Will Irish Broadband be next with speed increases?

Bros123

With Digiweb announcing speed increases will Irish Broadband Breeze be next?
A lot of people will just look at the advertised speeds when getting broadband and Digiweb have upped the game.

thebman

They'd want to be, already looking at moving to NTL. Those speeds are too good to ignore

watty

Breeze is pretty much a fixed speed technology.

Ripwave is not fixed speed, but can't go much faster than 3G.

DSL is very limited by Distance.

Not many people can get Fibre.

Cable is mostly dense parts of main cities.

Most small WISPs struggle to achieve 3Mbps.

14.4Mbps HSDPA or HSUPA basically just adds capacity to 3.6Mbps HSDPA, not generally much more per user speed.

EDGE can now do nearly 600Kbps rather than 240Kbps, but that probably needs new Modems and SW upgrade from Nokia Siemens Networks.

Bros123

watty wrote: »

Breeze is pretty much a fixed speed technology.

Ripwave is not fixed speed, but can't go much faster than 3G.

DSL is very limited by Distance.

Not many people can get Fibre.

Cable is mostly dense parts of main cities.

Most small WISPs struggle to achieve 3Mbps.

14.4Mbps HSDPA or HSUPA basically just adds capacity to 3.6Mbps HSDPA, not generally much more per user speed.

EDGE can now do nearly 600Kbps rather than 240Kbps, but that probably needs new Modems and SW upgrade from Nokia Siemens Networks.

So I'll take that as a no so watty!:DOh well when my IBB contract is up time to start looking elsewhere.

bigpaddy2004

Irish Broadband use mostly Alvarion 3.5 & 5.8 gear which cannot do really any more than 3Mb unless they upgrade all their cpe's and at that they can only get 6Mb from them.

Bros123

bigpaddy2004 wrote: »

Irish Broadband use mostly Alvarion 3.5 & 5.8 gear which cannot do really any more than 3Mb unless they upgrade all their cpe's and at that they can only get 6Mb from them.

I'd take 6Mb for the rest of my contract!No problem there!

crawler

To be fair - the issue most WISPs face is not the hardware they have but the amount of spectrum V the number of customers - they have to balance to get it right and to be fair to them, it's not easy. funny thing about speed increases, if you have a higher speed, you tend (in general, not all cases) to spend less time downloading the same level of information therefore the overall network impact is more or less the same or sometimes a bit better. The original Navini (now Cisco) kit can only do a few Mbps and older Alvarion stuff is also limited. the Digiweb Metro gear will do whatever DOCSIS 2.0 can do with the right signal levels and also uses DOCSIS efficiency.....interesitngly Wimax grew out of the DOCSIS standard (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=149407&site=cdn )

thegills

Increasing the speed doesn't really make much difference to you. IBB doubled their Breeze bandwidth in 2006 from 1Mb to 2Mb. I had the service and didn't really notice the difference. It's just a gimmick.
thegills

cgarvey

Well when you're comparing 6Mb to 10Mb, you're right .. the vast majority won't notice any increase at all (YouTube will still be slow, international link contention will still be a bottleneck, most sites you visit can't give you anywher near 1Mb dedicated to you, let alone 10 times that).

Comparing 512Kb to 2Mb would usually be more noticable to the masses.

TouchingVirus

Folks at home struggling on the EDGE network, they'd take the speed upgrade to 600k :P

Irishpimpdude

I hope they do something cause if they dont im getting rid of it 50 a month for 3mb blah

thebman

You'll notice it if your sharing a house and connection with a few other people/devices!

Bros123

Irishpimpdude wrote: »

I hope they do something cause if they dont im getting rid of it 50 a month for 3mb blah

I will be too!They really will have to do something as Digiweb must be the main rival in the fixed wireless market.

TomTom

I'm curious to know how everyone appears to know what’s going on with each company’s technology abilities. I have spoken to two different Alvarion 5.4 kit users in the past and both had two very different opinions of the maximum speed they could achieve and depending on the noise floor in their area the realistic speeds were different also. Very few hardware manufacturers give the real world speed listing on their kit as a lab is not real world.

90% of this thread is speculation and until an ISP announces their changes it will remain that way.

Moriarty

Alvarion gear is in widespread use and the limits of the technology are well known. IBB can't get around those. I think that's pretty relevant to the original poster's question, no?

TomTom

Not disputing its wide use but so many people have different opinions on its throughput capability its hard to rely on the info you get.

Bros123

Well after all that I'm still none the wiser as to whether IBB even have the capability to upgrade!
Do any IBB employees frequent this forum like watty does as a Digiweb employee?
If anyone does maybe they could clarify the situation.

Irishpimpdude

Well they do have a 4mb breeze business connection, so i would like to think that they could even up us to 4mb lol cause i really dont want the hassle of switching

Moriarty

Off-topic posts split into a new thread and moved to the Feedback forum. I'm more than happy to continue that discussion over there.

Let's keep this thread on topic in regard to any possible IBB speed increases.

thebman

Irishpimpdude wrote: »

Well they do have a 4mb breeze business connection, so i would like to think that they could even up us to 4mb lol cause i really dont want the hassle of switching

They can't give that to everyone though I don't think because I doubt they have the bandwidth available in most areas to provide that speed.

Bros123

brim4brim wrote: »

They can't give that to everyone though I don't think because I doubt they have the bandwidth available in most areas to provide that speed.

From what I've read here they don't have the bandwith to provide the speeds at the moment,never mind upgrading!
I sent an email off to their public relations manager yesterday asking have they plans to upgrade customers now that their main rival has done so.
No reply yet.:rolleyes:

Bros123

Ok I got a reply and this is it!I will leave the name of the person that replied as I don't know if it is wise to put the name up here.


My name is *********** and I’m Head of Marketing here in Irish Broadband. In January Irish Broadband launched our fastest ever broadband service by offering customers a 12Mb service (see attached press release). In addition over the next few weeks we will be introducing an up to 10MB service. These changes and more that are planned will mean that our entire product range is changing in terms of speed and over the coming months existing customers will be upgraded to the relevant new speed possible for their connection.



Full details of existing products are available on our website. If you have any more questions please do not hesitate to contact me.



Regards

***********

Well looks like they ARE planning to upgrade speeds so the technology must support upgrading everyone.

Irishpimpdude

Wonder if they mean dsl... i wouldnt mind 10mb symmetric

Bros123

Irishpimpdude wrote: »

Wonder if they mean dsl... i wouldnt mind 10mb symmetric

Well it says ENTIRE product range so hopefully everyone will see a difference soon.

Phlann

Why is IBB so expensive? Was just looking at their website.

170 quid per month for 12mbps down... Smart are charging €80 for 15mbps (including line rental) and NTL are charging €46 for 12mbps.

I notice the contention ratio is a bit better than NTL but I'm not sure if that's worth the extra €120.

Is there something inherently better about their service or are they just greedy bastards preying on people who don't know any better?

Bros123

Well I'm just interested in fixed wireless as it's all I can get so it's between Digiweb and IBB.
IBB would want to double speeds to compete with Digiweb!
But it has to be said,having no download cap IS a weight off anyones mind when they use the internet a lot,and with IBB I've been able to download to my hearts content and not worry about it.
But then again being able to download in half the time sounds good too!:D

thebman

Meh, when I get the full speed I'm supposed to get and a ping less than 700ms at peak times or decent support to fix that, I'll be happy.

At the moment, its a half arsed service for me and when I say half arsed, I'm actualy bein generous given the 2Mbps Breeze connection runs at 1/4 of a Mbps most of the time.

I've gotten speedtest results of 20kbps (that is bits, not bytes) with this service so I'll just jump ship thank you as I've been patient and they've been contacted via phone and boards PM to fix the problem and the problem has been occurring since just after Christmas so its not like I've not been a reasonable person about this.

I don't believe them when they say there are speed increases coming for Breeze given Watty's comment and their comment:

will be upgraded to the relevant new speed possible for their connection

which is the important part of that statement given Watty's statement. Yes I know he works for Digiweb but he's more reliable than some random person from IBB who felt the need to contact us through boards rather than sending a message out to all their customers (which means they've not set a deadline for these speed increases to be rolled out since they've not mentioned one or notified customers yet so don't expect it this month). I think Watty will be proven right over time, lets face it, he's rarely wrong.

Bros123

brim4brim wrote: »

Meh, when I get the full speed I'm supposed to get and a ping less than 700ms at peak times or decent support to fix that, I'll be happy.

At the moment, its a half arsed service for me and when I say half arsed, I'm actualy bein generous given the 2Mbps Breeze connection runs at 1/4 of a Mbps most of the time.

I've gotten speedtest results of 20kbps (that is bits, not bytes) with this service so I'll just jump ship thank you as I've been patient and they've been contacted via phone and boards PM to fix the problem and the problem has been occurring since just after Christmas so its not like I've not been a reasonable person about this.

I don't believe them when they say there are speed increases coming for Breeze given Watty's comment and their comment:


which is the important part of that statement given Watty's statement. Yes I know he works for Digiweb but he's more reliable than some random person from IBB who felt the need to contact us through boards rather than sending a message out to all their customers (which means they've not set a deadline for these speed increases to be rolled out since they've not mentioned one or notified customers yet so don't expect it this month). I think Watty will be proven right over time, lets face it, he's rarely wrong.

Well I hope Watty will be proven wrong on this occasion!:D

Chaz

Bros123 wrote: »

Well I hope Watty will be proven wrong on this occasion!:D

Sorry, but he wont ....

Bros123

Chaz wrote: »

Sorry, but he wont ....

But he just might ....
and Chaz,do you work for Digiweb??
or do you work for IBB and know their system?

Chaz

Bros123 wrote: »

But he just might ....
and Chaz,do you work for Digiweb??
or do you work for IBB and know their system?

Id rather not be dragged into an argument - will just leave it at that.