internet in rural parts of NCD

dirtyghettokid

i know there is a thread about balbriggan, but outside of the towns is a different kettle of fish altogether for broadband.

it's a very frustrating problem for us on this road.
i live about half a km from the masts up on hollywood hill near the naul/ballyboughal and we have huge problems with internet connections and speeds.

we started out with ICE broadband years ago, and my husband was paying 70 euro a month for a 4MB connection - we only saw about 200kbps if we were lucky. we ranted and roared at them and finally gave them the boot - but i heard they went belly up anyway.

i went onto vodafone dongle which was crap more or less and the hubby went onto 3 which was marginally better. eventually we got the 3 modem thing that allows 5 simultaneous connections. up to a possible 7MB connection.
but again, we're lucky to see half a mb. when you turn it on you can see a full 3G connection, then it drops to no bars after a few seconds and then goes onto H (whatever that is) and most of the time we have one or two bars on the H which means our speeds will be crap!

i had a thread in the 3 forum asking why it was so crap when speeds were grand when we first started using it. after weeks and weeks i was then told it was because we were too close to the masts. so now not a damn thing we can do about it!!!

it appears that only mobile dongle broadband is available to us in this area. eircom won't provide dsl here (even IF we DID have a line)
upc not available....

are there any other options? we are getting pretty damn sick of poor internet, considering we're only 8 or 9 miles from the capital.........:mad:

would like to hear from others living in a rural setting, as anyone in lusk, balbriggan, swords will already have way better internet than us anyway.

The Hill Billy

I live in the Blackhills between Skerries & Balbriggan. We have eircom broadband & it works fine. Mind you, I'm not a 'heavy' user - & wouldn't be streaming, downloading movies, gaming, etc.

Prior to that I was using an O2 dongle & it was so-so.

dirtyghettokid

our only requirements are for downloading the odd tune from the itunes store, software updates and basic pages! most of the time we can't even get that!
i was trying to upload a 3 minute video to youtube last weekend and it took 2 hours!!! :mad:

we have looked into eircom, but as i say, they won't give us dsl because the lines in this area are not good enough.

Jimdagym

Digiweb

Digiweb are for you. 100% population coverage. They have a couple of options. Some have pretty small download limits (too small for me) but you say you are a light user.

Fingalian

We were with ICE ( pretty crap). As far as I know this crowd bought the ICE infrastructure and have upgraded it.
http://www.ripplecom.net/

We are about a mile south east of the mast on Hollywood hill and are getting on average 5mb down and 1 up. Pleasantly surprised with them, customer service is very good too.

Over years we've tried everything, landline ( 14.4kb ! the wire fell off the poles and Eircom left it the ditch for about a year), Satellite, ok but a lot of fiddling with the dish. Vodaphone 3G , patchy to say the least.

Give Ripple a shout and tell them your problem.

SeaSide

try having a look at an external 3g antenna which may or may not help.

found some herehttp://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=3g+antenna&tag=googiehydra-21&index=electronics&hvadid=5478336150&ref=pd_sl_4xvqyeysqw_b

martinn123

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

it's a very frustrating problem for us on this road.
i live about half a km from the masts up on hollywood hill near the naul/ballyboughal and we have huge problems with internet connections and speeds.

we started out with ICE broadband years ago, and my husband was paying 70 euro a month for a 4MB connection - we only saw about 200kbps if we were lucky. we ranted and roared at them and finally gave them the boot - but i heard they went belly up anyway.



are there any other options? we are getting pretty damn sick of poor internet, considering we're only 8 or 9 miles from the capital.........:mad:

would like to hear from others living in a rural setting, as anyone in lusk, balbriggan, swords will already have way better internet than us anyway.

We went with ICE from the start, only paid 37.00 per month, service was pretty good.
When they went bust cancelled the D/D with bank, and had free service for 4 months till Ripple contacted us.
They matched the ICE price and no problems.

I am outside Lusk on old Dublin -Belfast Rd, not a heavy user, but two laptops, teenagers, downloading TV Music, etc, plus wife's laptop for work, emails etc.
No issues at all with Ripple, give them a try, the signal comes from Blanchardstown, but they can test before you commit to a contract.

dirtyghettokid

i had forgotten to thank the responses on this thread! sorry!

in the end, we stayed with three for a long time. ditched them earlier this year, and got a meteor sim. we're now ditching that.

we've no internet at the moment and i'm down in a friends house on the southside on UPC (maaaaaan i wish we could have fibre above!!!)
and i'm here again doing the research. still seems like digiweb or ripplecom are our only choices.

was looking at ripplecom yesterday -- i see their contention ratio is 30:1 which doesn't sound great, tbh. we are also reluctant to use ripplecom, as we read many bad reviews (and them formerly being ICE!)

i'm about to do my research on digiweb. it looks like wireless is our only hope

has anybody heard of possible upgrades to rural areas for other types of broadband?