Magnet FatPipe: Anyone know the full details

lotas

Morning all.

Got a call from Magnet yesterday about FatPipe. They tell me its in my area, but my address is missing from the list and they will try find me today (the house 4 doors up is on the list, mine is not...). Anyway, the guy said thats its 70Mb/s down, 20Mb/s up... is this right? Eircom's EFiber site is feckin useless... it asks me for my address, redirects me to a page and then back off to their home page... Anyway, if it is 20Mb/s up, that should be interesting... Any more details though?

lotas

right, so i managed to trick the eircom site, and the only thing it tells me, after putting in my address, is that my area is available, and i could get 50 or 70Mb/s and either 50Gb or Unlimited download cap... This being Eircom makes me think Unlimited means 75Gb, but anyway...

..Brian..

50mb BB and a 50gb cap ...... ridiculous :rolleyes:

lotas

..Brian.. wrote: »

50mb BB and a 50gb cap ...... ridiculous :rolleyes:

It is Eircom we are talking about here though... probably considered a good deal on their end!

finnteme

I got the call,and they told me that the 70mb fatpipe with unlimited calls to IRL, UK and US etc (Magnet Universal) will be around 65 eur.

I signed to that immediatly

lotas

finnteme wrote: »

I got the call,and they told me that the 70mb fatpipe with unlimited calls to IRL, UK and US etc (Magnet Universal) will be around 65 eur.

I signed to that immediatly

how long before it will be installed? Any ideas if they do it without the calls? though, unlimited is a good deal... may get rid of the UPC phone and stick with this...

finnteme

lotas wrote: »

how long before it will be installed? Any ideas if they do it without the calls? though, unlimited is a good deal... may get rid of the UPC phone and stick with this...

I dont know the price without calls, and they told me that i should be getting this around 20th of may, so 10 days to go

lotas

finnteme wrote: »

I dont know the price without calls, and they told me that i should be getting this around 20th of may, so 10 days to go

other follow up question... does that include line rental?

finnteme

lotas wrote: »

other follow up question... does that include line rental?

yes

lotas

right... in the process of ordering my Magnet connection... been told Broadband only is 45EUR a month, and the unlimited calls plan is 29EUR extra (still worth it... it includes mobile calls!). setup is EUR50, and there is no contract... 10-15 days for setup, but this is a second (third actually) connection in house, so i will have existing broadband still...

lmimmfn

lotas wrote: »

right... in the process of ordering my Magnet connection... been told Broadband only is 45EUR a month, and the unlimited calls plan is 29EUR extra (still worth it... it includes mobile calls!). setup is EUR50, and there is no contract... 10-15 days for setup, but this is a second (third actually) connection in house, so i will have existing broadband still...

whats the cap?

lotas

lmimmfn wrote: »

whats the cap?

None, suposidly... but if there is, there is also no contract... just ordered it there... been told the modem should be there in a few days and they send out an engineer to hook up the line... different connection from the eircom connection, they say... runs from the box (which is outside the estate) to the house (about 200m or so). More details as i get them...

lmimmfn

lotas wrote: »

None, suposidly... but if there is, there is also no contract... just ordered it there... been told the modem should be there in a few days and they send out an engineer to hook up the line... different connection from the eircom connection, they say... runs from the box (which is outside the estate) to the house (about 200m or so). More details as i get them...

sweet, that pricing is great, i presumed this is using Eircoms VDSL2 cabinets? in which case i dont understand how the connection could be different.

lotas

lmimmfn wrote: »

sweet, that pricing is great, i presumed this is using Eircoms VDSL2 cabinets? in which case i dont understand how the connection could be different.

yea, using Eircom VDSL2... no idea what the difference is... the lad on the phone said that it would be for both phone and internet... could be a splitter built in...

copacetic

lotas wrote: »

right... in the process of ordering my Magnet connection... been told Broadband only is 45EUR a month, and the unlimited calls plan is 29EUR extra (still worth it... it includes mobile calls!). setup is EUR50, and there is no contract... 10-15 days for setup, but this is a second (third actually) connection in house, so i will have existing broadband still...

Interesting, surprised they are €10 a month dearer than Vodafone for broadband only. Vodafone is €35 on a 12 month contract.

I guess it could be worth the €10 for no contract.

lotas

copacetic wrote: »

Interesting, surprised they are €10 a month dearer than Vodafone for broadband only. Vodafone is €35 on a 12 month contract.

I guess it could be worth the €10 for no contract.

Vodafone also have a fair usage cap of 300Gb... their "unlimited" pack also has the option to buy extra data... if you go over the "unlimited" Data... (sarcastic)

copacetic

lotas wrote: »

Vodafone also have a fair usage cap of 300Gb... their "unlimited" pack also has the option to buy extra data... if you go over the "unlimited" Data... (sarcastic)

They have said over on their forum that there is no charge for going over the cap..

I'd be inclined to go with Vodafone myself, purely because it's cheaper, any other pitfalls?

lotas

copacetic wrote: »

They have said over on their forum that there is no charge for going over the cap..

I'd be inclined to go with Vodafone myself, purely because it's cheaper, any other pitfalls?

I am a vodafone customer, and have been for whatever many years (before they where vodafone!) but the fact they are a mobile operator and have a list of charges on their site if you go over the cap is what worries me... they can say all they want in a forum, but if its not in a contract, its worthless... they can go and change what they wrote in the forum also.... its not legally binding...

copacetic

I guess so. Magnet messed me around re the fibre trial last year and don't actually even bother posting details of their plans, so can't check t and c. I filled in their 'check' form, but it doesn't do anything except for take your details! I wouldn't be inclined to trust them at all, and and don't think will hit the 300GB either way.

It's really a question of whether it's worth €10 extra a month to be without a contract I guess.

mad turnip

lotas wrote: »

I am a vodafone customer, and have been for whatever many years (before they where vodafone!) but the fact they are a mobile operator and have a list of charges on their site if you go over the cap is what worries me... they can say all they want in a forum, but if its not in a contract, its worthless... they can go and change what they wrote in the forum also.... its not legally binding...

I've been using vodafone since they were BT back several years ago, and they love sending us out the bills for going over our bandwidth cap which we've upgraded several times to 100gb now on an 8mb line.

lotas

Hmmm.... just found something "worrying" on the Magnet Legal site: https://www.magnet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Magnet-Traffic-Management-Protection-Policy.pdf

"As an example, a customer on our ‘Fatpipe 70’ service can have unlimited downloads every
day during off peak hours. During peak hours that customer would have to download 6
standard definition movies or 1,000 songs before a temporary speed reduction was applied,
and even then they can continue to browse the web and use services like the Netflix, AerTV,
Youtube, Spotify without any traffic management!"

Peak is between 4PM and 1AM.... That kind of sucks... glad i only have a 30 day contract is they are screwing with me on this...

lotas

trying to work out the max you could use in a month using this new traffic management system...

there are 15 hours a day where you get unlimited speed and no management... that means 15*30*60 = 27000 min @ 70Mb/s = 108TB a month.
then, it will take you a little over 7 min to download the 4Gb to hit your limit during peak times... there is no mention if this is per hour or per time period, so we assume its over the whole time... so, at 4:07PM, you are now limited to 1Mb/s, not the full 7... which, by my caclulations, means you get 530 min at the 1Mb/s.... which is 3975Mbytes...

SO, per day you can get:

Peak (before cap): 4Gb.
Peak (After cap): 3.9Gb
Off Peak: 3691Gb

when you do the maths that way, its not a major issue... the off peak downloads would be grand... peak sounds like it could suck... though the list of sites not affected are not bad:

Netflix
Youtube
AerTV
Spotify
Facebook
RTE Player
TV3 Player

would have liken to see iTunes, XBox services, possibly Sony's services and maybe the likes of Google Play, etc, on that list... Wonder if trafic from inside the magnet network (bit torrent from local users) is counted...

DECEiFER

Oh no, they've gone the way of Virgin Media in the UK. I was seriously considering them but 4GB in the space of 4pm-1am? Bollocks to that. I often download a few HD movies and in this day and age to have to worry if it falls between those 9 hours of "peak" usage is just stupid.

Off-hand, does anyone know if Eircom and Vodafone or any other FTTC supplier has a traffic management policy?

Maybe I should appreciate my UPC connection more. I just really wanted that 20Mb upload and was hoping the overall latency would also be lower.


Lotas, why don't you use your cooling-off period to cancel and get your connection charge back. Since it's contract-free, Magnet charge you €49.99. You should recover that cost if you're planning on going with another ISP.

lotas

DECEiFER wrote: »

Lotas, why don't you use your cooling-off period to cancel and get your connection charge back. Since it's contract-free, Magnet charge you €49.99. You should recover that cost if you're planning on going with another ISP.

In all fairness, i have a couple 150Mb connections already in the house from UPC (300Mb down, 20Mb up) and now this as a secondary connection. the upload is what i am looking for. As for the cap, ok, just set my downloading to kick off at 1AM... I mean most of the time thats when what i download is available... NetFlix is "free" from usage caps, so watching stuff from that is grand... I just hope they think of adding XBox and iTunes to that list soon...

lotas

lotas wrote: »

Hmmm.... just found something "worrying" on the Magnet Legal site: https://www.magnet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Magnet-Traffic-Management-Protection-Policy.pdf


Peak is between 4PM and 1AM.... That kind of sucks... glad i only have a 30 day contract is they are screwing with me on this...

This is a decent(ish) policy. Encourages heavy downloaders to pause/slow their client during peak hours. Not a big deal tbh, most clients have schedules to automate it.

Better that than fixed caps, excess charges, indiscriminate throttling etc. They are basically saying torrent as much as you want, just try not to do it during peak hours. Its a common sense policy.

DECEiFER

Deleted User wrote: »

This is a decent(ish) policy. Encourages heavy downloaders to pause/slow their client during peak hours. Not a big deal tbh, most clients have schedules to automate it.

Better that than fixed caps, excess charges, indiscriminate throttling etc. They are basically saying torrent as much as you want, just try not to do it during peak hours. Its a common sense policy.

4GB? It's not just torrenting/downloading movies that would be affected and 4GB in the space of 9 hours is laughable. My UPC 100Mb/s connection can do over 40GB per hour at full speed. If I was to go ahead and do that now, I wouldn't get penalized for it. I have no reason to do it, but maybe one day I might need to, and I don't want to have to wait until my ISP says it's okay (before 4pm or after 1am) before I can get cracking on it.

But common sense...? Say I upload a HD video of my own creation (to anywhere but YouTube); bam! What happens if I use a streaming service other than Netflix to watch legal TV shows in HD; bam again! It's 2013, we all should be able to do that stuff without worrying. It's just way too old school. If such a policy is needed, then revise the numbers. 4GB is way too stingy. Why bother having a kick-ass 70Mb connection if you can't use it when you're able to? A lot of people work until 4pm and are asleep by 1am. If you're a light user or just a heavy browser (Facebook addiction!), you'd do fine with 8Mb/s. You certainly don't need 70Mb/s down and 20Mb/s up.

Think about it. The policy doesn't bode well with the majority of their target market.


EDIT: Truly unlimited plans are surfacing. So, for example, on UPC, I am not be subject to punishment for downloading over x amount per day or month, as of February 2013, when they changed their FUP. More ISPs are following, so the days of "fixed caps, excess charges" are numbered. As for "indiscriminate throttling," that's almost what Magnet is doing now!

liamnojo92

do they drop you to 1mb/s or 1mbs ? if it's the latter that is ridiculous I've a better package with them at the minute with just fair usage policy.

DECEiFER

liamnojo92 wrote: »

do they drop you to 1mb/s or 1mbs ? if it's the latter that is ridiculous I've a better package with them at the minute with just fair usage policy.

What's mbs? Is it bits vs. bytes? 1Mb/s or 1MB/s? A lower-case "b" always refers to bits, whereas the upper-case refers to bytes. You can express megabits per second as mb/s or mbps, mbs isn't anything really.

The answer you're looking for is 1Mb/s, or 1 megabit per second.

TheDoc

I pay €67 a month for their 24mbps ADSL line, I'm literally praying to every god I know off that I get fatpipe in my area shortly. It's on the list, just needs to be done.

The speed throttle for peaking a cap between 16:00 and 1:00 is worrying though. i'll want clarity on that before singing any new agreement. That sounds dodgy as ****...

DECEiFER

TheDoc wrote: »

I pay €67 a month for their 24mbps ADSL line, I'm literally praying to every god I know off that I get fatpipe in my area shortly. It's on the list, just needs to be done.

The speed throttle for peaking a cap between 16:00 and 1:00 is worrying though. i'll want clarity on that before singing any new agreement. That sounds dodgy as ****...

The fact is, if you use more than 4GB of traffic in the space of 4pm to 1am, you will be throttled back to 1Mb/s for the remaining duration of the peak time. So at 1am, your speeds will return to normal. There are some sites like Netflix, YouTube, the Irish TV players, that are excluded from the throttle and I assume they are also excluded from adding to your traffic during peak times (so you could probably watch as much Netflix in HD as you liked during that time, for example).

I still think it's crap and would much rather a monthly data cap of 500GB.

jamesnp

I'm actually devastated to find this out... I've been on Magnet Simply Broadband 24mb/1mb offering now for the last year, and I'm quite happy with it. I'm very keen to get the fibre though, and signed up on the 20th. Not once was it mentioned that there'd be any change in T&Cs from my current set up.

This is a terrible, terrible idea, for several reasons -> I use off site back up — I will shoot through the 4gb on the upload alone every day at ~4.05pm. Then for the rest of the night I'm getting a worse connection than I got in 2003 with Eircom. Even if I wasn't using offsite backup, say I had a large OS update to download ~ 8gb. I would download 4gb of that in about 5min, and then HAVE TO WAIT ANOTHER 9HRS for the rest to download, not to mention other traffic.

It looks like I'll do the required 30 days and then switch to either their business package @ €75 odd a month (the static IP attracts me to this) or to Eircom (who seem to have the right idea about fibre and download limits/throttling.

Here's hoping Magnet will cop on a bit.

-jp