed manner ...essentially by sending engineers with no ingiliss out to explain the unforgiveable and then run off with the equipment.

They should simply admit they ****ed up all along and tell their soon to be ex customer that they have stopped ****ing up.

But no, they try to run off with the gear leaving a bad smell.!!

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

Digiweb work out to as much as 12km (as watty has gleefully stated manys a time ) but maybe not as much on a really busy urban sector with lots of customers .

Shh.. only offically up to 10km for Metro, closer for plain Wireless service.

gerryo

I am a farily recent IBB customer, I was really surprised when they did the signal test & it worked. I am a good distance from the local mast, futher than ricardo is, so I'd better be prepared for the chop.

Pity, as I am happy with the service I get right now.

Thanks ricardo, Sponge Bob & JNive, for the heads up, it's always good to be forewarned. I'm pretty sure the contract allows for termination on IBB's side at any time/any reason, with no liability for losses.

Time to start looking at alternatives...

richardo

Thanks for the replies lads. I'm only just back on line as IBB have been doing another one of their "planned outages".

I'm not an expert in these things, but from my understanding of physics, if a mast is reduced in power, then the download link should be affected? i.e. The output from the mast isn't as high, therefore there will be higher packet loss etc between the mast and the receiver.

However, reduction in mast power shouldn't affect uploads, as for this, I am the transmitter and the mast is the receiver. My aerial has not been reduced in power so uploads should not be affected. They are hardly going to attenuate their receivers?

My downloads are still relatively fine [1.139Mb down, earlier], but my uploads are off the scale [0Mb].

Holy sh*t!!!!!! BREAKING NEWS

I have just run another test.........
1.473Mb down, 1.248Mb up

Now these figures are acceptable [for me], so I must conclude -

• They are lying all along and have just fixed the fault
• They are bowing to pressure and have restored the status quo
• They have installed a wee aerial beamed just at me :rolleyes:

Whatever the answer, I now have great ammunition as I can prove that reasonable uploads and downloads are possible, despite all their messing around.

bushy...

If they reduced the power on both ends , your signal is getting a bit lost in the middle of the rest of them at the mast end. Its is a lot "quieter" at your end so downloads won't be affected so much , but still won't be perfect since you need upload to download stuff.

"My aerial has not been reduced in power so uploads should not be affected. They are hardly going to attenuate their receivers? "

has it or hasn't it ??????

The installers really don't have many options , they can't turn up the power (bad anyway ) , they can't attach a 6ft dish to the gear/your house .
They are wasting time/money calling out to you when they could be installing new customers well within the happy zone , who should always have good service.
Tbh the best thing to do is come to terms with the fact tis over and try out digiweb and see how you get on.

Foxwood

If, as has been suggested, IBB are reducing power to comply with their license conditions then the customer doesn't really have any comeback. This is covered in the Terms & Conditions


7.6 Irish Broadband reserves the right to suspend the Service and/or terminate this Agreement without notice to the Subscriber and to claim for any losses or expenses (if any) incurred by Irish Broadband as a result of such suspension and/or termination if;

7.6.3 Irish Broadband is obliged to comply with an order, instruction or request of Government, ComReg, an emergency service organisation or other competent authority;

(Some people would quibble with any document that used "Comreg" and "competent authority" in the same sentence, but that's another story".


Note that you aren't entitled to continued service just because they've provided service up to now - that's covered in the T&C too:

2.3 No indulgence, leniency or extension of time which Irish Broadband may grant or show to the Subscriber, shall in any way prejudice Irish Broadband or preclude Irish Broadband from exercising any of its rights in the future.

2.5 Irish Broadband will make reasonable commercial efforts to maintain access to the Service and ensure that it is available for use by the Subscriber. However Irish Broadband cannot be held responsible for accidental non-availability for outages of services, or for unforeseen interruptions to the Service.

2.6 If any provision of this Agreement is prohibited by law or found to be unlawful, void or otherwise unenforceable, such provision shall, to the extent required by applicable law, be severed from this Agreement. The remaining provisions of this Agreement shall not as far as possible be changed or modified and all other terms and conditions not so severed shall continue in full force and effect. (This last one also covers them on the reducing power situation, if that's what they are doing, and if they are doing it for licensing reasons.

They could do a better job of handling the situation, but it doesn't look like you have any real comeback.

richardo

Quite a few points to cover here...!

If they are reducing power to comply with regulations, then fair enough, but why couldn't they say that from the start? It would be a straightforward support call - "I have bad reception" Response "We are legally obliged to reduce power. Very sorry" End of story and no hard feelings.

With regard to my aerial being reduced in power - why on earth should they reduce power on it? As I stated above, I did receive/send at a reasonable level earlier today to that does not seem to be a factor. Speeds are a bit down at the moment, but that is to be expected with contention [contending with those of us that are left on this sector!!!]

I will see what happens tomorrow, as doubtless I will be in touch with them. I'm a stubborn b*st*rd and it's the principle of the whole thing that is annoying me, not to mention the whole way they have handled it.

I had a look at Digiweb but they are pretty pricey compared to IBB, so it looks like I may have to go down the path of Eircom. I don't like the idea of a cap, even if I should have no problems with the level imposed. It's the upload that bothers me as I'm used to the 1 to 2Mb levels. 384k is a bit of a drop!!

Sponge Bob

They won't say it Richardo.

They are up for sale by NTR and if IBB said in a prospectus they had 25000 customers and showed 25000 customers in a due diligence and it THEN came out along the line that they do not REALLY consider you a customer at all owing to distance then there would be absolute hell to pay

If you complain you give them a getout . If you keep your gob shut instead and do not complain from out in the twilight zone then they will probably not withdraw service .

Sending out engineers with no english and who who know nothing is genius , pure genius. If you are a customer and IBB send out guys with no english to your site to 'fix your problems ' you will henceforth know that they are out there to chop the service.

BigMoose

This has been an interesting thread as my service (in particular the upload) went to ****e a few weeks ago after being perfect for over a year. I had a really friendly (and seamingly knowledgable) Irish guy come out to take a look who moved me to a nearer mast (that didn't exist when I first signed up). He didn't offer any explanation of why the original connection when to ****, but this rumour sounds plausible.

richardo

BigMoose wrote:

This has been an interesting thread as my service (in particular the upload) went to ****e a few weeks ago after being perfect for over a year. I had a really friendly (and seamingly knowledgable) Irish guy come out to take a look who moved me to a nearer mast (that didn't exist when I first signed up). He didn't offer any explanation of why the original connection when to ****, but this rumour sounds plausible.

This is the reply that I would like to be posting soon.

I too have a nearer mast that was erected after my first connection. When they were out on Friday they muttered about this mast but didn't do any serious testing. They swivelled the aerial at its existing location and said there were trees in the way. The fact that there was a gable wall above them didn't seem to occur to them, and that they could have gone higher. It was sheer laziness and incompetence.

Time for a phone call to the office..........[again]

richardo

Latest update on this...

I phoned the office yesterday and got straight through to second level support.

I had a long and frank discussion and the outcome is that a team of trained technicians is to come out tomorrow. They will have instructions to either fix my service to the existing mast or to switch me to another. Essentially, they have been told to stay here 'till it is fixed.

I asked a few questions about rumours of reducing power to outlying area and I was assured that while they were pulling back on installing at the outer reaches, that they were in no way reducing power to existing customers. You can take that statement whatever way you wish :rolleyes:

n0tsane

As i understand it. As i have had a friend go through the same process with IBB, they do give you time to find another connection ie 28 days unless your connection is affecting other people in the area ie Where abouts are you and is the other site closer to you? And if it is closer to you would you be cutting acroos other customer to get to bray.

richardo

n0tsane wrote:

As i understand it. As i have had a friend go through the same process with IBB, they do give you time to find another connection ie 28 days unless your connection is affecting other people in the area ie Where abouts are you and is the other site closer to you? And if it is closer to you would you be cutting acroos other customer to get to bray.

There is no talk at the moment of them discontinuing my service. As far as they are concerned, they are going to fix the existing one.

The other site [which is relatively new] is closer to me and there should be no problem connecting to that. The prats who were here on Friday did talk about this mast but said there were trees in the way [they also said that about my existing mast 'till I showed the mast to them!!].

I reckon that with a little bit of effort they can connect me to the new mast. It means an extra hop but what the heck.

Not sure what you mean about affecting or cutting across other customers?

n0tsane

The way the service works is on direct line of sight, the tower transmitting uses different frequencies at different power levels. Lets say you have 2 towers one at 90degs to the other

.................................Mast a


A connection to mast b..................Mast b





....................................You connecting to mast a


In this case you are cutting across mask b to get to mask a , in doing so you are affecting customers on mast b because you are increasing the power levels on mast a to maintain a connection with mast a therefore affecting mask b with interference and affecting customer on that mast. The ideal way to look at it is that you should be connected to mast b which should increase your connection and stop the interference on mast b.
Did they tell you what your SNR was when they where out, If your SNR is very low say below 19. the tower would have to increase it’s own power levels to maintain it’s connection that is why most ISP’s have metrics (eg. Eircom will not install a dsl line below metrics as it affects other customers not only the customer.)

richardo

I see what you are getting at.

Strangely, everyone around here is beamed at mast A [Windgates] as all the connections were put in before mast B [Fassaroe] was put in. So there should be no crossing of signals. Because of the geography of the area, most people in this immediate neighbourhood will only see mast A anyway [it is on the top of a hill, the other is at the bottom of a valley].

I am one of the few fortunates who should be able to see mast B so there is a high chance of getting a signal from there.

As far as I remember, [it was two years ago] my SNR was around 18. That is now down to around 13 apparently.

n0tsane

From what i understand from working with rf, and from just your SNR dropping from 18 to 13. It does explain alot about your situation. When your connection went up it was probably one of only a few in the area covered by windgates mast(mast A). Hence the SNR of 18, but as more customers went online closer to the mast, hence the power levels on the mast have to increase and Your SNR dropping to 13, as more power is used first by those around the mast . As more and more people join that mast your SNR will continue to drop, the knock on affect is that most ISP will drop the connections futher out from the mast. The only thing that i can think of is that mast b was put in to take the connections that where further out. But what will happen if you can not connect to the other mast????

richardo

I shinned up on the roof yesterday and mast B is clearly visible from one spot. At least I'm 90% sure it is the mast [difficult to tell as I had to use a combination of Google Earth and IBB's own coverage maps to locate it]. Distance is 2.6Km, so I should be OK.

It means an extra hop as mast B feeds back via mast A but that is a very small price to pay.

They are due out within the hour so will report back in due course.

Nevyn

gerryo wrote:

Is this a "strong" rumour, by that I mean is it a new IBB policy if a customer complains about service degradation & they are greater than X Km from the mast, the immediate fix is to terminate the service?

We are getting at brush off story as well, 'oh right you are having issues your not happy, we will come and deinstall the equipment and take it away..."

ffs

gerryo wrote:

Bizarre! Does not make great business sense to drop paying customers in expectation of potential customers.

It does if the paying customer is out of thier 12 months of the inital contract and can quit at any time unlike a new customer who is tied into a 12 months contract no matter how badly they screw up.

richardo

As I type, the lads from IBB are here on the roof.

SNR of 23 on preliminary tests off mast B, which is a tad better than 13.

They are just about to switch me over.

I notice at least two of my neighbours have now lost their IBB antennas :rolleyes:

richardo

The problem is solved. The lads switched me to mast B and I have SNR of 24.

They were happy and so am I.

They confirmed that IBB had somewhat overstretched itself by concentrating on getting new customers. They are now concentrating on sorting out the network. Hence the changes over the last couple of weeks.

They also implied that some of the sub-contractors are trying to remove antennas as a first line of attack. IBB's policy is to improve quality if possible where there is an existing service. So if a couple of gougers turn up and say the only solution is to remove the equipment - don't take their word for it.....

gerryo

Thaedydal wrote:

We are getting at brush off story as well, 'oh right you are having issues your not happy, we will come and deinstall the equipment and take it away..."

I encountered this attitude at NTL, & thought it was just badly trained call centre staff. This response is great if you just bought a consumer device & they are taking it away & giving you your money back.

This is not so great if there is no alternative service in your area:(

Thaedydal wrote:

It does if the paying customer is out of thier 12 months of the inital contract and can quit at any time unlike a new customer who is tied into a 12 months contract no matter how badly they screw up.

It costs money to connect new customers, IBB offer free installs (OK, there is no such thing as free, it's rolled into the ongoing fees), but it takes a few years to get payback on an install (not 12 months), so it makes sense to keep customers.

Also, if a company provides a good service, I tell a few people about it, if they provide an unsatisfactory service, I tell a whole lot more people. No company cares for that sort of publicity.

richardo

gerryo wrote:

I encountered this attitude at NTL, & thought it was just badly trained call centre staff. This response is great if you just bought a consumer device & they are taking it away & giving you your money back.

This is not so great if there is no alternative service in your area:(

In my case, it wasn't the call centre staff. It was the pair who called out to "fix" the problem.
I got the strong impression that they hadn't a clue what they were at, and that the simplest answer [for them] was to remove the equipment

It costs money to connect new customers, IBB offer free installs (OK, there is no such thing as free, it's rolled into the ongoing fees), but it takes a few years to get payback on an install (not 12 months), so it makes sense to keep customers.

Also, if a company provides a good service, I tell a few people about it, if they provide an unsatisfactory service, I tell a whole lot more people. No company cares for that sort of publicity.

A company that deliberately loses customers, is a dead company. IBB spend a fortune on advertising, so obviously this isn't their intent.

The area where I live recently had its exchange upgraded, which makes the story worse for IBB as there is alternative.

I am a believer in praising where it's due. I wrote to the 2nd level engineer and thanked him for his trouble [I did give him a hard time!!!] and the lads who did the job today. I also suggested that the other two should be checked out for their compitence.

I have consistently defended IBB on this forum and others and will continue to do so.

I'm not going to let one bad experience with a couple of knobheads change that. I can't say the same for my neighbours who have been cut off!!