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WHICH BROADBAND IS THE BEST AND CHEAPEST??
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28-09-2010 3:01pm#1
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The thing about broadband in ireland is it's so patchy and area specific that quality of a service provider depends heavily on where you live, even down to a postcode if applicable as well as what kind of stuff you will be doing online.
There's no point in settling on a specific provider because 15 people at the other end of the country say they're great. I'm on the north side of Dublin and after trying pretty much every provider out there over the years i now have fantastic 15mb fibre broadband from NTL which i will never give up if i have any say in it. However i could move twenty miles down the road and the same service could be terrible, or even completely unavailable.
It depends where you live, whether you're urban or rural and how close to a decent fibre network you are, so take the recommendations of people near you much more seriously than anybody elses. Local knowledge rules on this topic, but as a general rule of thumb i've found the following to be the case.
To put my usage in perspective, I'm a moderate to high end web user. I surf the web a lot, send large files and attachments regularly, use web conferencing, work from home sometimes, download large media files from itunes and other web stores on occasion, and play video games online with other people a fair bit across large distances. I also have several machines in my house sharing the same internet connection.
Eircom and vodafone@home broadband have both been pretty shoddy for me and also for people i know of or have read up on online. Not to get too technical but their contention ratios are bad, their upload and download speeds are poor and the service speed and quality fluctuates a lot, particularly at peak times. I know that's a characteristic of DSL but they both seem to be terrible for it. Anything more than basic webpage surfing will cause frustration in busy periods with those two guys. Also you have the hassle line rental to worry about because eircom have a lot of the country by the short and curlies in terms of provision of broadband and phone infrastructure so they charge whatever they want and give as poor a service as they think they'll get away with. Vodafone at home broadband were formerly BT, who were always a very good eircom alternative, good solid speeds, reliable, and good customer service, but they were then bought out by vodafone, who transitioned all the BT customers to poorer quality service on much busier infrastructure and much much worse customer service. It's only a personal recommendation, but i'd avoid them both like the plague unless there's no other option.
If NTL are in your area they are very good and good value cash-wise to boot, especially if you go for their triple play service (tv, net, and phone all in one). From a technical standpoint it's the best broadband service i've ever had. Rock solid speeds that never fluctuate, higher than any other provider for the same or less cash. Great for everything you'd need to do on the net right up to the higher end home user stuff. Their customer service is a bit of a pain if you have to deal with it, the agents are all thick as planks, but you will rarely need to speak to them because their service usually just works fine 24/7. Account & billing issues due to general thickness are as bad as it's got with them for me, and if you know how to handle them you'll be fine. Here's a tip: if you're not getting what you want on the phone, just mention the phrase "comreg" to them and watch them jump to attention.
I have heard magnet is a good service but it's very expensive for what it is. Probably more than you'd need for ordinary surfing and at more of a price than you'd want to pay, but i don't have any direct experience of them so maybe check them out with someone who can tell you for sure.
Of the wireless options, i have no idea on wimax yet, that's still all "up in the air" (sorry for the pun
) but if you want to use your new connection to set up a wi-fi network, video stream, P2P torrent, use xbox live, or do anything more than surf the web, then forget about any of the wireless satellite broadband providers like clearwire, irish broadband etc or the mobile networks like the meteor dongle you have. They won't work properly for anything other than ordinary website surfing, will lose lots of data packets in transmission and result in poor experience generally for any advanced usage, and also a lot of them restrict the bandwidth they allow to very popular web activities like P2P filesharing etc.
Unless wimax has changed the situation, to do all of that cool stuff you will need a hardline of some kind(fibre, coaxial copper cable or DSL) into your house, so you're basically limited by what infrastructure is in your area and might have to bite the bullet on line rental etc.
if you want to get technical, watch out for contention ratio, upload AND download speed, throttling, packet loss averages, and stuff like that when you're choosing a provider, if you're lucky enough to have a choice. All the services out there look more or less the same until you look a little deeper under the hood, and all of this stuff can make a difference to your experience.
Here's a good site to help you figure out what it all means and find the best deal in your area without too much jargon. It's independent and run by the regulator's office so you can generally trust what it says.
http://www.getbroadband.ie/
Regards.0 -
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