North West Electronics/BlueBox

Tommy Lagahan

schizo1014 wrote: »

Looking at the ftth rollout map and it doesn't look like fiber is coming anywhere near my own house so I'm not holding my breath.

Bah, their coverage is hit and miss isn't it? Uncle works for them, asked why they weren't bringing it up my way and apparently the higher ups said they're going for the places where they can get the most houses with the least work until they get the NBP government money to do the rest.

schizo1014

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Bah, their coverage is hit and miss isn't it? Uncle works for them, asked why they weren't bringing it up my way and apparently the higher ups said they're going for the places where they can get the most houses with the least work until they get the NBP government money to do the rest.

That sounds about right, I'm a wee bit of the beaten track here on an old main road and they are only doing the first few houses and thats it, considering everyone I knew would take fiber over satellite any day It's a shame.

Tommy Lagahan

schizo1014 wrote: »

That sounds about right, I'm a wee bit of the beaten track here on an old main road and they are only doing the first few houses and thats it, considering everyone I knew would take fiber over satellite any day It's a shame.

Jaysus I woulda thought they would have gone on the whole way down the old main road, proper lazy of them not to. I'm over the opposite side of the new main road myself just up a cul de sac half way up the mountain, bit more sense that they wouldnt bother with me lol.

schizo1014

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Jaysus I woulda thought they would have gone on the whole way down the old main road, proper lazy of them not to. I'm over the opposite side of the new main road myself just up a cul de sac half way up the mountain, bit more sense that they wouldnt bother with me lol.

Just twigged on who you are, your looking down at my house here lol Yeah it just seems handier for them to do it this way, the cousin got a 4g router for his 3 mobile broadband there and is running 30mb atm its actually better than bluebox its mad the difference.

cushte

have to say my broadband is a lot better in the last month. its still low in the peak times, but its going in the right direction. i was hitting 17 mbps in off peak time but still around 1 mbps a peak. theres a new company starting called beacon broadband offering very good speeds as well so maybe that has something to do with the improvements?

Brogan9

Hi, does anybody know if this new company Beacon Broadband are in anyway connected with Northwest Electronics/ Bluebox Broadband?

cushte

Brogan9 wrote: »

Hi, does anybody know if this new company Beacon Broadband are in anyway connected with Northwest Electronics/ Bluebox Broadband?

cant say for certain but according to their fb page it shows customers in donegal getting 39mbps down and 8,08 upload. dont think bluebox was ever that fast so i dont think they are connected to nwe. also there phone number seems to be for a company called bizvoip?

editorsean

From a quick check, they are two independent companies:

Beacon Broadband LTD:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/NI638257

Bluebox Broadband LTD:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/NI059582

Beacon Broadband's address matches up with Com Cubed Computers and unsurprisingly the Whois registrant is also Com Cubed.

http://www.comcubed.co.uk/contact

It'll be interesting to see how quickly they cover the county. Interesting what a little competition does for speed.

schizo1014

Just a note, my bluebox has considerable dropped again within the last few days back to the old 2/3mb upload speed, it was good while it lasted.

Brogan9

Mine never improved at all, but after contacting Beacon Broadband, they don't supply out my way for now, but hope to do so soon....
Fingers it is soon and they are as good as they say they are....

cushte

editorsean wrote: »

From a quick check, they are two independent companies:

Beacon Broadband LTD:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/NI638257

Bluebox Broadband LTD:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/NI059582

Beacon Broadband's address matches up with Com Cubed Computers and unsurprisingly the Whois registrant is also Com Cubed.

http://www.comcubed.co.uk/contact

It'll be interesting to see how quickly they cover the county. Interesting what a little competition does for speed.

thanks for that sean, thats a handy website. seems no connection between shareholders of both companies.

maybe my broadband is getting a bit better because people are moving away from nwe/bluebox. i cant really complain these days though, im getting fairly good speeds off peak. peak times its under 2 mbps but still fast enough for me.
i agree a bit of competition will be good for nwe and if beacon are any way good they wont be long getting customers.

thebo

Hi

Do nwe throttle connections if your downloading alot. Ive bought few ps4 games online which are 40gb+. I'm planning to download only after midnight and leaving them downloading overnight.

Have many of you downloaded games, nwe say unlimited downloads but we know this is a vague term used by many ISP's.

Penfailed

thebo wrote: »

Have many of you downloaded games, nwe say unlimited downloads but we know this is a vague term used by many ISP's.

Santa brought the kids an XBox. It took forever to download FIFA 17 and Forza 6 with NWE.

ShowMeTheCash

Mine has been good these last few months so they have definitely done something different.

I kind of draw the line at downloading games.

I am happy if ping is low and I can perhaps stream Netflix which really only needs about a 2mb connection. Log into work and work remotely and have the quality of my Skype calls clear.

For literally 24 months the service struggled with the above.

But last number of months I am seeing 7 to 10mb.

I have downloaded games but with a game being 15 to 40Gigs I know that taking myself to "Game" is ultimately going to be faster than downloading.

schizo1014

Mines has been between 2-4mb the last couple of weeks running off the barnesmore mast its a complete joke.

cushte

schizo1014 wrote: »

Mines has been between 2-4mb the last couple of weeks running off the barnesmore mast its a complete joke.

i have been getting 2-4 mb during the day and late at night but from 4 o clock to 10.30- 11p.m. is between 20 - 100 kbps. it takes nearly 20 mins to do a speedtest. Utterly useless between those hours.
A neighbour made the switch to beacon broadband and they are extremely happy with it, lowest speed was 21 mbps but its usually around 28-30mbps. I think i might make the switch too,I think its slightly more expensive but this service is beyond a joke. Nwe has been talking about making investments in infrastructure and updating hardware for too long now and ive seen no improvements. Anyone here know if imagine are rolling out in inishowen area anytime soon?

Penfailed

cushte wrote: »

lowest speed was 21 mbps but its usually around 28-30mbps.

It depends on which package you go for though, 10, 20, 30 or 40Mb.

NIMAN

But don't Beacon promise you that you'll get what.you pay for? So if you pay for 10meg, it will be 10meg, all the time.

Others advertising "up to 50meg" and giving you 10meg or less is just taking the mickey.

fooker!

Well things running good didnt last long!, it's gone back to being crap after 5-6pm till late at night for me!

schizo1014

Is bluebox down for anyone at the moment?

cushte

schizo1014 wrote: »

Is bluebox down for anyone at the moment?

mines is "up" at the minute.getting a lightning fast download speed of .41mbps
:eek:ping was 243ms

cushte

neighbour getting 8.14mbps down, 1.84 up and 31ms ping with beacon 10meg package:o

schizo1014

cushte wrote: »

mines is "up" at the minute.getting a lightning fast download speed of .41mbps
:eek:ping was 243ms

Mine isn't even connecting atm so I dunno if its the mast or what is wrong

Penfailed

Bluebox always plays up in windy weather...

fooker!

Mine was saying it was having a DNS Problem yesterday as well, Not able to access websites etc for a while

schizo1014

fooker! wrote: »

Mine was saying it was having a DNS Problem yesterday as well, Not able to access websites etc for a while

Is yours working now? Mine is still down tis a joke

fooker!

Yes it came back on a few hours later!
Is it connected but just not loading sites?

schizo1014

fooker! wrote: »

Yes it came back on a few hours later!
Is it connected but just not loading sites?

Yeah that's exactly what its like

fooker!

You could try changing the dns settings to the google ones in your router if you know how to do it?

8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

schizo1014

fooker! wrote: »

You could try changing the dns settings to the google ones in your router if you know how to do it?

8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Yeah I tried that earlier and still no luck, I'll have to wait until monday to ring or just hope for the best. The sooner fibre gets rolled out here the better

fooker!

schizo1014 wrote: »

Yeah I tried that earlier and still no luck, I'll have to wait until monday to ring or just hope for the best. The sooner fibre gets rolled out here the better

Yeah cant wait!, its supposed to be coming to my area this year!

I woulnt wait for it to come back on, just get in contact with them! they wont do anything if its left up to them.
Mine was slow all day yesterday and today so far, so I must get in contact with them to see whats going on.

cushte

just a bit of an update on my situation, was using my neighbours wifi there with beacon broadband getting 9.55 down 1.69 up 28ms ping. that was at 6 pm so fairly peak time. on a 10 mbps connection.:D
tried my own bluebox connection which is "apparently"also a 10mbps connection at about 6.30 pm. so im getting 0.34 mb down and 0.25 up with 209 ms ping.:mad

fooker!

oh nice, do they have a map of where they cover?
my bluebox has been crap this last few weeks!

cushte

im in burnfoot area so they have that covered and i know of people in burt and inch that have it, the best way to know is if you contact them.
ive checked out there fb page and i think you can contact them there to see if they have areas covered.
i think bluebox will have to up its game now although they are a fiver cheaper per month.
theres a community project in uk called B4RN, installing their own fibre network worth checking out on fb. think they are on youtube as well. maybe be an option here?

harkers79

just thought id pitch in my 2 cents on this in the hope it might help someone. ive had bluebox for 8 years in st johnston and experienced the same problems as everyone else. pulled the plug on them 2 months ago, cancelled my bank payment and ordered the beacon broadband 20mb package after my cousin in buncrana recomended them. i have 3 kids with xbox1, dreambox, ipad and phones. i dont use netflix so not sure how that would work but im getting 19mb everytime i test speeds. also there's no contract or phoneline and i had the satalite dish fitted 2 days after ordering. quick, tidy and friendly.

fooker!

harkers79 wrote: »

just thought id pitch in my 2 cents on this in the hope it might help someone. ive had bluebox for 8 years in st johnston and experienced the same problems as everyone else. pulled the plug on them 2 months ago, cancelled my bank payment and ordered the beacon broadband 20mb package after my cousin in buncrana recomended them. i have 3 kids with xbox1, dreambox, ipad and phones. i dont use netflix so not sure how that would work but im getting 19mb everytime i test speeds. also there's no contract or phoneline and i had the satalite dish fitted 2 days after ordering. quick, tidy and friendly.

Yeah think I will join them too when they come to my area!
Seems to be a lot of good reviews!

harkers79

I was speaking to my cousin and she has free broadband from them for the next 10 months! apparently they are giving away a free months broadband for every new customer that she recomends and so far she got 10

Tommy Lagahan

I hope they can handle the contention of new members, thats what killed NWE in the end up after all!

schizo1014

In fairness to NWE i got 3mb download speed today, better than all of last month lol The sooner eir makes its way up the old main road here the better.

TireeTerror

harkers79 wrote: »

just thought id pitch in my 2 cents on this in the hope it might help someone. ive had bluebox for 8 years in st johnston and experienced the same problems as everyone else. pulled the plug on them 2 months ago, cancelled my bank payment and ordered the beacon broadband 20mb package after my cousin in buncrana recomended them. i have 3 kids with xbox1, dreambox, ipad and phones. i dont use netflix so not sure how that would work but im getting 19mb everytime i test speeds. also there's no contract or phoneline and i had the satalite dish fitted 2 days after ordering. quick, tidy and friendly.

How long have you worked for them? Shill account alert!

fooker!

Looks like Bluebox is getting a name change!

https://www.facebook.com/bluelightningie/
http://bluelightning.ie/

chris_ie

I like how the contention video on their Facebook shows the speed dropping to 26mb from 50mb. Would be a bit more realistic showing it down to 1mb!

Antoninus

Hello to all long suffering NW / Donegal broadband users!

Does anybody have experience of using Blue Box in the Tremone Bay area?

Thanks,
Antoninus

fooker!

If its using the mast in the Culdaff area like I'm on, then expect the usual bluebox experience unfortunately. Its been pretty bad since before christmas after having a couple of weeks where it was going ok. it is unbelievably slow at peak times for me, and that is EVERY evening not just now and again

Antoninus

Thanks for the feedback Fkr. What side of Culdaff are you?

We would need the service more during the day - if any is available.

I called Bluebox today and was told by a customer rep that there might be a signal in the Tremone Bay area, but they would need to arrange a line of site check, for which there would be no charge / no commitment, once I completed and signed an application form. After I received the application form, I called back and spoke to another customer rep to express my concerns that the "application form" was a binding 12 month contract, and was then told there is zero chance of a signal in that area!

I then called Beacon Broadband but they said they will not be rolling out their service to that area until the end of the summer.

NIMAN

I'm waiting patiently on Beacon to arrive ... I had Bluebox out a few years back to do an install and the only transmitter they had line of sight to was full up.

I dodged a bullet there.

Antoninus

The customer rep from Beacon was confident that their service would arrive by summer's end. Beacon's customer service contrasted favourably with Bluebox and that's putting it kindly. I would still like Bluebox to carry out the line of sight test for the €50 fee I was quoted, but I'm not prepared to sign a 12 month contract for the privilege!

Meanwhile, I see the Meteor coverage map shows good/excellent coverage in the whole Tremone Bay area. I'm wondering now, if there is a signal, if their €30 for 50GB MiFi / hotspot package might be the best option for now. We have Vodafone cell phones and thought we might tether, but we had no signal from Carrowmenagh to half way to Redford!

NIMAN

That coverage map for Meteor shows me as having excellent 4G coverage.

Might look into it.

Is there a package I could ditch my VF home broadband for? Allow me to stream Netflix etc?

Antoninus

We only looked at PAYG MiFi options Niman.
Meteor offer a PAYG package of 50GB for €30 over a 180 day period.
Technically there's nothing to stop you topping up whenever your 50GB is used up, whether that's on a monthly basis or not, but it if you're streaming a lot, limited data packages aren't likely to be economical.

Penfailed

Beacon called out to the house to do a line of sight test with us as the Eircode said we were all good...no joy. They have another mast coming online in the next few weeks so we should be good to go. Can't wait to get rid of Bluebox.