O2 Broadband - Is it worth it?

ToxicPaddy

I eventually decided to bite the bullet and purchase an O2 broandband modem and test it out in my parents place. They live down the country and due to a variety of reasons, excuses and plain lies from various providers they are unable to get broadband any other way..

Anyway, I bought it sat avo, connected up ok, no problems.. so far so good.. and then I tested various rooms around the house to see which has the strongest signal.. managed to go from edge to one bar.. so that was something. Got a signal and a connection speed of 258kbps.. not a lot but better than 50kbps on dial up.. so again, so far so good..

However, web pages and site that once took about 15 - 20 seconds to load took nearly a minute with this and some just timed out.. How can that be the case??

Have they programmed the modems and software to lie to??? :mad:

Anyway, since I had just got it, I said I'd give it a few hours and low and behold it now takes only 10 seconds to load a page.. so thats something.. however will it stay like this?

I have a month to test it, apparently with a no quibble refund if I return it within one month.. and I made sure there was no small print..

So im gonna test it, but is it worth it? I have to say I havent read too much on here to ease my mind.. everyone seems to be having issues, their CS are brutal and backup support is non existant.. :mad:

Should I just cut my losses and return it now?

Tox

Drakar

I'm in the same boat. If you play with the connection type on the application menu, you can force it to look for the broadband (3G - 3.6mb) rather than narrowband (GPRS - 256k) connection. 256k worked fine for me with 5 bars on edge, but the 3g stuff often takes ages to load pages, and sometimes times out etc, so although it's sometimes faster it's alot less consistent.

You can get a theoritically similar service from vodafone for cheaper (modem is 49 vs 109, and monthly 30 instead of 40 - [both offer half price for 3 months, and vodafone offer 2nd hand modems for 29]), it would be interesting to see if their service was better . VF only offer a 14 day trial though, and also they are 5gb cap vs a loose 10gb cap for o2.

I need someone else to guinea pig it!

watty

GPRS is more like 70k EDGE is 240K, both on GSM Network. Vodaphone don't have EDGE, only GPRS.

The speed depends hugely on how many people are using it and can drop to dialup speeds or even refuse a connection. The 3.6Mbps is shared among all users on a mast sector.

rebel.ranter

watty wrote: »

GPRS is more like 70k EDGE is 240K

More like 48k & 200k respectively.

ToxicPaddy

Well i would only be using it evenings and weekends when I pop home..

I have another 3.5 weeks or so where I can return it if not happy with the service.. so I'll just keep testing it and see..

Xcellor

I have had o2 for 2 bills now (4 months I guess)

I've found it a completely difference experience from Three Fraudband. When the weather is bad it can jump between HSPDA and UTMS and this can cause a slight delay and may require you to reload the page but when it's good weather with a signal strenght of 1-2 bars I can get peak 2.2 mbs download and in my first month downloaded 16 gbs! :O

KStaford

I have been using o2 BB for 5 months. I het around 1 bar of UMTS which translates to around 500kbps (half a meg). But it varies, during the evening from 6pm to about 11:30pm, browsing becomes very VERY slow, regularly waiting over a minute for a page to load and usually hitting refresh several times out of frustration. Then after midnight, it becomes responsive again.
I'm currently in the middle of a complaint with them and comreg.

long_b

I'm thinking of getting this too - could people post their location please ?

Anyone using it around Kilcullen, Kildare ?

croo

re: vodafone vs. o2
vodafone may seem a little cheaper at first glance but that is for 5Gb of data while the O2 price is for 10Gb with a fair usage policy.
When you pass your 5Gb limit with vodafone they automatically (without informing you) start billing by the mb and I have read posts in these forums of people getting additional bills in the 100s and sometimes 1000s of euro. There does not seem to be anywhere on the vodafone site to review your usage?
If you pass your 10Gb limit on O2 and they feel you have breached their fair usage policy they will inform you of this. If you then continue they reserve the right to bill - but I have not seen anyone post saying this has happened (as with vodafone).

So while o2 is an extra €10 you get double the download quota and piece of mind. If you did manage to get a 3.6Mb connection I don't imagine 5Gb would last very long!

spectre

I bought the vodafone deal a week ago and was told that they had stopped automatically charging people when they go over the 5gig cap. The salesman said that they just cut you off instead

Drakar

5gb is also ~166mb a day. I haven't come close to doing that daily average over a month on o2's service (though I don't download music or full length movies).