O2 Fixed-Line Broadband - better than Eircom?

Rogue-Trooper

O2 are offering me a land-line & broadband bundle (for my home office) which seems to be quite competitive. The broadband part is what’s concerning me though. I currently have Eircom’s ‘Business Starter 8mb’ package (€40 per month ex-VAT) and I have to say its woeful and driving me daft (very slow speeds & dropping connection regularly). I have been on to their tech support many times and have had my modem changed 3 times but still no major improvement.

Now apparently, O2 are just using the same Eircom network so am I just going to have the same poor broadband service if I change to them (I would be switching to O2’s Office 8mb)? Has anyone switched from Eircom to O2 yet and if so how are you finding it? Would love a direct comparison.

Failing that, I’m wondering if I should just look at UPC, Magnet or whatever at this stage. The 15mb with UPC for €32 looks tempting. I’ve seen a few negatives on UPC on the forum but I figure it can’t be any worse than my current service from Eircom (best speeds I seem to get are around 3.6mb/s). I’m trying to get a balance here between cost and quality of service!

Thanks in advance!

jor el

The contention and congestion at the exchange will be set and controlled by eircom, so if this is the issue, then it's not going to change. If this is the problem, then changing to O2 won't make any difference.

Only an LLU, cable or wireless operator can get you away from eircom's problems.

pizzahead77

Rogue-Trooper wrote: »

O2 are offering me a land-line & broadband bundle (for my home office) which seems to be quite competitive. The broadband part is what’s concerning me though. I currently have Eircom’s ‘Business Starter 8mb’ package (€40 per month ex-VAT) and I have to say its woeful and driving me daft (very slow speeds & dropping connection regularly). I have been on to their tech support many times and have had my modem changed 3 times but still no major improvement.


Failing that, I’m wondering if I should just look at UPC, Magnet or whatever at this stage. The 15mb with UPC for €32 looks tempting. I’ve seen a few negatives on UPC on the forum but I figure it can’t be any worse than my current service from Eircom (best speeds I seem to get are around 3.6mb/s). I’m trying to get a balance here between cost and quality of service!

If you are only ever getting around 3.6Mb/s would you not be better downgrading your package to the 3Mb/s from Eircom. It may be entirely possible that your line cannot handle the 8Mb/s.

You may get a more stable connection and also save yourself some money in the process.

If you were to post your line stats here, someone may be able to tell you whether or not your line is capable of higher speeds than 3.6Mb/s!

Rogue-Trooper

pizzahead77 wrote: »

If you are only ever getting around 3.6Mb/s would you not be better downgrading your package to the 3Mb/s from Eircom. It may be entirely possible that your line cannot handle the 8Mb/s.

You may get a more stable connection and also save yourself some money in the process.

If you were to post your line stats here, someone may be able to tell you whether or not your line is capable of higher speeds than 3.6Mb/s!

Apparently my line is only rated at 5 - they tried upping it but that only made it worse as it became really unstable.

Just tried a Speedtest:



That's actually quite good for my connection. I just tried an Eircom Speedtest and it's giving me 1.9Mb/s! Weird!

Rogue-Trooper

jor el wrote: »

The contention and congestion at the exchange will be set and controlled by eircom, so if this is the issue, then it's not going to change. If this is the problem, then changing to O2 won't make any difference.

Funny that - O2 claim a contention ratio of 12:1 with this package. I reckon the Eircom reality is way off the scale though....

bk

Rogue-Trooper wrote: »

Funny that - O2 claim a contention ratio of 12:1 with this package. I reckon the Eircom reality is way off the scale though....

Well there are different packages with different contention ratios.

So the residential packages normally are 48:1, while the business packages should be 12:1. So you might see some benefit from moving to o2.

On the other hand is sounds like your line just can't handle the faster speeds.
If that is the case only moving to cable might help.