Chorus Broadband

SQDD

I'm on Chorus broadband, and was wondering if anyone has been charged for exceeding their download limits?? And what do you think of the Chorus broadband service?

NIBBS

where are you located SQDD and what do you think of the service ????

I posted a few weeks back asking had anyone in Swords taken up the new offers and what the service was like, but didn't get much response at all....

NIBBS

infact I didn't receive one reply.....maybe the takeup is slow there.....anyway let me know what you think of the service, if it's good I may switch and get rid of the phone......

zilog_jones

NIBBS wrote:

where are you located SQDD

Look at his profile

I'd also be interested in anyone's experience with Chorus BB in Limerick. They seem to be doing a lot of work with the cable around here (digging up pavements and stuff), so I assume that'll help.

JNive

ive never exceeded the cap on chorus since its never been operational for long enough or given me a fast enough speed for me to get past it lol

Rabies

I had Chorus in Thurles.
Dl speed was usually 90KB/sec. Now and again it would drop to 50KB/sec. Don't know about upload, never an issue for me.
Never really downloaded much during a month. Probably about 2gig. Only used for browsing and the odd "legal" movie.

ghost26ie

from what i understand unlike eircom and BT, they current don't have the ability to track your usage.but that could change. friends of mine have it and always exceed the cap, but haven't been charged yet.

Jumpy

ghost26ie wrote:

from what i understand unlike eircom and BT, they current don't have the ability to track your usage.but that could change. friends of mine have it and always exceed the cap, but haven't been charged yet.

I really wouldnt assume that. Unless you know that specifically, dont quote it.

yayamark

hav ben looking at some threads about the poor standard of chorus broadband. all i can say is that i have it for past 4 months or so and not a thing has ever gone wrong with it. have def exceeded my download quota and not been charged:D

Vorsim

Hmmm people seem to have a good opinion of Chorus in this thread. My own limited experience with them is more mixed. Got their 6mb, 60euro per month service setup yestherday. During the 2 months plus it took to get a working connection I have been using ripwave from IBB.

With ripwave the only game I could play online was WOW (with issues), while with chorus the online gaming is much better Rainbow 6 on Xbox live with voice chat was fine as was UT2004 on the PC was getting a ping of 80-130. Torrents are also much better on chorus compared to ripwave, in one case I had an insanely fast download of 250 kb/s!!! I think this was an exception though as the norm seems to be around 40 kb/s still alot better than ripwave.

Judging from the gaming and torrent performance my Chorus connection has a pretty good upload speed. However it is the download speed that I am very disappointed with. If anything it is very similar to, if not worse then Ripwave, keeping in mind that I live in Cork city, less then 150m away from the Ripwave transmitter (always helps!). 17.00-19.00 weeknights getting 15-25 kb/s, same as Ripwave, while from 20.00-00.00 it seems to be worse then Ripwave getting less than 10 kb/s! Early in the morning I can get up to 80 kb/s with Chorus compared to 60 kb/s with Ripwave. Websites with a lot of links or banner ads load slowly, I have even been timed out on one occasion with Chorus.

This sort of performance, similar to Ripwave (less than a third of the cost of Chorus), from a so called '6mb' connection doesn't seem right to me. I am kinda of stuck with Chorus as I live in 3 story house with no phoneline or access to the roof. What I am wondering is, if I should downgrade to a slower connection, hopefully keeping a similar gaming / torrent performance while not paying Chorus as much for such poor downloads!

Id be really interested in hearing from more Chorus users, especially in the Cork city region about their experiences. Ive only been connected for 2 nights so maybe it's just a bad period the network is going through, maybe not so likely as you can find numerous quotes on the web from Chorus about mysterious 'network issues' plaguing their Cork customers going back quite a few years!

Spondulick

So you don't need a phone line for this broadband? It just comes through the TV cable, is this true?

Rabies

Yup, thats it. No phone line needed.

RangeR

Vorsim wrote:

Got their 6mb, 60euro per month service setup yestherday.

It's actually €39.99 for their 6Mb connection. As far as I know, that price has never changed. Anyway, that's a small point....

...I had a huge response typed up for this but decided to delete it after re-reading yours two or three times.

Anywho, Cork is a big problem area for Chorus. I hear they have had more outages than inages in Cork for a long time. But it's looking like they are now fixing their network but it might take up to 18 months to fully complete their network tweaks.

However, that is no excuse. They should not be selling you a package that they cannot provide, regardless of their intentions.

I've been through the wars with Chorus. When their good, they are bloody brilliant [the service, not their customer service] but when their bad, they are un-useable. From what you've said, it looks like I had it worse so I went down this route. I am in no way saying to do this, it's a last resort. I'd suggest downgrading to their lowest package until they have their network fixed and demand a refund for the bad months.

Antonius.Prime

Generally speaking chorus are kinda messing up imho in cork.
I was on IBB in the Dublin Hill Area in Cork on the Basic package, 2mb up/down, 50GB cap, €36 p/month.
I moved in with the girlfriend and got chorus BB in.
Now, the gf already had chorus for the tv.
USP, the sub-contractors for chorus, when they came to put the tv in about 9 months prevoius, put the cable for the thing across the bottom of the door.
Needless to say, everyone in the house has tripped up over it countless times, we had issues with closing the door, opening the door, you name it.
So time passes, I move up permanently, taking the beige beastie of a pc with me.
GF says, get BB in. I wasn't paying IBB €150 to 'move' my connection.
Sees guy in shopping centre, who hooks me up with chorus.
6mb down, 1/2mb up, 40GB cap, €40 p/m after 3 months of €30 p/m
Day i get it in the gf has to BEG USP to move the cable from in front of the door.
After they eventually do this i ask the pertinant questions:
Contenion ratio? 'Dunno'
Static IP of DHCP? 'Dunno'
Modem or Router UPnP? 'Dunno'

Now, while I have a Comp Sci degree, I realise most people don't. but if you were an electrician and had some guy re-wire your house and not know what a lightswitch was? Yeah, peanuts, monkeys and pay come to mind.

Anyhew,
Day we got it in, went down. Managed to DL on bittorrent 1 entire ALBUM. 60 odd mbs.
Eventually came back 2 days later and iv experienced worse speeds on torrents than i ever did on IBB, demonoid will not load 80%+ of the time and good luck googling. GOOGLE-ING.

To top it all, got a bill yesterday, for €37
I'm supposed to be paying €30 for the 1st 3 months.
Got a credit of €7 put on tho.
Wanna know how?
1. Phone 1890 20 20 29
2. Select option for sales
3. Select option for TV sales
4. When money-grabbing human comes on, ask to transfer to appropriate dept as they will not answer calls.

You will get to the relevant Dept in under 2 mins.

Now gottta save all my speed tests and ask why I'm getting sub-diallup speeds all the time.....

JNive

sub-dialup speeds ? lol

That would be due to their temporary problem that has been occuring for the past 7 months. since october it was going to be sorted in the next few weeks :-)

SQDD

While i don't mean to upset anyone on Chorus, to quote IrishTRL, When their good, they are bloody brilliant [the service, not their customer service] but when their bad, they are un-useable. I'm on the 6Meg package and when torrenting average 600kbps but this is mainly because no one else has it where I am (Cork) so I'm lucky to have a fast line, although i'm shocked that Vorsims only getting 250kbps when the service should be a theoretical 732 kbps, my ping is around 40-60 although saying all this, sometimes the service bombs out for absolutely no reason, like you could be downloading a few files, and the next thing is you can't even check your e-mail which is very frustrating. What is also disconcerning is that if you ever ring tech help, first off you hear some prerecorded message of the latest area that's having problems and that they're resolving it - not very promising!!

Vorsim

SQDD wrote:

i'm shocked that Vorsims only getting 250kbps when the service should be a theoretical 732 kbps

Yes like I said that 250kbps was an exception, that torrent had loads of seeders of the 3 or 4 other torrents I've done it was averaging 40kbps. Tried a download from a server again tonight and was getting 18kbps!! Rang Chorus tonight about it and they said they would send a technician around for a quality check, which is fair enough. The operator couldnt say if it was the same crowd that do the installations, if it is the same people all that will probably be done is that the cable will be hooked up to a little electronic box to read the signal - this was done already and I was told that I had an excellent signal.

One possible explanation is that the signal is being split for my internet and the household tv. The installation guy said that the tv would be limited to taking a quarter of the signal, later tonight when everyone else is in bed I might try hooking up my modem directly to the cable or swapping the tv and modem cable connections (might have been hooked up the wrong way around) - to see if there's an improvement.

JNive wrote:

sub-dialup speeds ? lol

That would be due to their temporary problem that has been occuring for the past 7 months. since october it was going to be sorted in the next few weeks :-)

Yeah, Im trying to repress the more cynical side of me thats saying that Chorus are trying to charge people for high speed broadband, using a piece of crap network totally unsuited to the task and when people complain they talk of vague/mysterious 'network issues', which they are 100% certain will only be temporary.

IrishTLR wrote:

It's actually €39.99 for their 6Mb connection. As far as I know, that price has never changed. Anyway, that's a small point....

A small point, but yes you are absolutely right, I could have sworn it was 60 euro . Even at 60 it was much cheaper compared to other suppliers, but 40 euro! almost seems to good to be true (see above)

yayamark

hi
ok i posted here on the 10/02/2007 and said all was perfect with chorus bb.

i'm in the limerick area
now in the intervening 7 week. not everything has been perfect. usually the connection has been pretty good, but now and again i get nothing for now reason or else i lose connection. i use a belkin 54mbs router
i often find that i have to turn off every connection at the wall wait a minute and start again. not too sure if that is chorus or the routers fault

overall i'm pleased with the service compared to some of my poor cousins service in cork

jpw

living in naas and chorus broadband was good for 20 months, but since 15 march is has gone, wasn't working for a week and since then it has been terrible. speeds never get over 1.0Mbs (pay for 6Mbs line) and currently speeds are about 0.4Mbs, last night they were 0.05Mbs speeds and 40% packet loss.

oops service gone again there, so second attemt to post.

JNive

you were probably lucky enough to have received an 'upgrade' to the latest UPC software versions, ROFLMAO

Irishdudedave

I'm on chorus broadband in cork (ballincollig) and find the service excellent. Im on the 6mb package for E40 and using blueface for my home phone service. This way I dont have to pay line rental and im saving loads...
As for the speed issues mentioned by some, I've never had them. My current stats from Irish isp test are:

Down speed: 5.92mbps
Up speed: 497kbps
QOS: 99%
Round trip time: 65ms
Max pause: 31ms

JNive

can you post a screenshot and traceroute of the blueface test utility results ( for checking the VoIP quality and jitter etc )

ricey

Whats the story with the download caps? I would 100% use
more then 40GB in a month. Im with digiweb at the moment and
the 30day rolling cap thingy is driving me off my game.

Has anyone ever been charged or heard anything from chorus for
going over there limit?

Private Joker

I was told iwas over my limit when i rang to complain, he said ui had downloaded 70 gigs and uploaded 40, really dont know how,

i'm never here at weekends and the speeds are terrible most of the time, by my estimation i had dl 20 gigs dunno about upload, I mostly use it for games and voip but i get pings of above 300 to dublin so its not really any good for either. i'm in naas and a friend of mine has it here too , when both of us are on a server our pings go crazy at exactly the same time

RangeR

Yup, Chorus gone to $hite in Naas again tonight. Seriously considering getting in my phone line again as I have no other options open to me.

rom

I downloaded 160 GB in a month and rang up cause my connection was going down. The tech support rang me back and said "Your fecking it up for everyone" . I also go a call from a manager a day latter to chill out on the downloading. I took heed. Nice to get a call though.