If You Can't Get Broadband Then Take Your Neighbours Line

pajoemccracken

Hi,
Don't know if this has been covered before but might help some people who can't get broadband.I moved in to my house 3 years ago and have been trying to get broadband since then. I live about 3Km from the local exchange I could not get broadband as I was on a carrier (i.e. I shared a phone line with 3 other houses) as there is not enough dedicated lines coming out to my area. I came up with an idea one night that as my neighbour was not using his dedicated line(for broadband) I could swap my line with him. I then met a guy who works in the local exchange and he said I didn't need to ask my neighbour as eircomes new policy is "use it or lose it". He got his buddies to swap over the line and I was able to order broadband. I ordered with Eircom as I kind of feel obilged to the eircom guy and I've been told be lots of eircom technicians that if your not with eircom and your line goes faulty you are not a priority. So my advice to anyone who is on a carrier or has a crap line that fails , find out if your neighbour is not on broadband then and if their line is suitable ask an eircom person to swap your line with your neighbour.
Pajoe
PaJOE

smellslikeshoes

I would think that if the Eircom engineer's boss found out about that he would probably be fired. And to be completely honest I doubt even a company with Eircoms questionable morals would have a policy like that. Congratz on getting broadband though.

Sponge Bob

happens all the time , nothing remarkable there

bigpaddy2004

Very similar situation where I am. I live in a cul de sac with 9 houses. The eircom pole is in my front yard, which has a carrier up on it. The guy next door to me has a brother who works in Eircom. They wanted BB but were on the carrier. There was one dedicated line run to the house down the bottom of the lane. Only 2 weeks ago his brother changed over the line for him to the dedicated one, he now has BB. 1 km from the exchange.

watty

Nothing to see here... BT in UK and TE in Ireland both doing that over 25 years ago when people ordered ISDN and had a carrier line.

lucernarian

*ahem*... ISDN was only in the world in the late 80s and in Ireland in the early 90s...

watty

Roughly speaking. I rounded up a little. If you want to be more accurate, maybe closer to 20 years.

I was desiging ISDN gear in 1985 and we were worried that some of the chips were obsolete! Not my fault if you couldn't actually buy it retail. I'm sure some PABXs had 32ch ISDN feeds in Ireland by 1986?. I think most of the current standards were stable from 1984.

I think though the practice of swapping lines rather than fixing the problem is as old as telephone exchanges.

god's toy

Still it's kinda shocking to know you could lose your fully working line if you dont have or want BB.

bigpaddy2004

god's toy wrote:

Still it's kinda shocking to know you could lose your fully working line if you dont have or want BB.

I suppose the way Eircom look at it is why bother giving someone a dedicated line if they are only gonna get only Eur25 per month from them for line rental when they can have someone else use it for telco & BB and make more from the same line.

god's toy

Suppose your right BP, after all the line outside the house is nothing to do with you, it's 'theirs'

lucernarian

watty wrote:

Roughly speaking. I rounded up a little. If you want to be more accurate, maybe closer to 20 years.

I was desiging ISDN gear in 1985 and we were worried that some of the chips were obsolete! Not my fault if you couldn't actually buy it retail. I'm sure some PABXs had 32ch ISDN feeds in Ireland by 1986?. I think most of the current standards were stable from 1984.

I think though the practice of swapping lines rather than fixing the problem is as old as telephone exchanges.

The finalised standard for ISDN, the blue book, was only released in 1988. There was a Red Book from 1984 but it was a rough sketch really. The blue book is pretty much what's in use today.

And eircom are doing the cheap way of doing things, though they're right to do it. There's nothing wrong with pairgains if they're only going to be used for faxes or voice. They make existing copper wiring more efficient, and on very long lines, they could sound better, but I'm not sure if lines are ever that long for that to be possible in Ireland.

But broadband, and dialup in exchanges which don't have DSL in them, should get the priority for clean cabling. Broadband should take priority over dialup which should take priority over voice.

watty

I only used the Red Book. I was working on PC & Database Software by 1998 and left ISDN design behind forever.

However most pair gains are alleged to have been fitted since eircom was privatised. Its a way of saving money that assumes customers are only ever going to want to use the phone line for talking. A reasonable investment in the 1980, but short sighted and a stumbling block to infrastructural development for the last 10 years.

In 1981 I used Prestel 1200/75 BBS messaging in UK, but I was using 300 baud in 1986 to access my bitnet email via x.25 dialup PAD in Co.Clare. By 1994 I was using Internet. I was only able to get more than 28k until about 2002(?) when I changed from eircom to Chorus Phone over Wireless (same modem was giving 49K with no errors).

I was only able to get Broadband at home in Nov/Dec 2005. We had it in work from about the 1st month of Esat Limerick DSL trials. In 2005 I couldn't even get ISDN although 900m from Digital Exchange as they would not start a new shelf for one order.

And pair gains make fax unreliable and run at slowest speed. Fax is nearly dead now. There should have been NO pair gains installed over the last 5 years.

byte

watty wrote:

Nothing to see here... BT in UK and TE in Ireland both doing that over 25 years ago when people ordered ISDN and had a carrier line.

Yup, that's what they did for me, when I ordered ISDN. They removed my line from the pairgain. After 3 years of 28.8k, my dialup speed shot up to 46k or thereabouts, until the ISDN PNP unit was installed.

lucernarian

Pair gains only stop the enhanced modulation of V.90 or V.92. I haven't had access to a pairgained line yet but I've been told that they connect at 28.8 kbps. More than enough for a fax modem?

And to eircom's credit, they've been removing pairgains in my area and in Drogheda, though some still remain.

Also there seems to be different policies in place in different exchange areas. I've seen marked differences in line provision in neighbouring areas. Though pairgain use is normally evenly spread in various areas.

If eircom got the proper gear, broadband could be supplied alongside pairgains, though it would be a stopgap solution and a problem with the gear affects a number of lines. Speeds would be 1 Mbit max I'd guess.

bigpaddy2004

I have seen pairgains down to 14k and even less where there was a lot of subscribers on the one carrier. It is true, Eircom are not installing any new pairgains. Where I live I applied for a line, thought there would be no problem seen as the pole with the carrier on it was in my front yard. The eircom guy said he could set up another line for me on the carrier, but it was not their policy anymore to open up new ones. So he tried to push the FWA on to me instead.

watty

You are lucky if you get more than 9600 and 19200 max. 28.8k on pair gain is mythical

skywalker

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

I suppose the way Eircom look at it is why bother giving someone a dedicated line if they are only gonna get only Eur25 per month from them for line rental when they can have someone else use it for telco & BB and make more from the same line.

I know you are looking at it from a practical point of view, but you have to laugh at the situation where they can charge €25 a month, and still decided to not give you a full line. The reverse of that situation is why should you pay €25 a month if you dont have a dedicated line? Shouldnt those people only be charged €12.50 or something more reasonable?

watty

€12.50 would be reasonable for a full line.

god's toy

Agreed, what is it now? €25 or so, shocking:eek:

lucernarian

watty wrote:

You are lucky if you get more than 9600 and 19200 max. 28.8k on pair gain is mythical

Have a look at byte's post, 3 posts earlier.

watty

Some modems report 28.8K .. or it might have been they have milder pair gains in Donegal cos of the rain

bigpaddy2004

watty wrote:

€12.50 would be reasonable for a full line.

I think ye may all have forgotten whom we are speaking of.....EIRCOM! Like thats gonna happen.

gerryo

watty wrote:

You are lucky if you get more than 9600 and 19200 max. 28.8k on pair gain is mythical

I used to get 31.2Kb/S regularly, bandwidth tests confirmed it was real, so it is possible to get more than 19.2Kb/S.

I do know some unfortunates who only got 9.6Kb/S, so maybe I was lucky

watty

I suppose it depends what kind of pair gain technology and how many pairs down one wire.

tonton-bob

Hi,

I just found out that my line was on a carrier as well.

It seems that the only possibility for me is to swap lines with a neighbour which doesn't have broadband.
I was told this morning that it regularly happens and it's a common procedure ( how could "stealing" your neighbour's line be a common procedure ? )

My question is how can i get them swapped ? I know that my line is shared with 2 other houses. One doesn't have a phoneline activated and the other one is owned by an old lady ( few chances that she is interested in getting broadband )
I don't know anyone from Eircom ( i just happened to meet some talkative employee ) who could do me that "favour" and seems I'm not irish, I don't see any way to get this sorted out.


It also seems that i'm on the Whitehall exchange ( Dublin 9 ) , does someone know its location ( so i can see how far i am from it and if it's worth all the hassle )

Thx ^^

jor el

tonton-bob wrote: »

One doesn't have a phoneline activated and the other one is owned by an old lady ( few chances that she is interested in getting broadband )

Do you know the lady's phone number and does it pass the line check?

The only thing you can do is ring eircom and see what they'll do for you. If you are on a pairgain then I think eircom have to remove it if you request it. You could also report a fault on the line, tell them it keeps dropping calls randomly and you hear intermittent noise on it. A plastic bag makes a nice crackly phone line sound

tonton-bob

I don't know the number unfortunately.

Our line is already faulty, it gets scratchy sometimes ( so badly that you have to end your call ) and we already got 2 visits from eircom technicians.

It's incredible that you have to know someone working at Eircom to get broadband in Dublin


edit:

jor el wrote: »

The only thing you can do is ring eircom and see what they'll do for you. If you are on a pairgain then I think eircom have to remove it if you request it. You could also report a fault on the line, tell them it keeps dropping calls randomly and you hear intermittent noise on it. A plastic bag makes a nice crackly phone line sound

I rang eircom this morning about that. I finally got someone from the custom care who told me in a very nice way ( hum ) that there was nothing they can do about that... apart from ordering a new line. I was told that broadband is not " service they have to provide" and phone voice was only the one we could expect from them.

I 'm f**** since NTL can't provide us with broadband as well