Cross Country Broadband - My experience

yrrag1974

I recently moved from Dublin down the country and, thanks to eircom's woeful investment in their infrastructure, found myself in a complete black hole when it comes to broadband and no local wireless providers either. Difficult to imagine I am only 40kms from this country's capital!! Anyway my only other choice was one way satellite broadband. I searched these forums several times to see other peoples experiences but none went into detail so hoping this will help someone else who lives in similar broadband black holes.

I've been signed up to Cross Country broadband for about a week now and am reasonably happy with the service. Before anyone starts moaning - Yes I know it is not strictly broadband but a download accelerator but hell its better than dial up. So lets get the specifics out of the way:

1. You still need to access dial up so unlike broadband you will be paying for your phone call when you are online. (You need your phone line to upload data - the download comes via a satellite dish).
2. For web browsing the experience is identical to broadband - fast and easy to use. I am back in the land of You Tube!! I am on a 1MB download service and using www.speedtest.ie I am getting 980 kbps download so I'm happy. Streaming and downloading is fine now.
3. Warning - this sytem is not what you want if you want to play online gaming, use Voip or use Torrents. I miss Torrents but again, its better than dial up and my only option.

In summary if you can get Broadband via a Telco or via wireless then do so. However if your only other option is dial up then this will keep you going until something happens in your area. Their website looks, and I quote previous posters, "that it was designed by a 10 year old", but it basically does what it says on the tin and it will do me until someone in eircom wakes up to reality. (They also have no minimum term contract so if someone launches broadband locally tomorrow there is nothing stopping you cancelling your contract)

Hope this helps some of you languishing in dial up territory.

Cheers

Burnfort Boy

Why did you not get 2 way Broadband bu Sat like I did in my "black hole"
Just means you have a transmitter and a receiver on your dish and no need for a phone line at all.

yrrag1974

Burnfort Boy wrote:

Why did you not get 2 way Broadband bu Sat like I did in my "black hole"
Just means you have a transmitter and a receiver on your dish and no need for a phone line at all.

Cost! Who did you use and what are you paying?

Sponge Bob

2 way costs about €500 more to install (minimum) and €50 more a month for the same download speed and allowance (minimum)

yrrag1974

Sponge Bob wrote:

2 way costs about €500 more to install (minimum) and €50 more a month for the same download speed and allowance (minimum)

Yep - looked into this already and the cost was prohibitive! Stick with what I have until eircom invest more money into their infrastructure.

Sponge Bob

they won't invest anything in rural areas and have clearly said so when they announced their ' €1bn investment program ' was for the 5 big cities only not smaller centres or , God forbid :eek: , rural areas.

Your only hope is the mobile operators.