In Ireland for 1 year - Eircom free line rental offer seems to be the best deal?

der_auslander

I recently arrived in Dublin, and need to get Broadband for about 1 year. I am currently using Meteor - it is the best mobile service in my area. 5Mbps I get off-peak, but only 1Mbps at peak times. I must get a fixed line to get cheap calls. There is a fixed line in my house, but it has not been active for over 1 year.

My requirements are as follows,

• Need a fixed line Broadband service for reliability, Skype etc.
• No Wireless/Mobile services - in my experience they are not too reliable when many people use them.
• Cheap phone calls, especially incoming international calls - parents and friends abroad are complaining about the cost of ringing Irish mobile. I need a land-line number, as many of my friends abroad do not use Skype.
• I dont' need cable TV - I am using a LIDL satellite receiver which gets me free English language and foreign channels
• Speed is not very important to me - reliability more important - 3Mbps or 7Mbps would be ok
• 10GBytes per month download would be ok - I don't download videos
• WiFi router is essential
• Free access to WiFi around some Dublin hotspots/airport etc would be nice
• Free minutes to Irish mobiles would also help to reduce need to use mobile, so I could stay on the €10 or €20 monthly phone offer from Meteor.

From looking at my WiFi, almost everyone in the area seems to be using Eircom. Eircom have an offer at the moment that gives free line rental for 10 months on lines that are not active. (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055691853) It also includes free WiFi hotspots. I can't find any other deals that offer free line rental, wifi and mobile minutes. This should give me fixed-line Broadband with free phone and calls for <€30 per month for the year. This seems to be perfect - is it too good to be true?. Am I making a mistake?

(Great Boards, by the way!)

jor el

Reliability! If this is a must have, then you should note that eircom have had 4 major outages in the last month alone. They're also getting a lot of bad reports on peak-time slow downs. There's not way to know what kind of reliability or speed issues you might have, but just know that they are there before you make up your mind.

Xcellor

der_auslander wrote: »

I recently arrived in Dublin, [...] Am I making a mistake?

If you want reliable broadband moving to Ireland was a mistake... Unless you can get Magnet/Smart on an unbundled exchange you are doomed to mediocre internet which yo-yo's up but mostly down.

jor el

You might consider Digiweb Metro. It's wireless, but very reliable, and has a VOIP phone with geographical number. It's reasonably priced too.

UPC cable is another option, though they are hit and miss on speed and customer service.

der_auslander

Xcellor wrote: »

If you want reliable broadband moving to Ireland was a mistake...

I have lived in a number of different countries, and one thing I find in common is that everyone thinks Broadband is better in other countries! In practice, I think the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and in every country the distance from the exchange is the most important thing.

What I find varies between countries is the honesty of the Operators. The UK was worst. The operators there all promise 24Mbps and deliver 1-3Mbps typically. I have no problem with an operator who delivers 3Mbps if they admit that when they are selling it to me - I would prefer this to an Operator who promises 24Mbps and delivers 3Mbps.

So far, I have been quite impressed by Broadband in Ireland. The Meteor Mobile Broadband that I am using is better than Mobile Broadband I have used anywhere. During the Summer, I stayed in a number of B&Bs in really remote parts of the country, includings offshore islands. Admittedly, I only selected B&Bs that had Wi-Fi, but I wouldn't have expected Broadband in these places - but they generally had eircom Broadband at speeds higher than I have got in many large hotels in London etc. So far, I can't complain.

Sponge Bob

The 10 month free line rental offer only applies if the line was disconnected ( in the 01 area) continously by and since the 31 dec 2008 but requires no engineering work to reconnect .

dmm10000

its equally as bad here if not worse than the UK we have a provider Eircom who have somewhat of a monopoly over the telecomms infrastructure and terrible customer service - and a multitude of outages as other posters have outlined on this board

Feidhlim

Eircom were shocking for me. I switched to Irish BB fixed wireless. 4mb up and down. Very reliable

cgarrad

UPC/NTL is the one to get.

20mb is really good.

Was not working one day and was going to call in the evening. On the way to the shops there were 3 UPC vans on the lanefixing the problem.

They said their monitering system caught the fault that morning!

Brilliant!

der_auslander

cgarrad wrote: »

UPC/NTL is the one to get.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I have decided that the Eircom free line rental offer is the best. It is good value, and despite some of the comments here most people I have talked to seem to use them and find them reliable. We use Eircom at work and it's fine - although they gave us a fibre connection, so it is not DSL. I have confirmed that the line at home meets the requirements for the free line rental and will support 7Mbps.

I don't need Cable TV - and I don't trust UPC, as I had them before - in another country. They are one of the really dishonest Operators I have seen. They tell you that you have 10Mbps, but they don't tell you how many people you are sharing it with - it could be the whole neighbourhood. I found them ok when nobody else was using them, but when everyone signed up for cable, the performance deteriorated.

DJ Alex Black

I signed for it.
Having a landline for doing work from home is essential.
The cost is excellent. But what happens 1 year later when offer is expired? Will the abolish line rental forever?

CelticMan2009

I was with Eircom but switched to BT Ireland...

That was a bad mistake.... BT Ireland have been very poor for me...

Eircom was def a better service and support was way better.

lawrenceSummer

der_auslander wrote: »

I have lived in a number of different countries, and one thing I find in common is that everyone thinks Broadband is better in other countries! In practice, I think the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and in every country the distance from the exchange is the most important thing.

What I find varies between countries is the honesty of the Operators. The UK was worst. The operators there all promise 24Mbps and deliver 1-3Mbps typically. I have no problem with an operator who delivers 3Mbps if they admit that when they are selling it to me - I would prefer this to an Operator who promises 24Mbps and delivers 3Mbps.

So far, I have been quite impressed by Broadband in Ireland. The Meteor Mobile Broadband that I am using is better than Mobile Broadband I have used anywhere. During the Summer, I stayed in a number of B&Bs in really remote parts of the country, includings offshore islands. Admittedly, I only selected B&Bs that had Wi-Fi, but I wouldn't have expected Broadband in these places - but they generally had eircom Broadband at speeds higher than I have got in many large hotels in London etc. So far, I can't complain.

one thing that you can be sure of is that no matter what broadband is available, and its quality in this country there will be people on this forum that will complain about it in someway, we all want 50mb with unlimited download and no downtime, 5 seconds on hold for customer service and for less than a fiver a month.......

i had eircom for 12 months and was happy with it, once or twice it was slow, and i never had a problem contacting customer service, i have changed to vodafone cause its the same thing but a bit cheaper.

some people just want to be complaining about things, that free line rental for a year sounds very attractive

CiniO

lawrenceSummer wrote: »

one thing that you can be sure of is that no matter what broadband is available, and its quality in this country there will be people on this forum that will complain about it in someway, we all want 50mb with unlimited download and no downtime, 5 seconds on hold for customer service and for less than a fiver a month.......

Hmmm.
Because it's true.
Ireland is way back comparing to other European countries when it comes to internet connections.

In Poland I used to have 50Mbit connection for 10 euro per month.

It wasn't ADSL broadband (because technology is the same and you can't get that speed through phone line) but it was just local internet provider which made LAN over whole estate of apartments.

Pretty much in Poland broadband lower than 3Mbit/s is considered extremaly slow.
And here is Ireland I have 1Mbit/s for 35euro a month.

deceit

just so you know this is what to expect using eircom at peak times
.
This is from a 7mb broadband line that used to work perfect and out of peak times will get 6.5mb dl. Its less than 4times quicker than dial up and 35 times slower than it should be.

Johnboy1951

I have been with Eircom for a number of years ... ADSL.

I have had reasonably good experience with them. Last year was the first time I had outage, and of course they had DNS troubles.

I have consistent connection regardless of time ...... about 2.6Mb/s down on a 3Mb/s service.

I have considered moving to another provider but decided it was not worth the risk. ADSL is my only option in this area.

To the OP ...... consider getting a local (other country) phone number tied into a VOIP service for foreign callers to reach you cheaply.

yermanoffthetv

Imho Id recommend Vodaphone ADSL bb. Gettin around 6.2mb down on a 7mb package and a ping under 50ms. Moved over to them a few months ago and havent had any troubles yet. €48pm with phone bundle.