UPC availability in Cork

checkyabadself

I'd like to know if anyone knows if UPC broadband is available in Glounthaune in Cork, orif anyone has a map of their coverage in Cork.

Cheers,
Will.

checkyabadself

I phoned UPC and asked them about the availability for my house. The girl on the phone wasn`t sure as she couldn`t find my house on their system. She said that the house (2 doors down) has got cable tv with them. Is the broadband network availability dependent on a different grid or is it a safe bet that if you have cable tv with the, that they`ll be able to supply BB to you as well.

Cheers,
Will.

Abelloid

I didn't think they offered any sservices other than TV that far out of the city, I wish they did offer broadband..

Macca07

I'm in Eagle Valley, and have broadband and cable tv with them. I'm moving soon and rang them saying i was moving, literally 5 minutes away, and they said that I couldn't get broadband or the recordable cable tv at the new address. complete joke! told them then i was cancelling the services with them and they said they needed a months notice. a months notice for a service that they can no longer offer me!

anyway, i wouldn't take for granted that if a house down the road from you has cable tv with them that you can also get broadband with them

Solair

UPC use two technologies:

1) Cable - provides huge number of TV channels and broadband/phone etc.

2) MMDS - wireless service that provides digital TV only (with a more limited line up, using different technology and different boxes hence the lack of recording etc)

Unfortunately, some of these problems are the legacy of Chorus' era of ownership of the Cork cable network.

Chorus had an identically bad line-up on Digital Cable and MMDS during their bad-old-days. So, they cut costs and corners and didn't bother cabling quite a lot of new housing estates in what should be cabled areas and instead sold MMDS products to them as in their minds, the two products were identical and interchangeable.

MMDS was supposed to be a 'last resort' product that was to be used in areas where cable services were unavailable, but Chorus used it all over the place.

When UPC took over, they poured money into fixing and rebuilding the very neglected cork cable network that years of underinvestment had allowed to sink into quite a state of technological backwardness and disrepair.

The cable system can now provide very fast broadband and a much nicer line-up of TV channels. However, MMDS is a totally different technology with limited bandwidth that can never provide anything like this. They're not comparable products.

MMDS is really not a very competitive product, it provides no broadband, very few channels relative to Sky and it's far more expensive than free-to-air satellite. You'd sort of wonder why they bother with it at all!?

The problem now is that some new build in Cork that ought to have been cabled hasn't been. I don't know if there's a plan to fix this situation, but it is resulting in a lot of Cork (and Limerick City) developments being denied access to cutting edge broadband.

You'll notice that older areas are all cabled, then suddenly sometime in the 1990s there's a gap and some developments in the city's original cable area aren't connected up to the network at all. You'd also have to wonder why housing developments in Carriagaline, Glanmire, large areas of Ballincollig etc etc are "off grid" when it comes to cable. These aren't rural areas and should not be stuck on MMDS.

It's not surprising that Ireland's broadband speeds are so low when you consider that the main cable companies in the past were so horrendously lacking in vision and seemed to, for whatever reasons, completely fail to invest in their networks.

Cable broadband drove the market everywhere else and we can already see just how much of an impact UPC is making in a few short years of having a serious cable operator!

center15

Macca07 wrote: »

I'm in Eagle Valley, and have broadband and cable tv with them. I'm moving soon and rang them saying i was moving, literally 5 minutes away, and they said that I couldn't get broadband or the recordable cable tv at the new address. complete joke! told them then i was cancelling the services with them and they said they needed a months notice. a months notice for a service that they can no longer offer me!

anyway, i wouldn't take for granted that if a house down the road from you has cable tv with them that you can also get broadband with them

Everything isn't connected to one giant cable, each estate or area is connected to a node and some of these nodes have been upgraded and some haven't hence the different services available.

Solair

center15 wrote: »

Everything isn't connected to one giant cable, each estate or area is connected to a node and some of these nodes have been upgraded and some haven't hence the different services available.

Sadly, in a lot of cases, some of the suburban developments just have no cable at all. If your service comes up as "digital TV" it's likely that it's not cabled at all and they're referring to MMDS.