Ice Broadband steadily becoming even more terrible

kaiser sauze

mrplop wrote: »

I subscribed to Ice because they were the only game in town so it's them or nothing.

Where are my inaccurate statements about Ice?

I'm supposed to be getting 3mb broadband.
I'm lucky if I get 1mb broadband most of the time and their technical support is terrible.
No incorrect statements there at all actually.

It's strange that there aren't any threads about how good their service is -
do a search and see if you can find one...

In fact you're practically the only person in this thread that has sung their praises so far and it sounds like your connection is going south already.
Trust me, you won't be an Ice fanboy for very long if it isn't fixed.

Yesterday you said you didn't believe you were getting what you paid for - what changed?

What about dial-up? Seriously.

You stated they have a fair use policy. They don't.

I can't comment on your experience with tech support, but I have found them to be knowledgeable the few times I have rang in. [I have not needed to do so in a while, mind]

I have not sung their praises and resent you describing me as a fanboy. I have issues with the service and I plan to go into detail on my experience with them, but I do not have time right now.

I'm paying for 3Mb down and 1Mb up. When I do speedchecks, I expect to get a speed approaching that or over. I wasn't when I posted those speeds. Contentions be damned.

Xennon wrote: »

You are supposed to be getting 3Mb broadband with a contention ratio of 36:1. So at any given time you should have a minimum of 83Kbps download and 27Kbps upload. These speeds are all you are entitled to.



As I keep ranting on, this is B*LL*X. A marketing ploy to sell to people who think they are getting a service. Who regulates contention? If people sign up for a 3Mb/1Mb package, they should be entitled to get those speeds 24/7.

Hear, hear.

unhappy ice use wrote: »

I finally got through to the Technical Services Manager on Friday and he got an engineer out to my home. It is a shame that I had to take a route of escalation rather than depend on normal processes. The engineer told me that they are recruiting many more engineers to cope with their growing business – so things should improve.

Both the IDU and the radio on the mast head were replaced.

On testing speed it was 300 down and 700 up. The engineer contacted base to see what could be done. It seems like contention is the culprit.

I did a number of tests over the following hours and had variation from 300 => 2600 down - up did not vary so much – probably averaging ~ 1200 – not what it should be but acceptable for what I needed.

So I am back up and running - I will monitor the performance and implied contention. While not as happy as I have been - I am happier !! I will monitor and post further

On a further note – when I joined Ice they were the only show around – I now have choice – but nothing I read in here or elsewhere gives me any reason to believe that I would get better service from another vendor – in fact – some of the fixed line operators seem to get the most virulent of commentary.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has been an Ice customer and has managed to get a consistently better service in terms of bandwidth and technical support from another vendor.

D

Glad to hear you got sorted [kind of!]. Let us know how it fares out. Good, bad, terrible.

kaiser sauze

New speedcheck. :cool:

mrplop

kaiser sauze wrote: »

You stated they have a fair use policy. They don't.

Please look at section 2.8;

http://www.icebroadband.com/ice/content/view/41/59/

2.8
In the case where “No Download Limits Apply”, The Company reserve the right to contact users with excessive usage and request that they adhere to reasonable limits. This will be referred to as our “Fair Usage Policy”.

I going to find out exactly what's going on with your speed cap.
I'm paying exactly the same amount for the same service and yet I'm getting a tenth of the of the speed.

If your connection isn't capped at 3mb mine shouldn't be either.

kaiser sauze

mrplop wrote: »

Please look at section 2.8;

http://www.icebroadband.com/ice/content/view/41/59/



I going to find out exactly what's going on with your speed cap.
I'm paying exactly the same amount for the same service and yet I'm getting a tenth of the of the speed.

If your connection isn't capped at 3mb mine shouldn't be either.

Ok, fair enough, but if they ever try to enforce their fair use policy on me I will refer them back to the original phonecall I made while interested in the service. I asked explicitly whether they operate a fair use policy; I was told that they did not. That is what I was going on. Also, in the link provided by me earlier, there is no * leading to a condition of small print saying that a fair use policy applies. O2 have theirs like this, you are pointed to that fact that they operate a fair use policy and that policy itself is clarified in great detail. Unlike ICE's in the link you provided. I'm very disappointed in them lying to me at sale stage, but caveat emptor applies. I never did sign anything nor was I ever given a copy of T&C's upfront.

So, you're out to have other users speeds controlled so that people can be as miserable as you? How pathetic.

Face it, they don't provide adequate coverage in your area. Get them to refund you and await a new supplier. It really is as simple as that. There must surely be an internet café or a good friend who you can use their internet temporarily. I'm really surprised that there are no other suppliers in Cellbridge.

mrplop

kaiser sauze wrote: »

So, you're out to have other users speeds controlled so that people can be as miserable as you? How pathetic.

What's pathetic about wanting the same speed as someone who's paying the same amount?

Maybe you'd feel different if you were the subscriber with a poor connection while some smug idiot dismissed all the problems you were having.

Do you actually care when you're downloading 30gb in a weekend with your 7mb+ connection that the other 35 people sharing contention are getting terrible download speeds?
They're paying the same amount of money you are for a 3mb service.

People like you are the reason ISP's throttle torrents and disable Rapidshare.

I don't see why you should get preferential treatment.

All I want is a reasonable 3mb connection and if you're service ends up being 3mb thats fine with me.
The other people sharing the bandwidth you're hogging might even get a decent connection.

For all I know my service is bad because some twat has been allocated the wrong amount of bandwidth too.

kaiser sauze

mrplop wrote: »

What's pathetic about wanting the same speed as someone who's paying the same amount?

Nothing, but implying that you're going to get my cap fixed is. I am asking you straight out not to say anything to ICE about me [If they monitor this thread, as is likely, fair enough], but you should not be hinting that you're going to be alluding to another customer's account during your own dealings with a company. Fight your own battle, as I successfully did a number of months ago.

mrplop wrote: »

Maybe you'd feel different if you were the subscriber with a poor connection while some smug idiot dismissed all the problems you were having.

I'm not being smug and I resent you calling me an idiot. If I was the subscriber to a poor connection, I wouldn't be paying for it. It really is as simple as that.

mrplop wrote: »

Do you actually care when you're downloading 30gb in a weekend with your 7mb+ connection that the other 35 people sharing contention are getting terrible download speeds?
They're paying the same amount of money you are for a 3mb service.

I have no power to control what the other 35 people in my contention are getting. How do you know that the other people in my area are not getting as good a speed as I am? This is far more likely than your implication that their speed is rubbish.

mrplop wrote: »

People like you are the reason ISP's throttle torrents and disable Rapidshare.

Throttling is easily gotten around, and I, again, resent you pidgeonholing me as some evildoer who cares less about others. If any ISP I was with throttled me, I'd refuse payment until they lifted the block.

mrplop wrote: »

I don't see why you should get preferential treatment.

I'm not. I'm just in an area with good coverage. I know that you can't bring yourself to accept this.

mrplop wrote: »

All I want is a reasonable 3mb connection and if you're service ends up being 3mb thats fine with me.
The other people sharing the bandwidth you're hogging might even get a decent connection.

Again, I point out that I cannot control the distribution of the bandwidth in my contention. The network setup is different in my area than yours. It may be a reason.

mrplop wrote: »

For all I know my service is bad because some twat has been allocated the wrong amount of bandwidth too.

Go ahead and find out, just leave me out of your dealings with them.


I went and did some checking and if you were really proactive about sorting yourself out with a provider other than ICE, you'd have checked out the mobile providers. I looked for you and Vodafone and 3 both claim complete coverage in your area. O2 is a little unclear from the map, but they would be worth a call. When I took them on they took my full address and were able to tell down to the street whether my area had coverage or not.

I appreciate that 3 and, to a lesser extent, Vodafone have not got glowing reviews on this forum, but they do offer trials. You've nothing to lose?

I am assuming that you're still paying for a shambolic service? Have you threatened refusal of payment and referral to COMREG? You need to start really laying it out to them if you haven't.

Whining constantly on these forums will not achieve anything and will, more likely, be letting them off lightly.

barcaceltic

here is my latest speed check.the download speed has dropped from 658 kb/s last april to the current 87 kb/s.doubt their are many other 'broadband' suppliers in the world that can provide this kind of service which includes not replying to emails and not answering any of the 5 calls i have made to the technical phoneline.im going to be cancelling it tomorrow which is a pity because it was good enough when i first got it.

Xennon

Do you actually care when you're downloading 30gb in a weekend with your 7mb+ connection that the other 35 people sharing contention are getting terrible download speeds?
They're paying the same amount of money you are for a 3mb service.

People like you are the reason ISP's throttle torrents and disable Rapidshare.

I don't see why you should get preferential treatment.

All I want is a reasonable 3mb connection and if you're service ends up being 3mb thats fine with me.
The other people sharing the bandwidth you're hogging might even get a decent connection.

For all I know my service is bad because some twat has been allocated the wrong amount of bandwidth too.

Whhoooaaa there now a secionde. Kaiz is getting what he signed up for. You cant come down on him for that. If the company are selling an over contended service then its not his fault. If the company cant manage the bandwidth between their clients, its not his fault. How he uses his service is of no business to anyone else, after all he did sign up for a "broadband" connection. If you are not happy with the service from Ice, then I dont think bashing Kaiz for using his connection as he sees fit is moving in the right direction.

Too many ISPs are misusing the term "broadband". Selling a product which is over contended and has restrictions placed on certain traffic cannot be termed "broadband" surely, more like somewhereinthemiddleband if you ask me.

daveharnett

from <info@icecomms.ie>
to <me>

date Dec 18, 2007 4:42 PM
subject Internet Outage

Dear Dave

We are currently experiencing a fault in your area due to an equipment malfunction on the part of our main trunk network provider. We hope to have the issue resolved as early as possible but we will keep you informed if the issue is prolonged.

We thank you for your valued custom at this time, we appreciate your patience and if we can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards

---

It's probably a bad sign when i feel the need to congratulate the guy for sending me this message unprompted. Still, this kind of contact does represent a big improvement on previous outages. A step in the right direction for their customer service, i hope.

I should add that i didn't notice any outage yesterday, so maybe it was sent to me in error :rolleyes:

madboggar

Ice Speedtest

maninaskirt

Here's my best one for a few days, earlier it was 8kbps down and 31kbps up!!!
Broadband!? Surely this can't be sold as Broadband, my neighbour's speed is just as bad, I'm only 200mts from a brand new base station.....I can almost read the writing on the transmitter...

Longrangedriver

My speeds are so low that I can't even upload, one email this morning took 8 minutes.

Last test shows 91kilobits per second down/291kilobits up.

They're having a laugh.

fl1979ie

Was on the phone to them this morning. they seem to thing there is a problem with the transmitter..... lets see what happens.

Longrangedriver

fl1979ie wrote: »

Was on the phone to them this morning. they seem to thing there is a problem with the transmitter..... lets see what happens.

I've been redialing since 9am, and nothing.

maninaskirt

I've been on the phone all morning since 9am too, tried all options too, 1 for sales, 2-tech support, 3-accounts, no answer, left numerous voicemails, no reply, loads of email- you guessed it, no reply......what transmitter? all of them? As the one longerange and myself are on is brand new and there is only 5 users in a small village in Kildare.

fl1979ie

I am in celbridge. but dont know what transmitter they are talking about. still no improvement, although this all seem to have started on Christmass eve when it went down for 3-4 hours.

maninaskirt

Hi fl1979ie, same as me, it went down christmas eve, was running at 2900kbps all week before that, then nothing for a few hours, then this terrible service since, I'm on a different mast to you so it sounds like the usual spin they give that's been mentioned loads of times in this thread.....I hope they fix it soon as my exchange it not enabled yet, although it looks like next month though, i never thought I would say that I'll be glad to see Eircon!! lol

fl1979ie

Hi just off the phone to them. they admit there is a problem with 3 areas in Kildare, and it wont be fixed till the 2 Jan as there is no one able to go out.

MrVostro

Ours speed has been fine since i last posted.
Pings are rubbish and there are regular drops in service for a few seconds at least once an hour.

VOIP is impossible because of these dropouts and bad pings, but at least the speed is up there where it should be.

lol5605

I only use Ice mostly for gaming, it's usually well..just about playable. I have a so called 3 Meg connection that they provide. They have always been crap, bad service, and telling you lies. Anyhow on average on a week day i download at 100Kbp/s if I am lucky. But ever since Christmas Eve at about 2am I think it was its been just....a joke I can't do anything. I'm downloading at about 2-6Kbp/s and playing games is just a no no..anyhow heres my speed check doesn't say it's Ice for some reason but it is.



Edit: And that's at 1am in the morning its A LOT worse during the evening can't even load a web page..

bigpaddy2004

you could very well be on their redundency backhaul link if the main one went down.

maninaskirt

Hi, bigpaddy is most probably correct here, as ICE slowband went down on christmas eve and ever since then myself and a lot of others are having the same issues, by any chance are you in Co.Kildare? As according to their tech support guys three mast have faults in Kildare and it will be fixed on Jan 2nd as their call out guys are on hols until then....before that I was getting 2900kbs down and 950ish up all the time, with 2 xbox's and a PC all using the connection at the same time with no issues, although the long pings do have drawbacks on COD4 online for example, it made me cannon fodder! lol. I hope they fix it then as it's really unuseable at the moment, as soon as my exchange is enabled I'm off to BT's 3MB package....although no ISp seems to be hassle free....

lol5605

Yea I'm in the Kildare area, in Maynooth.

madboggar

I am here in kilcock and the service is terrible, i think the time has come to go back to eircom, imagine an ISP not having a engineer over the last few weeks.. I do not think that is good enough

maninaskirt

Well madboggar I wish I had that option, the good thing about ICE is no download cap, but it's never up long enough to reach any normal cap anyway, also you are correct about the maintenance staff " missing " during the holidays as they don't see our issues with their slowband being an emergency, but I'm sure I'm not alone whn it comes to Christmas day and my son opens his new xbox membership and games and can't get online is an emergency to me, although the money for for slowband was removed from my account even though I was assured I won't be charged for this month.....the bigger problem is not enough of us are going to leave them as some people even call vodafone's GPRS 50k service as broadband as all they do is email and ryanair....even more frighteneing is the fact that they have no radio's left due to the demand that they can't keep up with!! As soon as DSL is available to me, off I go, it worries me that ICE even make Eircon look good......almost impossible!

madboggar

Well i am the same, microsoft have brought out a new service to download movies through the xbox live service.. I laugh when i think i can hardly download emails at the moment at home..

madboggar

Good News i have signed up to Eircom ... Happy Days.. 2mb Home plus package.. Tried to contact ice to cancel my service but no replys from anyone

maninaskirt

Good news for you madbogggar, I'm sick with jealousy! lol. As soon as my exchange is enabled off I go, I've only been with ICE for a short period and already I'm fed up, but I will have to exercise my consumer rights, not looking forward to a battle with a company so un-organised to get out of my contract, but I have all my telephone bills with loads of phone calls to them, kept all email sent to them and also have all the speed tests done saved, so I can prove to anyone that I have not been getting the goods that I pay for, we just need loads of others to do the same, it's the only way they might listen. Also I'm very surprised you can't contact anyone to cancel, as they always get back to you, NOT! Just remember and cancel your DD with the bank, that will make them contact you! Possibly! lol. Good luck with your DSL and hopefully I will be the same before the end of next month........it's a shame too as ICE could have an excellent service that would prevent people giving money to Eircon but they don't really want to keep customers happy, only interested in getting our money.

mrplop

Still crap as of 1.30 on the 2/1/08



It amazes me their business is so brisk they've run out of radios - they can't even properly facilitate their existing customers.
Hopefully the one happy customer that's posted in this thread won't convince anyone to sign up to this dire service.

For anyone thinking about it you could compare it to a manufacturer producing 999 defective items and one perfect item - the person that ends up with the perfect item is going to rant and rave.
Unfortunately the other 999 people that listen to said ranting and raving will end up with a defective product.

Ice broadband is TERRIBLE.

Don't let anyone convince you otherwise - the MAJORITY of their customers are receiving a truly awful service with little to no support.

delakota

I posted here maybe two months ago after an extended period of sub-dialup connections and other problems, which was resolved at least enough to allow me to overlook the fact I still was not receiving the package I was being charged for every month. The connection was borderline adequate at best, and I was pretty much too busy at work to waste more hours of my life being patronised by idiots on the phone who in reality are more concerned about stacking up 'resolved calls' on their spreadsheets than they are about whether they feed me a bunch of crap about radio units, bad weather and interference from nearby alien spacecraft.

The facts are now undeniably clear to me, and I think to everyone else who's unfortunate enough to still be beholden to this utter piece-of-**** excuse for a telecommunications company for internet access. This is NEVER going to improve to a point where you don't pinch yourself in disbelief everytime you manage to send a plain email in less than 30 seconds, or don't get your arse handed to you on a plate in World of Warcraft because your latency registers in 4 digits, or you can browse Amazon without needing to go and wash your car while waiting for the phuckin images to load.

I've run a preliminary line test with Imagine, and passed, even though the copper into the house is pretty creaky and far from ideal. If I can get hooked up with a basic DSL line, I won't look back. Because nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, can be worse than this. Fran Rooney - if you and your assembly of unscrupulous chequebook monkeys are reading this (although I realise literacy might be a stretch of the imagination here) - you're all a bunch of cocks. Of course, if you're trying to read this from an Ice connection, you won't get to actually see it until Easter, by which time I'll have long moved to a true broadband service and hopefully so will the majority of other folks who don't like having their nipples twisted for 40 euro a month by a bunch of bull****ters with a company charter.