Why am I paying UPC for 30Meg package when I'm only getting 15meg?

Snake Plisken

I've had it up to here with UPC I'm in Lucan and during peak times between 6 & Midnight I get between 7 & 15mbps download speed upload is fine, I had an engineer out a couple of months back who checked the line which was fine, he gave me the Scientific Atlanta modem, but made no difference to speed. Ok I can get over 25mbps during the day or at 1am in the morning but I expect at the very least to have over 25mbps during peak times. The customer service girl was trying to arrange an engineer callout again which seems to be their answer to all issues, I said no point as line checked out fine, so she is sending it to some dept called MD. It's pretty simple to me, it's contention issues in the area although they won't admit to it. I'd recommend all upc customoers to run speedtest during the hours of 6pm to midnight and see if your getting what you pay for.

Anan1

I'm having similar (although milder) issues, UPC sent out a couple of engineers who told me that it's due to contention and that it won't be resolved until the infrastructure in my area is upgraded in Jan. In the meantime we've agreed that i'll pay 1/2 price for my 30mb connection.

Snake Plisken

your not in Lucan by any chance? lol at least it would cut out the game I'm going to play with them again now to get my bill reduced until they sort out the infrastructure in my area.

vibe666

that's about average, i'm not sure what your problem is. all broadband speeds are "up to" whatever the quoted speed is and with UPC you're getting a much better "up to" speed than you could ever hope to get with any other broadband provider.

the very fact that you get anywhere near your maximum speed at all at any time is something pretty much only UPC customers ever see, so i for one have no problem with a bit of slowdown at peak times, its to be expected and the non-peak performance more than makes up for any peak slowdown you might get imho.

if you really have "had it up to here" with UPC then vote with your feet and leave them and go and get yourself a DSL connection instead.

you'll be paying more for a much slower connection and with a much lower cap that gets totally choked at peak times and i guarantee you'll be begging to get UPC back within a month.

answer me this. if you weren't spending your evenings running arbitrary speed tests would you even have noticed you weren't getting 30mbps at peak times?

Anan1

vibe666 wrote: »

the very fact that you get anywhere near your maximum speed at all at any time is something pretty much only UPC customers ever see, so i for one have no problem with a bit of slowdown at peak times, its to be expected and the non-peak performance more than makes up for any peak slowdown you might get imho.

I do, if I pay for 30Mb at peak times then that's what I expect. UPC agree, which is why i'm paying 1/2 price until the problem is resolved.

I have to agree though, even now I think UPC are in a different league to Vodafone. There's no way i'd go back.

Snake Plisken

I agree with Anan, why pay for a service that your not getting, It's like paying for a full tank of Petrol only to find the Petrol attendant only filled your tank halfway, I agree UPC are the only game in town, that doesn't mean they can take customers for a ride by not being able to provide "up to" 30meg service, listen I'd be happy enough with over 25meg during peak times.
As for your question yes I do notice the drop during peak times if I'm downloading or streaming over the internet or playing Black Ops on the PS3 I do notice. And I don't care about putting UPC under pressure to provide a decent service to their customer base, UPC are lucky that most people just take them at their word that they are getting the speed from the package they signed up for.

Anyway an update on my story I rang back UPC tonight as I wanted a reference number to quote when I rang back over the weekend, the girl I had talked to first sent of a couple of emails to find out what was and the response she got back was that my area would be getting an infrastructure upgrade in WW50, I said is due to contention issues in the area and she laughed and said maybe. I have to ring the billing department to see if I can claw back some money on the account as I raised this issue with them back in June.

vibe666

Snake Plisken wrote: »

...It's like paying for a full tank of Petrol only to find the Petrol attendant only filled your tank halfway...

a better analogy would be it's like paying your road tax etc. and then complaining because you can't drive at the speed limit during peak hours because of all the extra traffic.

no ISP can offer full speeds 100% of the time on a residential package, it's just too expensive. if you want guaranteed 30mbps speeds 24/7 you'll need to be paying in the region of several hundreds of euro per month or more because its not a cheap thing for the ISP's to provide. i don't actually know the current prices, but if watty is around he'd be able to tell you off the top of his head. it's well out of the price range of residential users anyway.

i'm pretty sure the UPC margins for residential broadband are fairly slim so i imagine that they have to make sure each area is fully subscribed before they schedule shared bandwidth upgrades for any given area to cope with the extra demand which all takes time when they're trying to build everything up on a national basis.

anyway, history in this forum tells me that this is something we'll probably never agree on so i think i'll give up trying.

if you're not happy, keep emailing them every few days asking for updates and eventually they'll probably give you a discount.

jor el

UPC are claiming that their Fibre Power Broadband is congestion free, to combat eircom's NGB congestion free claim. This is simply not true though, as it's obvious that their broadband is congested. The best solution is to do what Anan1 has done, get them to admit that there's a "problem" and pay half price for the half service.

Snake Plisken

jor el wrote: »

UPC are claiming that their Fibre Power Broadband is congestion free, to combat eircom's NGB congestion free claim. This is simply not true though, as it's obvious that their broadband is congested. The best solution is to do what Anan1 has done, get them to admit that there's a "problem" and pay half price for the half service.

Yep thats what I did so I'll be interested to see if I can claw back any credit on my account as I first raised the issue with them in June. It will be interesting to see if their "infrastructure" upgrade in WW50 will improve things in my area.

As you state they are advertising that their product is "congestion free" as listed here http://www.upc.ie/broadband/thirty/

@Vibe as I've pointed out I fully understand that I will not get the advertised 30 Meg speeds but I at least expect over 25 Meg during peak times if its going to be less then 15 Meg I might as well switch back down to the cheaper product. Anyway I'll see what happens in December and report back.

LEIN

My BB has been the same over the past few months. Well under 10Mb most evenings with some tests coming up just under 2Mb. As said above i have no prob with 20Mb and up but under 10 is taking the piss.

I have got the ball rolling with my first email yesterday. No response yet but i will keep sending till i get an answer.