wireless broadband north donegal

donegal2008

any reccomendations? i know certain areas of north donegal have crap or no signal, thinking about going for o2 or 3 - any advice? Thanks

Seanog69

Whatever you do I would like to advise you about NWE wireless broadband "blue box" which is beamed out over most of Inishowen avoid it like the plague. It was fine up until about a year ago, but the amount of people signing up must have rocketed. Evidently there are little or no restrictions on the amount of people the service provider can heap onto on each "channel" for this type of service - they claim a contention rate of 30-1 but it's definitely much much higher and it would be virtually impossible for the authorities to monitor since this service originates in Derry and is beamed across the border (if they were bothered to monitor it at all....) It simply boils down to too many users online at the same time, people downloading video and mp3 files etc or just surfing the web, and all those snouts in the trough are using up bandwidth with the result that their system is being bled dry and you and everyone else all end up with download speeds more like dial-up.... Instead of the usual 1mb download speed we used to get it has now dwindled to a pitiful 150-250 kps and the upload speed is really slow - maybe 40-50 kps. Even the so called "premium" silver and gold services are mind numbingly slow. But very expensive. What this means is that for example watching video streams on Youtube - forget it! All you will get is a few seconds, then a white circle rotating while the slow..... slow...... slow...... data stream tries to sync with the website and then another few seconds etc etc. Normal jpeg pictures on websites or online brochures and pdf's open very slowly - so slow in fact that it brings you right back to the days of dial-up ( remember that?) from the 90's as your picture builds up line by line. Absolute rubbish. And definitely a complete waste of your money. And a barefaced cheek for them to charge you €25 or €35 per month. ( There is little difference in speed for either service as far as I can see, they are both mind-numbingly slow.
You have been warned. I stopped using their service recently, and I know many people who stopped paying and took out mobile broadband from O2, Vodafone, Meteor or or the 3 network because of the slow download speeds on NWE.
My reason for telling you this is that I feel I was very poorly treated by NWE and I would advise anyone against signing up for this service and paying installation costs etc only to find thet I am telling you the truth. Ask them if they will give you a money back guarantee on download speeds.......... even a guaranteed pisspoor 200 kps....... not much chance of that I think.

If you buy a mobile internet dongle from one of the phone companies and you find it doesn't work at your home, most providers will refund your money in full if returned within a few days, no questions asked.

Stephen_2010

donegal2008 wrote: »

any reccomendations? i know certain areas of north donegal have crap or no signal, thinking about going for o2 or 3 - any advice? Thanks

3 mobile broadband works really well for me in my west Donegal spot - but there's not a kick out of it for a friend a mile down the road. Their website 'coverage' map is, therefore, useless! Ask them if you can try it out before committing to a 12 month contract.

jor el

A year later, I doubt this matters.