Broadband Ennis

imonboard

Hi what companies provide broadband in Ennis town? What packages are available and who has the best rep for speed and reliability?
Thanks

m83

I'm with Eircom and they are really good. On the Next Gen Regular package, 8mb, very happy with it.

MyKeyG

imonboard wrote: »

Hi what companies provide broadband in Ennis town? What packages are available and who has the best rep for speed and reliability?
Thanks

Yeah I'm on Eircoms 8mb and pull a respectable 7.02mb constantly.

Clareman

I'm with Vodafone, I'm on their Ultimate package which is supposed to go to 25Mb but I'm on 12, that's my choice however

Gregor Samsa

All the fixed line DSL broadband offerings (over phone line) use Eircom's infrastructure, so the speeds and reliability you get from Eircom/Vodafone/Digiweb DSL etc will be the same across the companies. The differences will be in the monthly cost, call bundles, extras included, download caps etc.

I had an Eircom rep call at my door on Saturday, trying to tell me that only Eircom offer "next generation" uncongested broadband. I pointed out to him that Vodafone do to (they have no choice - they're using the same lines and equipment as Eircom - they just call it "enhanced broadband"). This seemed to be news to him - but I suppose that's sales people for you.

Also, the speed you will be able to get depends on how far you are from the exchange, and the quality of the lines to your house. I live in an estate (7 years built) on the Tulla road, and can only get a max of 2.53 Mb on my line. Others around the town (as noted above) can get much higher speeds.

So, if you're going for DSL on your phone line, pick your provider based on who provides the best overall package for your needs.

The various mobile wireless/fixed wireless/satellite offerings are different kettle of fish - each provider is different in those cases.

colm_mcm

Half of the estates on the tulla road aren't ngb. Cappahard, gort na mblath, rath ban, knockanean aren't, but the likes of oakliegh, castle rock (although the smaller estate within castle rock isn't) are, there is another exchange these houses are on that isn't the ennis one. There doesn't seem to be any logical pattern to it though.

Daniel S

Vodafone 8mb, get a pretty damn consistant 5mb/s so I'm happy with that (considering all they lying ISP's do :rolleyes:). Ping is excellent though on most servers. When gaming on UK/Irish servers it's usually sub 30.

yuzbin

colm_mcm wrote: »

Half of the estates on the tulla road aren't ngb. Cappahard, gort na mblath, rath ban, knockanean aren't, but the likes of oakliegh, castle rock (although the smaller estate within castle rock isn't) are, there is another exchange these houses are on that isn't the ennis one. There doesn't seem to be any logical pattern to it though.

Castlerock doesn't. My line can only handle 3. Well that's what they officailly say. I'm actually on 2 because the higher speed didn't work. Still get the same speed as before the "upgrade" from 3 to their faster package, so I'm not going to fight about it

colm_mcm

Castle rock is def on the newer network, but the line well may not get the full 8mb.

Mr. G

I know fibre is limited in Ennis, and UPC isn't available. I don't think Magnet is available either but there was talk about it was.

Your stuck with eircom (or a high interconnection cost from enet if you badly need it). Mind you I know someone outside of town and eircom say 3mb is the max, vodafone supply a constant speed of 5mb- that's in a village. I depends on your location in town for speeds from your exchange.

CptSternn

Here is the low down on broadband in and around Ennis...

As it has been said, you have two companies doing DSL (over the phone line connection:

Eircom and Vodafone. There also used to be Perlico and BT but were both bought by Vodafone.

You have all the major mobile companies offering dongles:

Vodafone, Meteor, O2, and 3.

There is no UPC or fibre/cable option in or around Ennis at this point, I would actually say this is true throughout Clare but I could be wrong.

Finally you have Imagine who use a line-of-sight solution and WiMAX in some areas.

The best option for speed is obviously the DSL. You can get up to 24meg connections in some areas. I live an eight minute walk from Ennis town centre and can still only get a 16 meg connection. It's hard to price the packages here because they change quite literally almost every week. Vodafone and Eircom jockey for cheapest broadband with most transfer allowance and they continue to overtake each other every other month. I have switched between the pair four times in the past few years, each time taking advantage of some new deal.

Per the wireless dongles from the mobile crowds, there are mixed results. When they first rolled out the whole area had problems with congestion and it being so busy the dongle speeds were worse than old school dial-up. This has been fixed for the most part in most areas and no matter which dongle you go with you get decent speeds around most of the area with a few exceptions. Again, the prices change almost daily so to get the best deal you have to hit all the shops, or the Carphone Warehouse.

Imagine is in some areas and offers up to like four megs, depending on your location, but it costs as much as the Eircom and Vodafone packages that have double the speed and limit for the same price. Imagine is really only for people who can't get any of the other landline DSL based packages and not something that should be included into anyones normal comparison shopping, for now at least.

I say that because they have competitive DSL packages and what not in Dublin so maybe one day they will setup shop in the West of Ireland as well.

One last note, many areas have small companies now offering line-of-sight and WiMAX connections in Clare as well. There are quite a few actually but they are all in very specific areas and their prices are by no means competitive with the other groups. Like Imagine they operate in areas where people have no real alternative, but most do offer a good service.

colm_mcm

Yep, Shannon is the only place in Clare with UPC, it's the up to date ed3 100mb stuff too.

Kilaloe, Shannon and ennis are the only towns to have the eircom ngb, and shockingly, places like kilkee and kilkishen have no fixed line broadband at all

Mr. G

Its shocking I know but from eircoms perspective there's probably little profit once you have paid for upgrading the kilke exchange which is a good bit away from ennis.

As for Wireless, I looked into this before and there's:
-Ripplecom, who don't have a good reputation for good customer service
-Lighthouse net who seem to have a good rep for good cust service and broadband service
-Digiweb metro

I'm surprised UPC haven't started fibre in ennis.

Nerdkiller1991

I'm currently on Eircom 3Mb broadband and while it works, it's not really satisfactory for my downloading. Takes me a good hour to download 1GB's worth of content on my consoles. I just pray to Zeus, Mick Foley and Athiesmo that we get UPC in our area soon enough.