Broadband in Charlesland

JandS

Hi all,

Just moved into the Park, and looking for broadband - Anyone have any experience of who is good/not so good? Eircom want to make me wait 28 days to get the line connected and not prepared to wait that long -

Has anyone tried btinternet.ie?

Also, im wondering has anyone taken the wireless plunge (Clearwire etc.)

Thanks in advance

Jonathan

Perty

Don't go with Eircom. After waiting 28 days for the installation we were told that there was no room on the exchange for us and we'd have to wait until another customer cancelled their contract to take their place. We waited three weeks and we still had no service.

We cancelled our broadband contract with them and got the DSL wireless home plus package from Irish Broadband. It costs EUR35 for the wireless modem and EUR28.95 per month subscription.

They are much more efficient and helpful. We received the modem in 5 days and were connected within two weeks. We've had no problems with it.

Charlie-Bravo

BT, like eircom & ntl, have hopeless customer service. Well, not as bad as ntl cause they hold the title in bad customer service.

There are a few service providers out there, personally I use UTV Talk and Clicksilver Broadband. Their customer service is really good not that I have to use them much! They have brilliant packages available. You could check out www.callcosts.ie for other providers.

loyatemu

if you go with BT you'll still have to wait for eircom to install the line - ditto any other company offering DSL - they all just piggyback on top of eircom's service.

For wireless, I think your only option is IBB, though these guys - http://www.wicklowbroadband.com/coverage.jsp - claim to cover charlesland as well.

Jun Wan

I am looking to get the broadband for my home. I don't really want to get a phone line to go DSL. I called up Irish Broadband and they told me they don't supply any more customers in Charlesland area since their mast could not accomomdate. It seems that Digiweb is the only choice I have for wireless broadband. I have never used wireless broadband before. Can somebody give me some information about the services of wireless, especially Digiweb please? Cheers.

Eoin

Jun Wan wrote:

I am looking to get the broadband for my home. I don't really want to get a phone line to go DSL. I called up Irish Broadband and they told me they don't supply any more customers in Charlesland area since their mast could not accomomdate. It seems that Digiweb is the only choice I have for wireless broadband. I have never used wireless broadband before. Can somebody give me some information about the services of wireless, especially Digiweb please? Cheers.

Moved to existing bb thread.

macmurchu

Hi guys

I just moved into the crescent last week and am looking to get broadband installed, wondering if there is any new consensus on the best package? I was living in dublin before and had smart telecom with 1:1 contention ratio and 12Mb speed. They don't cover Wicklow and I was wondering if anyone knows anyone else who can deliver something similar?

MyPerfectCousin

I've had Eircom and UPC. Eircom is more reliable but much slower (8MB package can only reach 4MB on a good day in Charlesland).

UPC is cheaper and offers 5, 15 or 30MB down, 3MB up.

There are recent threads in the forum discussing this if you want to search for them.

DK32

Both Eircom & BT have never able to offer their full speeds due to the distance from the Greystones telephone exchange. I was a BT business customer working from home in Charlesland for nearly 5 years, the best they could offer was a very unreliable 3mb connection .

If you are looking for wireless internet, as far as I know, due to the lack of local antenna you would need to mount an external antenna to your house in order to pick up a decent signal from Bray head. You then run into the same dilemma as those who have installed satellite dishes which in most contracts signed by the house owners at point of sale, are not allowed. The management companies are perfectly within their rights to remove them as they breach the contract. In this area there are a high volume of rental homes, the home owners are finding out the hard way when a tenant gets a dish or antenna installed. I still blame the house owners as they should advise their tenants of the service options in this area.

UPC are probably your best bet in terms of reliability & connectivity options. They supply a piped mmds signal to the whole of Charlesland, in most cases if your broadband is down, so is your tv, thankfully this does not happen too often.

JAYG

I use UPC, i find it best value for money (for the speed anyway) have had it since it was released in charlesland and have only had a couple of downtimes when trying to use it.

BTW the upc broadband is not really piped. It is MMDs, they have a standard square mmds aerial installed at the top of a pole next to one of the houses in charlesland (pointing i think to the east coast antenna at bray head) this is where the service for charlesland comes from. If this aerial goes down or the transmitter at bray head then everyone’s service goes down.

The digiweb antenna are quite small and would be attached to the chimney, i have installed quite a few of them in charlesland and not heard of any complaints from the management companies. You would need a chimney, most in charlesland have fake chimneys, some concrete or block and some metal, both of these should hold a lashing wire and didigweb antenna. Depending on where you are located you may find the antenna is on the back of the chimney and not viewable from the street. A few houses in charlesland are able to have the antenna installed on the back wall and a few are not able to get the service at all due to line of site problems.

I do not know of any houses that the management companies have removed dishes or antennas. They would have to take each household to court before they could do that. By the amount of dishes on the front of houses i am guessing that they do not have the finances available to do that. Many letter over the past few years have been delivered threatening to remove dishes but i think they are hoping this will scare people to remove them. I personally dont like them on the front of houses and in most cases the dish could be located in the garden.

macmurchu

MyPerfectCousin: What was the contention ratio for the packages you had do you know??

I asked UPC did they do broadband when I got them to arrange my tv package and they said they didn't, must check it out again.

Is it just on the crescent then that the satellite dishes are not allowed? I saw on another thread somewhere that the management company wanted to take down a sky dish from a house, the owner took the management co to court on grounds of denial of civil liberties or something and the homeowner won!

Has anyone tried the eircom NGB yet? They do up to 8Mb I think and it's all yours, no sharing. Having it piped in through the DSL line would be great and then use a wireless router, that way I could get around going totally wireless?

MyPerfectCousin

Sorry, I'm not sure about contention ratios.

I would assume if you can get UPC TV in the Crescent then you can get their broadband as well.

When I was looking into changing from Eircom recently, I saw that Greystones was NOT included in the list of areas getting upgraded to their NGB at first.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

MyPerfectCousin wrote: »

Sorry, I'm not sure about contention ratios.

I would assume if you can get UPC TV in the Crescent then you can get their broadband as well.

When I was looking into changing from Eircom recently, I saw that Greystones was NOT included in the list of areas getting upgraded to their NGB at first.

TV and broadband are completely different, you can get the TV and not get broadband... TV doesn't need fiberglass cables to run

MyPerfectCousin

Louis Eager Self-deception wrote: »

TV and broadband are completely different, you can get the TV and not get broadband... TV doesn't need fiberglass cables to run

Broadband doesn't need fibre either. In the rest of Charlesland, UPC's TV and broadband/phone services are coming in through the same cable, so there must be some other explanation if it's true that the Crescent gets one but not the other.

macmurchu

Just got the UPC broadband, they did it through the MMDS so no need to go through eircom to reactivate the phone line (which has been a nightmare process so far). They said it's using fibre optics so contention ratios don't come into it.

Initially when I asked her if they did broadband there and I said the TV was via MMDS she very definitely said no, there's no way then. But she went and looked anyway and said they could. I said high speed, she said 8/15/30 Mb, I went for 30, it's €42 per month and the 15 was €32. She said I could be guaranteed 85% of the quoted speed but here's hoping