Anyone else get a UPC network upgrade letter in Ashbourne

cubix

Seen the lads from KN network(i think) messing on the road last week and then got this through the door. We use to be chorus and all of the estate is cabled for anologue. Anybody else in other esates get this letter, will be interesting to see how long it takes them to get started.

JayeL

Didn't get a letter but wouldn't mind UPC broadband! I'm at the other end of the town, apparently Eircom plan to have fibre power here by the end of the year.

Irish Steve

E-mailed UPC to see what's happening, and got a call back that they are planning to upgrade Ashbourne "shorly".

Interestingly enough, I also had a call from Eircom in the last few days, and supposedly, (and I'm not about to hold my breath) they will be releasing a new product in March that will include streaming TV, on Fibre powerd broadband.

It's at moments like this that I am happy that I'm nearly at the end of my 12 months mandatory with Imagine Wimax, though to be fair to Imagine, I've not had any serious issues with the Wimax product, it's been reliable, reasonable speed, and not failed too often, which at the end of the day is what is expected from any service provider.

It will be interesting to see if Ashbourne does at last get a sensible speed broadband service, though I shall watch UPC with great care, the quality of service on the old analog cable system has been dire for years, regardless of who owned it, and even recently with the demise of Chorus, there have still been problems with the reliability of the cable system, so there's going to be a lot of work to be done before I will trust it for all my comms requirements

cubix

Also had eircom rep boy up @ the door last night. When I told him that I was'nt interested in changing at the moment as UPC should be re-doing the estate sooner rather than later. His answer to that was " I dont think so as there is issues with the phone lines in Ashboure":eek:. I understand these lads are out to sell but are they really that F$£King stupid or feel they can get away with Sh$t like that. Anyways I said good night and closed the door.

Shot off an email to UPC with the REF number on the letter to see if they had a start date only to be rung back by a lad nearly as bad as eircom boy. When I asked him regarding start date he said " Oh yeah Ashbourne is on the list alright for sometime this year". I said does the letter I got in the door with the Ref number mean nothing then. He said "Oh right, Ah sure its only a matter of time".;) I thought to myself, well done my son you have earned your days pay today alright.

Irish Steve

cubix wrote: »

I said does the letter I got in the door with the Ref number mean nothing then. He said "Oh right, Ah sure its only a matter of time".;) I thought to myself, well done my son you have earned your days pay today alright.

and now you know why I am very reluctant to trust UPC. I've been here 20 years, and the quality of the cable network over that time has been dire at best, and unusable for long periods of time at worst.

Right now, the majority of new TV sets being sold won't work with the cable network, SKY1 is so low down the band, most receivers can't tune it accurately. The scrambled channels put so much cross channel modulation on to other channels, the picture quality is dire, and for long periods of time, things like teletext were completely unreliable, which might not be an issue for a lot of people, but I do know of families with hearing impaired members who wanted to use subtitling, and could not because the signal quality was so poor. Wide screen, Stereo Sound, many of those "extras" just were not there, or not properly implemented by Chorus and the like, and if you had the temerity to ring to complain, that was a recipie for aggravation of the highest order. In many respects, while it was and is expensive, the best thing to happen to cable in Ashbourne was the arrival of Sky, at least the satellite system can be relied upon to work pretty much all the time, as long as it's been correctly set up.

Then there's the problem of terrestrial channel interference with the cable channels, which again causes poor quality, and things like varying volume levels between channels, so you have to turn up the volume on (say) TV3, only to be deafened by the volume level when you then change to another channel.

To put it in context, if you go to the UPC web site, it doesn't even show Ashbourne as an area in which they have coverage, which I suspect is down to the fact that they'd rather not admit to being responsible for the dire performance and quality of the "service" they provide at present.

A few years ago, Bord Gais were laying a new pipe from Swords to Ashbourne and beyond, and Chorus were offered the option of having fibre laid in the trench at the same time for a contribution. At the time, they also had one of the first fibre systems running in Swords. They didn't take up the offer, with the result that the Asbourne Relay systems is still in the dark ages as far as anything modern is concerned.

UPC may be better than Chorus used to be, that won't be hard, but I'm not about to start trusting them any time soon, performance is all, and that has to be proved. Leopard and spots is the phrase that comes to mind, and I see way too many issues being reported in the broadband forum about problems with UPC for comfort.