Fibre: Vodafone or Eircom?

iniall

UPC is not available in my area at the moment (& they won't say when it might be), but it seems as if eFibre is. So the question is: Vodafone or Eircom? I'm currently with VF - it's been ok, but only on 4Mb out of "Up To" 24Mb. Was previously with Eircom and wasn't hugely impressed.

I'd appreciate it if anyone with experience of fibre with either VF or Eircom could offer any advice?

iniall

iniall wrote: »

UPC is not available in my area at the moment (& they won't say when it might be), but it seems as if eFibre is. So the question is: Vodafone or Eircom? I'm currently with VF - it's been ok, but only on 4Mb out of "Up To" 24Mb. Was previously with Eircom and wasn't hugely impressed.

I'd appreciate it if anyone with experience of fibre with either VF or Eircom could offer any advice?

Anyone?

bealtine

iniall wrote: »

Anyone?

It's exactly the same stuff, Voda just resell eircom VDSL. There are some minor differences like price and other technical issues but they won't really change the speed delivered to you.

iniall

bealtine wrote: »

It's exactly the same stuff, Voda just resell eircom VDSL. There are some minor differences like price and other technical issues but they won't really change the speed delivered to you.

Sure, but in terms of service, reliability, installation, all that stuff, how do they compare? I have an aversion to eircom from horrors in the past, but have they improved? Vodafone's 70Mb offering is cheaper than eircom's, but is there a catch? Or are they, as you say, just more or less the same and it doesn't matter a damn which one I pick?

murphaph

Maybe hold off and wait for UTV as well. Their pricing looks even better than VF (especially for BB only with no phone-you can port your number to a VoIP provider like Blueface if you need a landline number for calls in).

bealtine

iniall wrote: »

Sure, but in terms of service, reliability, installation, all that stuff, how do they compare?

All pretty much handled by eircom, the only real difference is the quality of the backhaul (and price) everything else is exactly the same

iniall

murphaph wrote: »

Maybe hold off and wait for UTV as well. Their pricing looks even better than VF (especially for BB only with no phone-you can port your number to a VoIP provider like Blueface if you need a landline number for calls in).

When are they coming though? A UPC rep spoke to me six months ago saying they would be available in my area by summer and there's still no sign of work even starting. And would UTV not have to use eircom's network, the same as Vodafone do?

ofcork

I got vf fibre today having been with them for a few years, am getting 48mg down and 13 up,imo their packages are cheaper than eircom esp with a phone.

murphaph

iniall wrote: »

When are they coming though? A UPC rep spoke to me six months ago saying they would be available in my area by summer and there's still no sign of work even starting. And would UTV not have to use eircom's network, the same as Vodafone do?

No idea when they'll launch but their prices are good. They are just a reseller like Vodafone yes.

LillySV

ofcork wrote: »

I got vf fibre today having been with them for a few years, am getting 48mg down and 13 up,imo their packages are cheaper than eircom esp with a phone.

thats great to hear...im in galway and am thinking of movin to vodafone...they are cheaper than upc and hopefully faster too..as stated by me in another thread...im on the upc 50mb package at mo and only getin 21 mb...and i have friends in other parts of city with upc and they are gettin no better!its fairly clear that for alot of people..upc's advertising is false:mad:

berettaman

Hi.
I am in a very similar situation. I am 3 miles from a town. My neighbour on a main road has quite good broadband and I am a field away and I have zilch. No UPC etc. I am trying to run a business at home as well, by the way.:rolleyes:

I pay €45 a month to eircom for a wireless connection for phone only (and fax if the weather is good) This included line rental when there is no physical line to the house!!. I pay €20 to Three for a BB dongle.
Vodafone stated that they would PAY eircom to bring a proper line/broadband to my house. all for €45 per month.

After 5 years of crap broadband and all sorts of promises of roll outs in our area I said why not? I went for this package.:

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/home-extra/

I know they may be just reselling an eircom line but eircom wasn't bothered doing anything for me so why not try them out?

I will let you know what quality the actual service but compare to intermittant Three broadband I will give anything a try!

LillySV

berettaman wrote: »

Hi.
I am in a very similar situation. I am 3 miles from a town. My neighbour on a main road has quite good broadband and I am a field away and I have zilch. No UPC etc. I am trying to run a business at home as well, by the way.:rolleyes:

I pay €45 a month to eircom for a wireless connection for phone only (and fax if the weather is good) This included line rental when there is no physical line to the house!!. I pay €20 to Three for a BB dongle.
Vodafone stated that they would PAY eircom to bring a proper line/broadband to my house. all for €45 per month.

After 5 years of crap broadband and all sorts of promises of roll outs in our area I said why not? I went for this package.:

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/home-extra/

I know they may be just reselling an eircom line but eircom wasn't bothered doing anything for me so why not try them out?

I will let you know what quality the actual service but compare to intermittant Three broadband I will give anything a try!

when are they connecting ya? run a speed check on speedtest.net when they do and let us know what speed ya record

berettaman

Hi LillySV,

They said they would connect in about a month. I will let you know how it goes. I will deffo do a speed test and let you know..

Still very sceptical as I expect to eircom yo put a spanner in the works. We shall see..;)

Cantona's Collars

Currently paying €32 a month for Vodafone,they also promised me the price will stay the same when fibre is available (soon I hope)

It's the VF Max package http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/simply-broadband-max/

Clover

Was going with Eircom and today was to be install day but after they cancelled the install , I cancelled them.

So hello / goodbye Eircom , hello Vodafone.

For the people that got it installed , how did the Vodafone install go?.

jantheman91

I've had eircom and vodafone and always noticed better speeds with eircom.

Couple that with the fact that my ping is approx. 10ms lower with eircom to the exact same server.

There is definitely a difference between the two, but for what reasons i am unsure.

Eircom > Vodafone

BArra

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/simply-broadband-max/

the above plan is for fibre only?

i was under the impression that you still required a phone service/line rental to have fibre broadband service, is this not the case?

Cantona's Collars

BArra wrote: »

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/simply-broadband-max/

the above plan is for fibre only?

i was under the impression that you still required a phone service/line rental to have fibre broadband service, is this not the case?

No,I have it and don't have fibre just yet.I also have the phone service with it but if I recall a cs rep told me that the fibre service will have broadband only at that price.

BArra

but fibre only goes to the vdsl cabinet, from there its a phoneline to your home, therefore thats why i assume you still pay line rental?

Cantona's Collars

BArra wrote: »

but fibre only goes to the vdsl cabinet, from there its a phoneline to your home, therefore thats why i assume you still pay line rental?

VF don't charge line rental,the €32 I pay is inclusive of rental/vat.

iniall

So I spoke to the Vodafone guy today and despite the fact that my landline number can - according to VF's own website - get up to 70Mb, he told me the maximum I could get was 50Mb. What's more he suggested that speeds would more or less never reach 50Mb and would vary between 20 and 40Mb, depending on demand. He said I should sign up for their guaranteed 28Mb option, which would never drop below that speed - and would never go above it either. Can this be right? No 70Mb, not even 50Mb, and wildly varying speeds, "depending on the time of day". But if I want to take less than half the advertised speed, they can guarantee that. This was kinda the sort of experience story I was looking for.

Anybody had this offer of guaranteed speed before?

iniall

Just got a text to say there's an engineer coming Friday, but I'm having second thoughts. Anybody had any experience of this capped fibre from Vodafone?

red_bairn

iniall wrote: »

Just got a text to say there's an engineer coming Friday, but I'm having second thoughts. Anybody had any experience of this capped fibre from Vodafone?

There is no "28Mb" package. All the packages on the website state: up to 70Mb speed (*All speeds are "up to" and dependent on the quality of your line. Speeds of up to 70Mbps are available in Vodafone fibre broadband exchanges only. Speeds of up to 24Mbps are available in Vodafone enhanced broadband exchanges only. In all other areas where broadband is available, speeds of up to 7.1Mbps are provided.)

iniall

red_bairn wrote: »

There is no "28Mb" package. All the packages on the website state: up to 70Mb speed (*All speeds are "up to" and dependent on the quality of your line. Speeds of up to 70Mbps are available in Vodafone fibre broadband exchanges only. Speeds of up to 24Mbps are available in Vodafone enhanced broadband exchanges only. In all other areas where broadband is available, speeds of up to 7.1Mbps are provided.)

I know there's nothing about it on the website. The guy I spoke to yesterday said that my line could only get up to 50Mb, but it would likely be less than that and fluctuate greatly at busy times. He then said that they offer a "guaranteed" rate of 28Mb that will not fluctuate, will always be 28Mb and "that should be enough for anybody".

ofcork

Clover wrote: »

Was going with Eircom and today was to be install day but after they cancelled the install , I cancelled them.

So hello / goodbye Eircom , hello Vodafone.

For the people that got it installed , how did the Vodafone install go?.

My installation was quick about half hour,changed the original te socket,went to the cab connected modem and ran a few tests and good to go.

iniall

Looks like eircom's similar plan is €60 a month (full price), compared to Vodafone's €44.50. Guess I'm sticking with VF and their strange capped broadband plan...

Clover

ofcork wrote: »

My installation was quick about half hour,changed the original te socket,went to the cab connected modem and ran a few tests and good to go.

That sounds quick enough.

How long did it take for them to get in touch with you after you placed your order ? ordered mine last Friday and have not had so much as an e-mail from them.

ofcork

Ordered on a Tuesday by rang Wednesday morning set date for the following Monday.

crawler

iniall wrote: »

Looks like eircom's similar plan is €60 a month (full price), compared to Vodafone's €44.50. Guess I'm sticking with VF and their strange capped broadband plan...

the service is unlimited....

**Most Vodafone broadband packages come with unlimited usage, subject to a 300GB fair usage policy (FUP). The FUP exists simply to allow Vodafone to contact a customer if we notice unusual usage that is driving very high internet traffic volumes, such as a PC virus. The service is truly unlimited and there is no charge and no service degradation of any sort that takes place for exceeding the 300GB FUP. The FUP simply exists to protect customers and gives Vodafone a means to contact them to help out if we notice something unusual.

SpaceTime

The access network is the same with any of those companies selling VDSL2 (eFibre type products).
Same cabinet, same line to your house.

The difference can be things like the national backhaul network. They take traffic back from eircom at various nodes and feed it onto their own network. So it's not just re-sold eircom broadband it's actually a different product.

Also, their international connectivity would be different to eircom as they'd be providing their own.

So, really you'd want to check reviews before jumping.

From what I've read online, Vodafone @ Home Fibre seems quite good though. It's definitely a few quid cheaper than eircom as you can do it without landline phone service where as eircom for some inexplicable reason are still forcing you to take a dial tone with the broadband.

From my experience of eircom efibre so far, I'd have to say it's very good.
I have gotten excellent speeds and reasonably low pings. The thing I *really* noticed was the uploads. If you've had reasonably fast ADSL2+ until now, you'll notice things are quite a lot faster for big downloads, but where it really shines is uploads. It's nearly like comparing ADSL to dial up on that side of things!

Their uploads are actually even faster than UPC at present, although UPC's downloads still blow them out of the water on the top packages.

The speed varies depending on your distance from the cabinet and it varies quite drastically too.
Seems like most people get something like 40-50 down and about 10-15 up.
If you're lucky enough to have the cabinet at the end of your garden or something, you might get close to 70 down and 20 up but, for that it really does have to be very close by.

Also, there's a technology called Vectoring being rolled out in the coming months (it's already built into the modems and the cabinets) which will allow for a major speed increase that should see 100mbit/s becoming possible over the same gear.

Basically Vectoring works by cancelling noise on the line. The cabinet actively analyses all the lines connected to it and then sends noise-cancelling signals down the lines to remove cross-talk and some aspects of other noise too. That allows the speeds to be cranked up considerably.

*ALL* VDSL2 providers including Vodafone will have access to this and their modems had to be specified to support it from day one.

...

One other thing on the modems:

Each supplier has its own modems, but they're all to whatever spec eircom set out. Do not use any other modems with the service as you risk screwing up vectoring and the cabinets may even detect and stop talking to non-vectoring capable modems.

naughto

crawler wrote: »

the service is unlimited....

**Most Vodafone broadband packages come with unlimited usage, subject to a 300GB fair usage policy (FUP). The FUP exists simply to allow Vodafone to contact a customer if we notice unusual usage that is driving very high internet traffic volumes, such as a PC virus. The service is truly unlimited and there is no charge and no service degradation of any sort that takes place for exceeding the 300GB FUP. The FUP simply exists to protect customers and gives Vodafone a means to contact them to help out if we notice something unusual.

after reading that i might cancle my order with eircom and go with vodafone the cap was def putting me.iam avering about 150-190gb a month on 5 mb line.
just an up date on this rang eircom to cancle and what do you no my order for fiber was never put on there system.my advice to any one do not sign up with the reps that call to your door

iniall

crawler wrote: »

the service is unlimited....

**Most Vodafone broadband packages come with unlimited usage, subject to a 300GB fair usage policy (FUP). The FUP exists simply to allow Vodafone to contact a customer if we notice unusual usage that is driving very high internet traffic volumes, such as a PC virus. The service is truly unlimited and there is no charge and no service degradation of any sort that takes place for exceeding the 300GB FUP. The FUP simply exists to protect customers and gives Vodafone a means to contact them to help out if we notice something unusual.

Yes it's unlimited download, but the speed is capped at 28Mb.

crawler

iniall wrote: »

Yes it's unlimited download, but the speed is capped at 28Mb.

Nope - unless that's all the line can handle or someone selects a stable profile...

iniall

crawler wrote: »

Nope - unless that's all the line can handle or someone selects a stable profile...

Tell that to Vodafone. The rep told me that (despite their website telling me my line could handle up to 70Mb) my line could only handle up to 50Mb and probably wouldn't get near that. He also said that the speed would vary hugely at peak times, so I might be better off going for a guaranteed 28Mb, which would neither go up nor down, regardless of time of day.

ofcork

I suppose you could chance the up to 50mb and see what you get and if its bad switch to the 28 mb package, I was told up to 50mb and getting 47 or so constantly since.

naughto

ofcork wrote: »

I suppose you could chance the up to 50mb and see what you get and if its bad switch to the 28 mb package, I was told up to 50mb and getting 47 or so constantly since.

i was told by vd that the best i can ge is 30 down 8 up.

raymix

iniall wrote: »

Looks like eircom's similar plan is €60 a month (full price), compared to Vodafone's €44.50. Guess I'm sticking with VF and their strange capped broadband plan...

it's €35, most people don't care about having a landline. Almost half the price, lol.

iniall

Engineer arrived this morning to install fibre box. Took about an hour. Down 27Mb, Up 13Mb, Ping 25ms. Nowhere near 70Mb - or even 50Mb - but much better than ADSL speed of 4Mb.

naughto

iniall wrote: »

Engineer arrived this morning to install fibre box. Took about an hour. Down 27Mb, Up 13Mb, Ping 25ms. Nowhere near 70Mb - or even 50Mb - but much better than ADSL speed of 4Mb.

how far away are you from the cabneit?
i was told ill be on some thing the same speed wise,hopefully i get that.

iniall

naughto wrote: »

how far away are you from the cabneit?
i was told ill be on some thing the same speed wise,hopefully i get that.

I'm only about 150 metres away, so I was hoping for faster speeds. I wonder if the copper might be the problem, as on ADSL I was getting pretty low download speeds.

ED E

iniall wrote: »

Engineer arrived this morning to install fibre box. Took about an hour. Down 27Mb, Up 13Mb, Ping 25ms. Nowhere near 70Mb - or even 50Mb - but much better than ADSL speed of 4Mb.

13 Up is pretty good. Are you testing on wireless? Try wired?

iniall

ED E wrote: »

13 Up is pretty good. Are you testing on wireless? Try wired?

I am testing on wireless, yeah. The engineer said he was getting 40Mbps from the box and he was wired. My laptop doesn't have an ethernet port though, so I'll have to stay wireless.

naughto

it has to have and ethernet port
one like this

SpaceTime

iniall wrote: »

I'm only about 150 metres away, so I was hoping for faster speeds. I wonder if the copper might be the problem, as on ADSL I was getting pretty low download speeds.

You might not be so close in terms of wiring though.
It could be taking the scenic route from the cabinet to your house.

iniall

naughto wrote: »

it has to have and ethernet port
one like this

No it does not have to have an ethernet port.

http://store.apple.com/ie/mac/family/macbook-air

iniall

SpaceTime wrote: »

You might not be so close in terms of wiring though.
It could be taking the scenic route from the cabinet to your house.

Yeah it's 150 metres as the crow flies, so who knows what twists and turns the wires take. So near and yet so far...

naughto

iniall wrote: »

I'm only about 150 metres away, so I was hoping for faster speeds. I wonder if the copper might be the problem, as on ADSL I was getting pretty low download speeds.

you r150 meters away iam about 650 meters away from my cabnet yet we are still getting the same speed.how does that work?

LillySV

i put in my order for vodafone fibre over 8-9 days ago...they told me at the time that eircom had to conect the house for them but it would be done in 10 days max...noone has even contacted me to arrange it yet and when i ring vodafone about this i get fobbed off...absolutely terrible customer service by a crowd that should be tryin to encourage me to get connected!!im really really startin to rethink about how bad upc was...might stay with em

SpaceTime

UPC were pretty excellent in my experience of them!
Never had any bother with them and found they generally responded to tech issues very fully and quite rapidly.

Bear in mind with Vodafone they're basically sending service request to eircom wholesale via a standardised system. So, they're probably waiting for responses.

Also, because the rollout's on-going, the crews are pretty busy. They're doing a hell of a lot of new installs.

Two family members have had efibre installed and it's taken 2 weeks in one case and 6 in another!

LillySV

SpaceTime wrote: »

UPC were pretty excellent in my experience of them!
Never had any bother with them and found they generally responded to tech issues very fully and quite rapidly.

Bear in mind with Vodafone they're basically sending service request to eircom wholesale via a standardised system. So, they're probably waiting for responses.

Also, because the rollout's on-going, the crews are pretty busy. They're doing a hell of a lot of new installs.

Two family members have had efibre installed and it's taken 2 weeks in one case and 6 in another!

i rang vodafone a month in advance of gettin upc out and they said they would ring back closer to the time...never did so rang them and the girl was very rude and said i wasnt on system anddidnt wana help at all..got through to a guy after who was nice and guaranteed install within 10 days....thats gone by in a day or so....no one contacted me or conected me since...rang again and they said they would check next mon(which will be 11 days!)i could try blame the eircom side of things but it seems as if vodafone have more questions to answer about their service than anyone else

raymix

Just found out from Eircom resellers (that shall remain anonymous), that Eircom is also selling Simple Fibre 70Mbps connection for €40, it's not on their website because they still want to enforce you to pay for landline for whatever reasons. Basically if you are mobile user and don't care about landline, you can save €20 on this. This is not their "first 6 months cheaper" crap. Basically extra €5 on top of similiar vodafone's offer, just no questionable FUP enforced.

Hope someone finds this helpful.