Ice Broadband steadily becoming even more terrible

BigglesMcGee

Well, Eircom is a bust so it looks like im stuck with the Ice cowboys. Sub dial-up speeds as usual.

I have to start a complaint with Ice every time i want to contact them. I believe that anyone who cant get through to Ice should do this. No harm in them having a deservedly prominent place on Comregs radar.

speaking of Comreg, am i imagining things. Everytime ive spoken to them on the phone its an Indian person and i can hear nothing but Indian accents on phones in the background. They arent outsourced are they?

Sellphone

bartificer wrote: »

Their phone number is on their website. I just rang that and they started a case history for me which I kept updated so they had the full story. TBH I'm not sure you need to actually contact ComReg, just telling ICE that you are and asking for a reference number for your case will probably work just as well.

Bart.

I started the complaint process yesterday with ComReg, and let ICE know that I had also. Also advised ICE that monthly payment is being pulled.:mad:

BigglesMcGee

Ice "broadband" is officially slower than dial-up now.

Time to pull the DD again. Its the only thing that gets them to contact me.

Emails just bounce back.

BigglesMcGee

Sellphone wrote: »

I started the complaint process yesterday with ComReg, and let ICE know that I had also. Also advised ICE that monthly payment is being pulled.:mad:

Make sure to ask Comreg what they will be doing. Tell them you want the service you pay for and are not interested in terminating your contract unless they get you BB elsewhere, so you would like them to REGULATE.

You know what COMREG will do ---- NOTHING.

PS - I'm told the prime time program is going ahead. They have now installed monitoring equipment in several Ice customers houses to gather data for the show. They are also going to focus on the uselessness of Comreg too.

daveharnett

BigglesMcGee wrote: »

Make sure to ask Comreg what they will be doing. Tell them you want the service you pay for and are not interested in terminating your contract unless they get you BB elsewhere, so you would like them to REGULATE.

You know what COMREG will do ---- NOTHING.

PS - I'm told the prime time program is going ahead. They have now installed monitoring equipment in several Ice customers houses to gather data for the show. They are also going to focus on the uselessness of Comreg too.

"Please note that there is no minimum service level for broadband, but we can still act on your behalf to see if speeds can be improved." --Comreg (by email)

Pretty much an admission that they are powerless. I guess that they will politely ask Ice if they wouldn't mind improving their service pretty please?

thebman

daveharnett wrote: »

"Please note that there is no minimum service level for broadband, but we can still act on your behalf to see if speeds can be improved." --Comreg (by email)

Pretty much an admission that they are powerless. I guess that they will politely ask Ice if they wouldn't mind improving their service pretty please?

If the service is below the agreed minimum service as set out in your contract (ie. below the speed once contention ratio is applied) then ICE are in breech of the service they said they would provide and are breaching your agreement with them and you are entitled to stop payment and cancel service before 12 months because they broke the contract.

I imagine ICE are working on 1:40 contention ratio like all the rip off operators.
If that is the case on their 3Mbps package, if your speeds are below 76.8KB/s then you are entitled to cancel.

daveharnett

brim4brim wrote: »

If the service is below the agreed minimum service as set out in your contract (ie. below the speed once contention ratio is applied) then ICE are in breech of the service they said they would provide and are breaching your agreement with them and you are entitled to stop payment and cancel service before 12 months because they broke the contract.

I imagine ICE are working on 1:40 contention ratio like all the rip off operators.
If that is the case on their 3Mbps package, if your speeds are below 76.8KB/s then you are entitled to cancel.

That's the strange thing. All of the online speed test thingies show speeds ranging from 120Kb/s to 700Kb/s (depending on time of day, alignment of constallations etc) with pings of 70-150ms, and no major packet loss. This means that they could blame contention if they are called up on it. These speeds are achievable for P2P programs on my connection. This is a lot less than i pay for, but i would almost tolerate it given that there are no competitors available to me.

The thing is that despite the figures above, normal web browsing feels sub-dialup - up to 5 minutes for a page to load (regardless of what DNS i use).

shanekeogh

I think it's safe to say, that we all now know why they call themselves ICE broadband...because it's frozen on crap speeds.

thebman

daveharnett wrote: »

That's the strange thing. All of the online speed test thingies show speeds ranging from 120Kb/s to 700Kb/s (depending on time of day, alignment of constallations etc) with pings of 70-150ms, and no major packet loss. This means that they could blame contention if they are called up on it. These speeds are achievable for P2P programs on my connection. This is a lot less than i pay for, but i would almost tolerate it given that there are no competitors available to me.

The thing is that despite the figures above, normal web browsing feels sub-dialup - up to 5 minutes for a page to load (regardless of what DNS i use).

Have you checked for packet loss?

BigglesMcGee

brim4brim wrote: »

Have you checked for packet loss?

Packet loss can be anywhere form 5% to 75% and speeds are almost always sub dialup. Certainly nowhere near usable broadband.

Ice are just taking the mickey and Comreg are in on the mickey taking too.

Hank Scorpio

just quit at least dialup is "stable" xD

barnicles

Is anybody happy with Ice

BigglesMcGee

barnicles wrote: »

Is anybody happy with Ice

Only Ice employees (and even then just the ones paid to come on boards).

Did you hear - Ice Broadband are changeing their name -

to "Ice sub Dial-Up"

BigglesMcGee

Tonights Ice speed from speedtest.ie.
Believe it or not its better than last night.



Download speed 172 Kbps (socket test)
Upload speed 77 Kbps (socket test)
Quality of service 71 %
Maximum delay 507 ms
Round trip time 59 ms
Upstream jitter 0.6 ms
Upstream packet loss 0 %
Upstream packet order 100 %
Upstream discards 0 %

tor1

What is package loss?

lol5605

barnicles wrote: »

Is anybody happy with Ice

mines been grand for the past month or so without any real probelms had a 2 hours bad spike about 2 weeks ago that was it, getting less then 100 ms in wow with is really good. i'm in maynooth any others net been good there?

i dont work for ice either you can check my posts ive had a fare few rants here.

daveharnett

I registered a complaint with comreg on friday. Today, Ice contacted me, turned down my contention ratio, and apparently they are sending an engineer to my cell tomorrow. I'm seeing the best prime-time speeds i've had in six weeks

tor1 wrote: »

What is package loss?

Packet loss is the % of data packets which go missing in the network between you and the internet server. Network protocols will cause the packets to be re-sent, no information is actually lost, but high packet loss can cause the speed you see to be reduced quite a bit.

Agent J

lol5605 wrote: »

mines been grand for the past month or so without any real probelms had a 2 hours bad spike about 2 weeks ago that was it, getting less then 100 ms in wow with is really good. i'm in maynooth any others net been good there?

i dont work for ice either you can check my posts ive had a fare few rants here.

Ha!

Look up a blog by bart busschots and the section on ICE broadband.

I was with themmyself in maynooth a for while before i got rid of them for their constant terrible service.

I wonder though if enough people leave them does that mean numbers go down so service gets half decent again?

BigglesMcGee

Has anyone got through to the cowboys in the last week?

What did they say?

mrplop

I started this thread and it's a shame to see it still going after 47 pages.
By the look of things they're never going to improve!

The amount of advertising hoardings I've seen for Ice is amazing - I figure they're replacing the people that leave with new unsuspecting customers.

Then the cycle continues...

My advice is find a different provider if one is available - it's what I did and I haven't looked back since, just give up while you still have your sanity.

They're not worth the hassle and the phone bills.

thebman

Ice is like a box of choclates, you never know what your gonna get!

I think word of mouth will spread about them. I know I've warned everyone I know off them at this stage. One of my friends has them and they are a disaster in Maynooth.

Its not even that its a poor service all the time, just eratic and you can't depend on it to actually be there at all, let alone be the speeds your paying for.

Shockingly bad, this is on a simliar level of poor service to Clearwire and I don't think anyone ever expected another operator to be that sh*t.

BigglesMcGee

I beg to differ.
You know exactly what you're going to get with Ice.
Sh!te service and ignorance to your complaints.

Tonights speed : Worse than dialup as usual.
Cant get through as usual.


Speed test statistics

---

Download speed: 47496 bps
Upload speed: 15864 bps
Quality of service: 17 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: HTTP
Maximum download pause: 1959 ms
Average download pause: 404 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 22 ms
Average round trip time to server: 1068 ms

VoIP test statistics

---

Jitter: you --> server: 0.8 ms
Jitter: server --> you: off
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.4 %
Packet loss: server --> you: off
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported VoIP lines: 0
Estimated MOS score: 2.1

JD1763

I had two connections with Ice (stressing the had). One was on the Lispople mast and I would say the connection there was fine. The Ice receiver crapped out once and it took them 10 days to replace it (threatening to pull the DD got them moving that occasion). Otherwise it was a fairly reasonable down/up speed with pings good enough for gaming. It took 2 months to transfer this to my dads account - they tried to claim we hadn't sent the mandate in - total BS. This was finally resolved this week or so they claim.

However, I moved to Ashbourne and given the fact I was satisfied with Ice from using them for 2 years at my parents I got them in again. And so the nightmare began, speeds were absolutely atrocious all the time - pings through the roof, unable to load any webpages. Loads of support calls and emails with no responses. After 30-40mins waits arranged for engineers to come out twice to look at it and was told that the setup at my house was fine it was an issue at the basestation. Apparently this issue was being worked on (solidly for over 2 months with no improvement- go figure). From day one the connection in Ashbourne was barely usable - dial up would have been faster.

They also claimed to have improved bandwidth in Ashbourne and that only a few users were having problems (more lies none of my neighbours connections were any better). The second engineer came out and despite being there for 40mins the speed never went above 200kb/s. I lost the rag a bit and he phoned someone at the centre - hey presto 2000kb/s. He left and that evening speeds were back to 100kb to 200kb. At that point I gave them a week to sort it out and contact me (did this by email) - they never contacted me so I cancelled. Got Eircom in and haven't looked back - major improvement in service.

Despite cancelling over a month ago the Ice connection is still active and the equipment on my roof. They tried to bill me this month - phoned them after the usual 30min wait got through to someone who claimed I hadnt cancelled (I have a copy of the mail) - at which point they said 'oh wait you have actually cancelled'.

Yesterday they phoned me asking was I happy with the service!!! Again usual rigmarole - 'ive cancelled', 'no you havent', 'yes i have, i have a copy of the mail i sent to every email address on your website' - 'oh thats right you have cancelled' -aaaaarrrgh!!

Worst company ever - they're beyond a joke with useless staff, a bad attitude and an even worse service. Use anyone else but this shower of absolute robbers, con artists and flat out liars!

Sellphone

JD1763 wrote: »

I had two connections with Ice (stressing the had). One was on the Lispople mast and I would say the connection there was fine. The Ice receiver crapped out once and it took them 10 days to replace it (threatening to pull the DD got them moving that occasion). Otherwise it was a fairly reasonable down/up speed with pings good enough for gaming. It took 2 months to transfer this to my dads account - they tried to claim we hadn't sent the mandate in - total BS. This was finally resolved this week or so they claim.

However, I moved to Ashbourne and given the fact I was satisfied with Ice from using them for 2 years at my parents I got them in again. And so the nightmare began, speeds were absolutely atrocious all the time - pings through the roof, unable to load any webpages. Loads of support calls and emails with no responses. After 30-40mins waits arranged for engineers to come out twice to look at it and was told that the setup at my house was fine it was an issue at the basestation. Apparently this issue was being worked on (solidly for over 2 months with no improvement- go figure). From day one the connection in Ashbourne was barely usable - dial up would have been faster.

They also claimed to have improved bandwidth in Ashbourne and that only a few users were having problems (more lies none of my neighbours connections were any better). The second engineer came out and despite being there for 40mins the speed never went above 200kb/s. I lost the rag a bit and he phoned someone at the centre - hey presto 2000kb/s. He left and that evening speeds were back to 100kb to 200kb. At that point I gave them a week to sort it out and contact me (did this by email) - they never contacted me so I cancelled. Got Eircom in and haven't looked back - major improvement in service.

Despite cancelling over a month ago the Ice connection is still active and the equipment on my roof. They tried to bill me this month - phoned them after the usual 30min wait got through to someone who claimed I hadnt cancelled (I have a copy of the mail) - at which point they said 'oh wait you have actually cancelled'.

Yesterday they phoned me asking was I happy with the service!!! Again usual rigmarole - 'ive cancelled', 'no you havent', 'yes i have, i have a copy of the mail i sent to every email address on your website' - 'oh thats right you have cancelled' -aaaaarrrgh!!

Worst company ever - they're beyond a joke with useless staff, a bad attitude and an even worse service. Use anyone else but this shower of absolute robbers, con artists and flat out liars!

This is almost a carbon copy of my experience.A week ago spoke to a guy who miraculously got me back to 1.5 Mb down load, which is fine, then over the week end it started to go do to as low as 18 kbps!.Lispopple is being blamed, work starting this week etc. etc etc.Had an engineer out a few weeks ago, twice on the same day, won't even bore you with that, suffice to say it was a complete comedy of errors. Only game in town unfortunatley.

BigglesMcGee

Sellphone wrote: »

This is almost a carbon copy of my experience.A week ago spoke to a guy who miraculously got me back to 1.5 Mb down load, which is fine, then over the week end it started to go do to as low as 18 kbps!.Lispopple is being blamed, work starting this week etc. etc etc.Had an engineer out a few weeks ago, twice on the same day, won't even bore you with that, suffice to say it was a complete comedy of errors. Only game in town unfortunatley.

Heard the same crap when i got through eventually. Lispopple too.
The guy on the phone, who this time was sound told me the following.
Engineer calls to your house. He jacks up your priority, shows you its fixed. He goes to the next house. Jacks up their priority, pushing you down. And so on. After only about 5 visits you're speed is back to the stone age again.

Then they tell you that they are working on the mast. And after that you go through the whole process again.

I was on to Comreg and told them about this and they said they are putting a case specifically against Ice together due to the massive amount of complaints. What this means, i dont know, but everone with ice issues register it with Comreg. Pile on the pressure.

bartificer

BigglesMcGee wrote: »

Engineer calls to your house. He jacks up your priority, shows you its fixed. He goes to the next house. Jacks up their priority, pushing you down. And so on. After only about 5 visits you're speed is back to the stone age again.

Then they tell you that they are working on the mast. And after that you go through the whole process again.

The day I FINALLY got an engineer to come and remove their junk from my roof the guy was STILL trying to tell me that once they were finished working on my mast everything would be fantastic. I actually think he believed his own BS. I had to explain to him that the first time I was spun that tale I believed it, now that we were on about the fifth "it will be fixed in two weeks when the new mast is installed" tale I had ceased to believe a word an ICE support agent told me.

Also, here in Maynooth things were so bad that even when the engineer made his call to up my priority (which he did in Polish so I couldn't understand) that it only went up to about 25% speed. He was surprised that I was not happy about this!

I really hope ComReg get their finger out on this one. I'd love to see them file a class action lawsuit (do they exist in Ireland?) against ICE on behalf of all the people with complaints.

Bart.

lol5605

Yes it was too good to be through! Came back from ****** and it stated to get worse and worse and now it's like this



Odd, whats the problem now how am I managing pings like that with near dial up speeds, can't manage to load a video on Youtube but I'm still pulling pings under 200ms in WoW witch is strage, so any reason for pings like that and such sh!t DL/upload speeds?

Hank Scorpio

yes because ping time isnt relient on download/upload speeds(Well upload can be important in online gaming to a extent)

Btw 200 ms pings is 56k standard

alansweeney100

I have finally cancelled my ice broadband package. My 'gaming line' has been sub-dial up speeds for the last month.
Had a 'engineer' out last week and by the time he had finished my speeds were even worse!
I don't know how long they will take to respond and get my mast off my roof, I'll keep u's posted. I rang my bank and told them to give them c*nts Sentinial nothing, they're looking for €7.50 extra off me cause the funds weren't in the account when they tried to withdraw them.
What a nightmare, does anyone know a good ISP in Balbriggan? I'll never get a ISP without properly researching ever again.

BigglesMcGee

Ice told a neighbor that they ave guys from Alvarion coming over to show them how to operate the equipment. Maybe they should have done this at te beginning :rolleyes: