Irish Broadband Speeds Are Actually Dropping..Official

Sponge Bob

The only country in the world ( developed or otherwise ) where this is happening.

http://irelandoffline.org/2010/12/irish-broadband-speeds-continue-their-decline/

IrelandOffline Quarterly Broadband Speed and Quality Survey Q4 2010
The steady decline in Irish Broadband speeds and quality continues to decline under the regime in the Minister Ryans watch. An overriding belief exists that accepts that substandard satellite is an acceptable solution to their many policy failures.
In this quarter it is now the turn of Vietnam and Macedonia to overtake Ireland for average download speeds after Mongolia went past us in May and as the rest of the developed world continues to power away from us. Recently, Albania overtook us for upload speeds.
We are no longer a first world country but seemingly a third world economy and with the “Smart” and “Green” communications infrastructure to match our status.
The provision of high quality broadband is a key driver of economic growth, even in developing countries, and our minimum requirement to be the equal to that of our nearest competitors.
Download speeds in Ireland are now less than HALF the EU Average which is 11.37mbits
Upload speeds in Ireland are just over one third of the EU Average which is 2.82mbits
Average Irish DOWNLOAD speeds have declined from 5.94mbits to 5.51mbits since May 2010.
It is probable that if the Cable Broadband subscribers in the larger towns are subtracted, that average download speeds are closer to 3Mbps across the rest of the country. The average UPC Cable customer can download 3 times faster than the average eircom Next Generation customer. 12.21mbits versus 4.01mbits and with mobile broadband customers getting under 2mbits.
Upload speeds have held steady at 0.97mbits from 0.94mbits in May 2010.
The Quality Metric has shown a slight improvement since May 2010
We were 41st in the World for download speeds in May 2010. The country NOW occupying 41st position in the world, Malta, has an average Broadband speed almost 2mbits higher than Ireland does today. In order to stand still in 41st place in the world we in Ireland should have increased our average download speed by just over 1.5mbits where it declined instead by nearly 0.5mbits.
Since May 2010 we have dropped out of the Global Top 50 for download speeds and out of the Global Top 60 for upload speeds and we continue to decline.
Ireland is now:
55th for upload speeds down from 51st for Download Speeds in September (down from 41st in May)
75th for upload speeds down from 70th for Upload Speeds in September (down from 63rd in May)
56th for Broadband Quality up from 59th for Broadband Quality in September (and up from 63rd in May)

Speaking about these findings Eamonn Wallace chairman of IrelandOffline said “This continues to show that the policy of relying on unreliable mobile “midband” products does nothing for the consumers of Ireland. A system that cannot guarantee minimum speeds to consumers is not a suitable replacement for fixed “line” broadband across the lesser served areas of the country. The only reasonable solution is a fibre optic deployment and the lack of fibre optic cables needs to be addressed urgently”

sdanseo

Must be a lot of people switching back to eircom's rubbish, inadequate and overpriced product from the likes of Smart etc...or a whole load more people taking up BB where UPC isn't available as as we all know, eircom are rubbish. Could still be a good sign though, that people are at least taking up some sort of BB and just going for lower plans.

Very little alternative to UPC with any sort of decent speed, though, outside of Eircom's 24Mb which is very limited.

Sponge Bob

eircoms 24mbit costs more than UPC 100mbit and is generally available in the larger towns only.

spot the difference between the cabled towns and the adsl towns, here


http://www.netindex.com/download/2,49/Ireland/

AntiRip

Was actually reading somewhere that anything under 4mb is not technically broadband! Must get the link. Absolutely pathetic, The most I can get is 2mb from a wireless company (right now I'm getting 700kbps).

bealtine

AntiRip wrote: »

Was actually reading somewhere that anything under 4mb is not technically broadband! Must get the link.

That's the definition of broadband in the USA as set out by the FCC.
Using this definition most Irish "broadband" does not qualify...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056116647

watty

Two types of eircom circuit
8 Mbps ADSL is 0.8Mbps to 7.6Mbps depending on distance. Average is about 3mbps
24Mbps ADSL2+ is 0.8Mbps to 22Mbps depending on distance. Average length line is about 6Mbps to 8Mbps, slower speed due to crosstalk when more people in multipair cable have BB.

http://www.techtir.ie/comms/dsl-limits

LLU and DSL is now obsolete though still better than Mobile.

With Fixed DSL when the backhaul is upgraded your speed is stable. It's whatever the physical line does. It not going to change much.

The problem with Mobile is that a 2Mbps "Average" is nearly meaningless. While trying to download and watch a video your speed can vary from 0.05Mbps to 6Mbps on a notional "up to" 21Mbps mast. There is no stability at all. It may disconnect or not connect. Fixed Wireless, DSL and Cable simply doesn't do that unless there is a fault.
LTE simply is a much more costly system that might have more capacity. It's just as erratic as 3G. It still will never be broadband.

Most Irish Broadband (excluding Cable) does not meet the 2004 target for 2006 or 2008

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

Most Irish Broadband (excluding Cable) does not meet the 2004 target for 2006 or 2008

I believe it was an early 2002 target ( Minister for Comms Mary O Rourke, esq) to have 5mbits universally available by 2006.

We did on our holes, it is not even universal in Dublin. and it 2011 as good as

Richard Dower

Absolute scandal, 2010 and yet this country is in the dark ages.

Cantona's Collars

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I believe it was an early 2002 target ( Minister for Comms Mary O Rourke, esq) to have 5mbits universally available by 2006.

We did on our holes, it is not even universal in Dublin. and it 2011 as good as

Now that the country is broke,can't see any improvement in the situation.Where I live the town is cabled for poor analogue tv by UPC.Can't see them upgrading anytime soon seeing as they use MMDS for digital tv so providing broadband isn't high on their list.Pity as the alternatives aren't great.

lmimmfn

well i get 4mbit and im in a town lol, as ireland offline says it looks like we have the communications infrastructure to match our economy.

The country is a bit of a joke, monopolies, cronyism and jobs for the boys.

Theres no future plan so what we have now is exactly whats going to be available in 2020 and onwards. I just hope ad's dont end up using loads more bandwidth by then lol

Donne

I've recently gone to the 24Mb package and am about a 1/4 of a mile to the local exchange.

According to my router i'm getting 17403 kbps down & 765 kbps up.

Do you think there is a possibility of getting an increase in these speeds if I rang up Eircom and put a bit of pressure on them to get me closer to the 24Mb I'm paying for?

Or do Magnet or Smart or whoever generally give higer speeds than Eircom?

watty

You are not paying for 24Mbps.
You are paying for ADSL2+ and up to a certain amount of traffic.

The speed depends on distance and drops rapidly. No-one actually get 24Mbps. 17Mbps is pretty good for more than 0.4km. Don't forget it's not "as the crow flies" or even "best route" it's how the wires get to your phone socket.

do Magnet or Smart or whoever generally give higer speeds than Eircom?

Comparing LLU with ordinary ADSL (up to 8Mbps approx) yes. Compared with the ADSL2+ you have? Rarely. Same line, which is main factor on speed.