Digiweb Phone Service

dag_t_on_tv

Hello Boarders...

My confidence in Digiweb's telephony service is rapidly on the wane. The latest outage in service once again does not allow me to dial out even though I can receive calls. I've had to call or email tech support 5-6 times. I've just gotten off the phone from them where I tried to get answers to a number of questions.

1. Can I have confidence in the service if dialling out is such a lottery?
Ans: They couldn't guarantee a 100% dial out capability, philosophically it was pointed out to me that nobody not even eircom was able to guarantee the same. Accepting the philosophical certitude that nothing in life could be guaranteed I asked them what percentage they would put on their level of service seeing that I had 5-6 dial out outages since I signed up last December. They couldn't give me that figure either. They could however understand me having "little confidence in the service" and that considering I wasn't paying line rental I should maybe accept these outages as part of the price for a low cost service!

2. Once this latest outage was addressed I asked could I have confidence in the service?
Ans: They couldn't guarantee against further outages, in fact they couldn't guarantee that the rate of outages would decrease. A case for growing confidence in the service was not mentioned. The engineers were however endeavouring to tackle all issues including the current one, by the way all the outages were caused by unique problems and not one a persistent one.

3. Could I recommend Digiweb's telephone service?
Ans: No

4. Is their telephone service a substitute to an eircom landline?
Ans: No, they agreed with me on that one.

5. Will they get their act together to be in a position to offer their telephony service as a substitute to an eircom line?
Ans: They couldn't tell me. For a "growing company" ( I cannot understand what kind or why that excuse was made ) they've sowed more doubts than I had before I rang.

To clarify, I've had few no problems with the broadband service, and people have been able to dial in. I am just wondering about the times where I did not dial out and where the service was down, that could be a very large amount of outage time.

I was hoping that Digiweb was going to be the company to stick one in eircom's eye, I now doubt that. They should qualify their advertisments for their telephony service as an unreliable service, "growing company" and all as they are.

Death to monoplies!

Dag T

delllat

Dont tell me all this,I have digiweb comming tomorrow to install my broadband

dag_t_on_tv

Their broadband service is fine ( I have Metro lite) but unfotunately the phone service can't be relied on, it seems to be an afterthought, buyer beware!

tak

I can't say that there won't be problems but there are 2 consolations -
1) The cost of Blueface is about 1/3 that of Digiweb.
http://www.digiweb.ie/pdf/phone.pdf
http://www.blueface.ie/rates/rates.aspx
2) If there is a problem with your ATA or the network-VoIP interface you can use the Softphone option.

McSandwich

As a digiweb metro user, I've long since given up on their phone service and switched to blueface. The Internet part of the service works without problems..

pjproby

on the three rock mast with their metro service-had to abandon blueface because of quality issues, switched to their metro phone service, had to abandon that for the same reason, now back with eircom for the phone service.
hat said their broadband service is very reliable.

watty

If you have a problem with the phone service you should contact Digiweb support. It should be perfect. A few handset models are not compatible, and there can be issues with phones wired or intended for UK market.

dub45

watty wrote:

If you have a problem with the phone service you should contact Digiweb support. It should be perfect. A few handset models are not compatible, and there can be issues with phones wired or intended for UK market.

The poster has contacted Digiweb's support at least 5 times with no satisfaction.

Given that Digiweb apparently advertise a full telephone service on their website (well at least there is no mention of half a phone service!) have you tried contacting the ASAI?

penfold944

Bear in mind that any VOIP solution is a supplementary service. Unless you can provide power remotely to the phone ( ie from the exchange via -48v ) you cannot guarantee service all the time. Therefore anyone providing telephony services over cable, wireless, dsl etc etc can only give a supplementary service.

The switching infrastructure ( be it TDM legacy exchanges or soft switches such as SIP ones ) is categorised based on availability. Anyone providing packet based telephony services should be using switches capable of providing similar levels of switching service to traditional TDM based switches.

The particular problem on Monday with Digiweb was to do with the outgoing calls on a gateway. it was resolved as quickly as it could be without affecting a lot of other users.

I'm sorry that you feel you are geting a poor voice service from Digiweb, but previous issues with capacity were resolved about 2 months back. This has been the first problem since then - and was unrelated.

If this was a problem with a backhaul link out of an exchange, or a problem with your phone line would you be jumping up and down as much ?

As regards the 'growing company' statement, there is some truth in that. None of these solutions are turnkey and as new services get delivered there is always going to be a bedding in period. I wonder how reliable the telephony service was back in Alexander Graham Bells day ? I'm sure they had a few growing pains too...

dub45

penfold944 wrote:

Bear in mind that any VOIP solution is a supplementary service. Unless you can provide power remotely to the phone ( ie from the exchange via -48v ) you cannot guarantee service all the time. Therefore anyone providing telephony services over cable, wireless, dsl etc etc can only give a supplementary service.

The switching infrastructure ( be it TDM legacy exchanges or soft switches such as SIP ones ) is categorised based on availability. Anyone providing packet based telephony services should be using switches capable of providing similar levels of switching service to traditional TDM based switches.

The particular problem on Monday with Digiweb was to do with the outgoing calls on a gateway. it was resolved as quickly as it could be without affecting a lot of other users.

I'm sorry that you feel you are geting a poor voice service from Digiweb, but previous issues with capacity were resolved about 2 months back. This has been the first problem since then - and was unrelated.

If this was a problem with a backhaul link out of an exchange, or a problem with your phone line would you be jumping up and down as much ?

As regards the 'growing company' statement, there is some truth in that. None of these solutions are turnkey and as new services get delivered there is always going to be a bedding in period. I wonder how reliable the telephony service was back in Alexander Graham Bells day ? I'm sure they had a few growing pains too...

Does the Digiweb site anywhere inform potential customers that its phone service is a 'supplementary service'? and are you saying that Digiweb considers that its phone service is at the Alexander Grahamam Bell stage?

Also does the Digiweb site anywhere state 'we are a growing company please bear with us?'

You seem almost to be on the verge of saying that customers should be glad to have Digiweb and should be prepared to put up with shortfalls in service??

penfold944

dub45 wrote:

Does the Digiweb site anywhere inform potential customers that its phone service is a 'supplementary service'? and are you saying that Digiweb considers that its phone service is at the Alexander Grahamam Bell stage?

Also does the Digiweb site anywhere state 'we are a growing company please bear with us?'

You seem almost to be on the verge of saying that customers should be glad to have Digiweb and should be prepared to put up with shortfalls in service??

Well I'm sorry that I tried to explain the difference between having a telephony service that requires power to operate and one that doesnt.

And no - you are just being pedantic for the sake of it.. What I'm saying is that carrier level packet based telephony solutions are still very new technology and that they take a little time to bed in REGARDLESS OF THE PROVIDER.

To be honest, I thought I gave a decent response to the original statement and you have chosen to ignore this and make childish and simplistic remarks.

Just look on the forums and you will see that all providers are trying to deliver a good service to their customers but falling short on occasions. Service outages are a fact of life - and are just as likely to happen with Eircom and their traditional PSTN services.

dub45

penfold944 wrote:

Well I'm sorry that I tried to explain the difference between having a telephony service that requires power to operate and one that doesnt.

And no - you are just being pedantic for the sake of it.. What I'm saying is that carrier level packet based telephony solutions are still very new technology and that they take a little time to bed in REGARDLESS OF THE PROVIDER.

To be honest, I thought I gave a decent response to the original statement and you have chosen to ignore this and make childish and simplistic remarks.

Just look on the forums and you will see that all providers are trying to deliver a good service to their customers but falling short on occasions. Service outages are a fact of life - and are just as likely to happen with Eircom and their traditional PSTN services.

The customer is not interested in your technical jargon and it is of absolutely no consequence when a paid for service is not available.

He or she wants a phone service that is reliable -if Digiweb cannot provide that then the website should clearly state that it is a supplementary service. It does not do this as far as I can see.

But you cannot make up your mind what you want to say apparently?

Are you seriously claiming now in spite of your previous references to the growing company syndrome and the limitations of the technology that Digiweb are using and the implication that the paying customer should put up with this that the Digiweb phone service is as reliable as Eircom's telephone service?

watty

I know of lots of people who have had eirom fixed line problems. It took eircom FIVE years to fix my phone line.

From http://www.digiweb.ie/broadband_metro_faq.asp?i=80&i2=81&i6=98&zzz=hm#q11

Do I have to cancel my eircom line / move my eircom line etc to get the service?
No - this service is delivered using our next generation wireless network – it has nothing to do with your current phone line. If however you port your existing number you will have no need for your landline and therefore need to cancel it to avoid paying unnecessary charges.

Can I make calls to 112 / 999?
Yes – this has been tested. Please remember though that your EMTA requires electricity to work. If there is a total power failure in your home/business then the phone service would also stop working.

Is your voice service a standard VoIP service?
No - Our voice service follows the principles outlined by cable labs for Packet voice. It is a PATS replacement technology and our network is optimised to guarantee voice quality.

Can I change to another provider using CPS (carrier pre select)?
No - this is currently not supported.

What happens if I have no Dial tone or cant make a call?
Have a look at the front of the modem. If your phone is on the hook you should see a steady green light for “Tel1” and or “Tel2”

I use a cheap €74 UPS (Trust from Maplin). It runs my Metro radio, Thomson Modem, DECT phone, Netgear Gigabit switch and DLink Router/WiFi, so the phone & laptops still work during our frequent power cuts. I actually have other gear on UPS too and a back up generator, but we live in an almost rural area.

Anyone without a mobile phone (and over 30% of households have NO phone line) should consider €50 to €70 on their system for a UPS.
110% of people have mobile phones.

Apart from faulty lines I have had also service outages on eircom, though infrequent.

I think the website makes it clear that this sevice is more than a "Blueface/Vonage/Skype" service but not traditional analogue PSTN.

There may be over 400,000 DECT phones on eircom lines now. None of these work during a power cut.

If there are still teething problems with Metro phone, the best why to get them resolved is users contacting support with their problems. When Metro 1st started in Limerick I was one of earliest people on it and phone service was erratic and I had quality problems. One problem was an incompatible Siemens handset supplied by Chorus.
For a long while now we have been getting better audio quality than we used to get on eircom. Strangley a €10 phone was perfect. I've tried 3 brands of DECT and they are same audio quality as on a good fixed line. (The base needs to be about 30cm away from any other electronics or you get a buzz on DECT).

lucernarian

I wouldn't blame Digiweb for pointing out eircom's problems. They're a lot more serious and negligent than Digiweb's. For example, look on Aertel this morning. And the state of their local loop infrastructure in certain areas is laughable.

On the basis of one very unhappy customer, I would not expect Digiweb to change their advertising strategy. Though the issue of modems is a widespread one, and pointing out that it is a voice-only service which uses different technology to eircom's PSTN would be appropriate.

And Dub45, I think it's pretty clear that he says that service outages are just as likely with eircom, as opposed to saying the line does everything that an eircom line does. No need for stupid questions and reading into what isn't there...

watty

principles outlined by cable labs for Packet voice

I don't think that sounds like eircom. Sounds more like UPC.

dub45

To_be_confirmed wrote:

I wouldn't blame Digiweb for pointing out eircom's problems. They're a lot more serious and negligent than Digiweb's. For example, look on Aertel this morning. And the state of their local loop infrastructure in certain areas is laughable.

On the basis of one very unhappy customer, I would not expect Digiweb to change their advertising strategy. Though the issue of modems is a widespread one, and pointing out that it is a voice-only service which uses different technology to eircom's PSTN would be appropriate.

And Dub45, I think it's pretty clear that he says that service outages are just as likely with eircom, as opposed to saying the line does everything that an eircom line does. No need for stupid questions and reading into what isn't there...

It is not on the basis of one unhappy customer that I would expect Digiweb to change their advertising strategy it is on the basis of honesty.

In their defence for poor service Digiweb are claiming that the phone is a supplementary service it is not marketed or sold as such. In fact Digiweb have quite a lot of stuff on their site about line rental etc etc. If Digiweb were honest with customers and told them what they were getting as a phone service then there could be no complaints. They are not being honest its as simple as that. No matter what faults Eircom may have with their service they are irrelevant to the point that Digiweb are not being honest about what they are selling.

Its pretty clear that he says that outages are just as likely with Eircom as Digieweb

Service outages are a fact of life - and are just as likely to happen with Eircom and their traditional PSTN services.

Thats all I was pointing out I was not reading anything else into it you are the one who is doing that.

dag_t_on_tv

Having read a couple of replies here it seems we have gone off point regarding the core problem which is the inability of Digiweb to guarantee a level of service which I can reasonably expect from a competitor such as eircom. Their advertising states that with Metro you can get broadband and phone for just E19.95 per month. In light of my experience that should be amended to read broadband and "sometimes" the phone for just E19.95 per month.

I have as stated I have no problem with their broadband service, it was down just once for a short time. Their response to queries is generally good, they seem to have an eager and young workforce but on this occasion I was getting no answers from them regarding a consistency of service which is not unreasonable as a customer. This is a core flaw in their service, there were no service targets quoted to me regarding what I could expect in the future such as say downtime has decreased by x% in the last 6 months in fact it seems to be increasing and there was no indication they were going to nail it down in future.

I feel misled by the advertising. I shouldn't have to adjust my expectations of a service just because it's technologically complicated or advanced, either it works or it doesn't and as a replacement for a fixed land line this service doesn't. Imagine someone signing up for the service who isn't as geeky as myself or the posters here and finding the phone down when they need to make an emergency call having ported their old landline to Digiweb's service?

With the increasingly short cycle time for a technology to mature I would expect the service to improve not disimprove. The argument of referring to the patchy nature of eircom or telecom eireann in the past just doesn't hold. In today's fast moving telecoms environment if you make a pitch with a product that doesn't match what the user experiences you'll get burned and that'll cost you revenue which in my case is what is going to happen because I'll be using an alternative in future.

I trust the same "excuses" if you can call them that will not be trotted when Digiweb roll out their 4G service.

Thanks for your posts I'm enjoying reading your views.

Dag_T

taung

I'm another dissatisfied Digiweb 'phone-line' customer.:mad:

Digiweb's advertising is misleading; they promise you a 'phone line' but don't explain that a Digiweb phone line is significantly more unreliable than an eircom phone line. In my experience I could only make calls 80% of the time with Digiweb's phone line. It's only when you go to the small print in the Digiweb "Terms and Conditions" that they explain their service is mainly to provide internet connectivity and that the phone line is secondary.

Complaining to Digiweb on this issue proved useless for me; they messed me around and pretended they had resolved the problems.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for; there is no charge for the Digiweb 'phone line' service and you get a phone line that works some of the time. They need to be more upfront with their advertising 'though.

I've already switched back to an eircom phone line; it works 99.999% of the time. I will dump Digiweb when my 12 month contract expires and switch to DSL broadband.

slave1

am seriously looking at Digiweb in Athlone but the negative comments on phone quality is holding me back, would appreciate feedback from any Metro Athlone users.....

watty

It's only a few people on two Dublin bases that had any problem with phone. It's perfect here in Limerick and I'm right at the edge of coverage.

eircom it depends where you live for reliability, if it's bad it is nearly impossible to get it made better if you can actually make voice calls. Metro Phone works for most people nearly all of the time. It's certainly more reliable and higher quality for most people than most 3rd party VOIP.

But really the main reason to get Digiweb is to get broadband without paying nearly 300 Euro a year to eircom just for Line rental.

You don't have to cancel eircom line unless you think you are getting a good enough Metro phone service. An existing number can be ported at any time after install.

taung

Does anyone know the technical reason why people are having problems with the Digiweb phone service?

Is is signal strength related or is their phone network under-dimensioned for the number of users they have, or a combination of the two?

Who supplies the telephony gateway to Digiweb?

What capacity have the signalling/voice links towards the eircom gateway/transit exchange?

LadyJane

pjproby wrote:

on the three rock mast with their metro service-had to abandon blueface because of quality issues, switched to their metro phone service, had to abandon that for the same reason, now back with eircom for the phone service.
hat said their broadband service is very reliable.

>>>>>
You think Skype is rubbish too?
you tried it?

LadyJane

watty

There are a number of issues that can affect the phone on Metro.

• Poor signal. If the signal is this poor browsing is affected.
• certain types of interference on the upstream frequency so that the base station is affected. This will affect uploads too and other VOIP systems such as Skype or Blueface. It may not be noticable on browsing or downloads
• Incompatible handset. Typically the speech sounds distorted. Some expensive siemens handsets suffer this while a €10 handset may be perfect. Many PABX experience the problem with same handsets. Oddly it is only some expensive handsets that have been seen with this problem.
• Poor quality handset in theory, though so far only encountered with some cheap DECT/Cordless phones. Avoid old analogue cordless phones.
• Incompatible wiring, such as UK ringing (needs an UK -IRL adaptor, not a cable replacement) symptom is no incoming ringing. The same phone may have this problem on older eircom sockets too.
• Anti-tinkle / ringing wiring. The outer two wires in flex need cut or a two core flex. LEDs on the modem TEL1 & TEL2 will flash madly. Affects many PABXes also.

All of these apart from signal/Interference issue is a problem on all phone systems.

Digiweb used to use a 3rd party voice gateway, but now have their own direct PSTN voice gateway. No Digiweb phone traffic goes on the Internet, it is all on their own QOS managed internal network.

There is no capacity issue. More capacity can be added as customer numbers grow.

Since Digiweb Metro equipment uses frequencies exclusive licence to Digiweb in a base station area, Comreg is contacted and active in cases of interference. There is no "name & shame" policy on interference.

Most people now have a trouble free phone service. (Initially 18months ago my phone was poor when the base here in Limerick 1st activated, but it has been perfect for a long while). If your phone service does not work please tell support exactly what is wrong. The more people use the service & report any issues the higher the likelyhood of clearly documenting any small percentage of incompatible handsets or illegal RF interference sources. If only one or two people complain it is not going to create much of an impact.

pjproby

yeah i abandoned blueface because of quality issues, experienced the same problem with skype-remember i am on the three rock mast. the fact that i experienced the same problems with skype indicates that it is a metro issue rather than a handset issue.
i did contact metro support many time's before i gave up trying.
penfold944- your explanation is interesting however if i tried to give this explanation to the two women in this house who spend hours on the phone, i could imagine the reaction.
it is about four months since i stopped using the metro phone service so the possibility is that they have resolved the issues.
again i reiterate, i have no problem with their metro broadband service.

taung

The fault on my line is that I frequently cannot get through connected to any destination number; I have no problem getting dialtone, but thats where it starts and ends, after 20/30 seconds the line just dies without any busy/congestion tones....

What could be causing this?

When I manage to connect to a number nine times out of ten the audio quality is equivalent to a fixed line phone.

I am connected via the Digiweb Three Rock Mountain transceiver and I have a very strong signal.

How can Digiweb guarentee quality of service over their IP network, are they running IPv6?

watty

IPV6 is not really to do with QOS. It's about not running out of IPs. The voice has its own QOS management, it even uses a different IP to the data.
You always remember to prefix the area code even for calls with same area code as your own?

When did you last explain this dialing problem to support?

taung

Area codes.....yes, I know about them!:p

I reported these faults early in the new year.......(Jan/Feb).....

dub45

All the technical gobbledegook in the world will not excuse the fact that Digiweb appear to regard their phone service as 'supplementary' and yet they mislead potential and existing customers by not advertising it as such.

penfold944- your explanation is interesting however if i tried to give this explanation to the two women in this house who spend hours on the phone, i could imagine the reaction.

Sums up the situation perfectly!

taung

For what it's worth, here's Digiweb's 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card with regard to the provision of voice services;

Access to emergency services (112 or 999 calls) is provided on a “best effort” basis and is reliant on an electrical supply to the Customer equipment and availability of the network. The base component of the Service is the provision of Internet Access, and the Service may include additional components such as Voice or other services. In a small number of situations the provision of Voice service may not be feasible, even where Internet Access is provided. In such cases the Service is deemed to have been provided and stated charges are applicable without discount. In the circumstance where Voice service is unavailable the Subscriber may terminate the service in writing within 7 days of installation without penalty and with refund of fees paid.


I guess when/if Digiweb have a 99.999% reliable voice service they will charge extra for it.;)

watty

taung: You should try phone and contact support again. That was nearly 6 months ago.

taung

Well, I have been in contact with Digiweb recently (handing in my cancellation)......the billing team contacted the technical team about my problems (since they didn't want to lose the account) and technical team didn't even bother to deal with the issues at all......says it all really......bye, bye Digiweb.....:mad: