Broadband in Oranmore

TerrorFirmer

Anyone any recommendations as to the best provider for Oranmore? Currently with Airwire which are diabolical beyond belief, slower than dial up during most evenings and completely non-functional others. The choices seem to be Smart, Vodafone or Eircom - at the same price point Smart seem to offer the most (45 euro-ish, 7mb) - but what we're concerned about after our airwire fiasco is quality of service, not necessarily the speed of the line. We'd much rather have a stable 1 or 2mb connection than a patchy 7mb one - anyone vouch for Smart?

biko

Galway->BB.
Previous threads

Head The Wall

Have been with Digiweb for 2 years now. Using the metro package so no land line rental and have had no problems what so ever. Phone connects to the cable modem and works over VOIP. Chatterbox bundle may suit you

Madame Razz

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Anyone any recommendations as to the best provider for Oranmore? Currently with Airwire which are diabolical beyond belief, slower than dial up during most evenings and completely non-functional others. The choices seem to be Smart, Vodafone or Eircom - at the same price point Smart seem to offer the most (45 euro-ish, 7mb) - but what we're concerned about after our airwire fiasco is quality of service, not necessarily the speed of the line. We'd much rather have a stable 1 or 2mb connection than a patchy 7mb one - anyone vouch for Smart?

Airwire are bad

TerrorFirmer

Madame Razz wrote: »

Airwire are bad

We heard nothing but good things about them which is why we got it - but it's atrocious in our area. On an average day - say, from 7pm to 3am - the speeds are about .1mb up and .05 down (5-10% of paid for speed), with pings between 700-1000m/s. It's fine in the afternoon and at unsociable hours like 3am-9am - which clearly shows the issue as contention though airwire deny this and weren't much help overall.

As for Metro - heard some patchy things about that too. Again, we use the internet heavily, and will be using it not only for downloading but also a fair amount of online gaming, so latency and stability are more important than speed.

fish fingers

I have the 3mb package from vodafone since they started their broadband.I've neve had a problem with it. There is a lot of downloading and online gaming in my house also. I'm in Glenascaul btw.

Madame Razz

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

We heard nothing but good things about them which is why we got it - but it's atrocious in our area. On an average day - say, from 7pm to 3am - the speeds are about .1mb up and .05 down (5-10% of paid for speed), with pings between 700-1000m/s. It's fine in the afternoon and at unsociable hours like 3am-9am - which clearly shows the issue as contention though airwire deny this and weren't much help overall.

As for Metro - heard some patchy things about that too. Again, we use the internet heavily, and will be using it not only for downloading but also a fair amount of online gaming, so latency and stability are more important than speed.

Wow. That's not good at all; especially given that their prices aren't exactly cheap. I know they claim that their contention ratio is better for business packages; I wonder is that really the case?? Some parts of Oranmore are almost impossible to get any decent type of a broadband service in; a mate of mine is stuck with eircom bog 1mb which is dial up speed most of the time but it's all he can get where he lives:(

TerrorFirmer

fish fingers wrote: »

I have the 3mb package from vodafone since they started their broadband.I've neve had a problem with it. There is a lot of downloading and online gaming in my house also. I'm in Glenascaul btw.

Great - will keep that in mind. Thanks.

Wow. That's not good at all; especially given that their prices aren't exactly cheap. I know they claim that their contention ratio is better for business packages; I wonder is that really the case?? Some parts of Oranmore are almost impossible to get any decent type of a broadband service in; a mate of mine is stuck with eircom bog 1mb which is dial up speed most of the time but it's all he can get where he lives

They seem to be good from what everyone else has said to us, so clearly just our location is wholly unsuitable for airwire, which they should have told us in the first place - we're not just talking bad, we're talking 50/50 between usable - which is still slow - and unusuable, which is completely unacceptable. We're right in the village, my old house is a couple of yards away and I had both Eircom and BT BB there, both of which were pretty reliable....but we were hoping to hear a few testimonials before committing to either, as Smart offer more and also have a higher cap!

P1erce

My main issue with most broadband providers is contention ratio.

Eircom and Vodafone have 48:1 (Eircom does 24:1 on a business package).

Digiweb do 12:1 but they are expensive and they have a history of being tight when it comes to bandwidth allowances.

The other factor is that each of these providers have minimum contract lengths and they renew the contract every time you make a change (say you go from middle package to a bigger one, or a bigger one to a smaller one).

Just a few things to think about.

Pierce