broadband options for skype in Tuam/AbbeyKnockmoy area

Sniipe

My sister is heading to Oz and her inlaws are looking to video skype them. Currently they have no internet and are based here.

The Eircom line tester says that they only qualify for 1MB broadband which is 1mb down and 128kb up. I don't think thats enough for video broadband?

I think the 3 coverage map shows the area suitable for indoor use (as opposed to "out and about"

The vodafone coverage map shows them as iffy for 3G.

I had an iphone O2 and it showed no 3G coverage.

From their window I could clearly see a mast of some sort, but don't know what it is for.

Digiweb hasn't really got a coverage map. The offer satallite (is satallite fast enough or would there be too much delay and dsl (really?)

Jaden

www.airwire.ie

Sniipe

Thanks Jaden (owner of Airwire?). I had forgotten about them. It looks good. They appear to be 4KM from the knockroe mast. Before I go telling them about this do you/anyone think that 1mb from wireless (I assume its 1mb up and 1mb down?) will be good enough for a video conference? I'm looking to get them the best service for where they are. It really only is video skype that they want it for to see their only grandchild in Oz who will have 10MB up and down service.

mibbs

i live in abbeyknockmoy and have used airwire for the nine months, year contract, and its useless for skype. i wanted the service specificaly for skype to speak to my family abroad, its too slow, sound is broken, very fustrating,useless. they are also too expensive for the service they provide, but then if theres no other company providing a similar service, they can rip you off all they want.

Airwire: Martin

Sniipe wrote: »

They appear to be 4KM from the knockroe mast. Before I go telling them about this do you/anyone think that 1mb from wireless (I assume its 1mb up and 1mb down?) will be good enough for a video conference?

Chances are, that if you can see the masts on top of Knockroe hill, where our mast is, then there shouldn't be any problems with a decent connection.

If skype (voice or video, doesnt matter) works, depends not so much on the speed.

Obviously you'd need at least around 80 kbit/s each way for voice alone. I'm not sure, how much video will consume. So your assumption, that the 128 kbit upload on DSL is pretty useless, ESPECIALLY because it's 48:1 contention !!!!, is correct.

For voip, video conferencing etc. to work, it's more important, what sort of latency you have and how high the jitter is.

We at Airwire use VoIP for all our telephony ourselves, so the network is designed with that in mind. In the cases, where it doesn't work properly, the issue is either, that the connection to the customer is bottom line, the customer is using wireless internally in the house with a bad signal or running heavy downloads while trying to use voip. These are obviously things outside of our boundaries.

mibbs wrote: »

i live in abbeyknockmoy and have used airwire for the nine months, year contract, and its useless for skype. i wanted the service specificaly for skype to speak to my family abroad, its too slow, sound is broken, very fustrating,useless. they are also too expensive for the service they provide, but then if theres no other company providing a similar service, they can rip you off all they want.

While you are entitled to your opinion, you need a reality check here:

Airwire installation is 99 eur, 6 months contract, and 30 eur/month for 1 mbit symmetric, 16:1 contention, NO cap and NO fair use policy either.

Eircom compared to that, is approx 150 eur, if you need a new phoneline installed. It'll cost you 26 eur/month line rental and 24.99 eur/month for DSL. That is 50.99 eur/month for 1 mbit/s down, 128 kbit/s up, 48:1 contention. In a bundle you can get it down to 46.79 EUR/month. Besides that, the dsl then has a 10 GB cap download and 1 GB cap for upload.

How on earth can you say, that airwire is rip off ?

As for your Skype issues, have you made sure:
- that no downloads are running at the same time ?
- that you aren't using a wireless router with a bad wireless connection, which also affects your voip quality ?
- have you contacted support about this ?

Try run a speedtest and a pingtest on the Galway server and post the result here and describe how your equipment is connected to the airwire connection, also mention, what operating system you are using. That should give a good idea, where the problem is.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
Airwire

Airwire: Martin

Sniipe wrote: »

Digiweb hasn't really got a coverage map. The offer satallite (is satallite fast enough or would there be too much delay and dsl (really?)

Satelite is typically 1000-2000 ms latency. VoIP will not work with that.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
Airwire