Well, I'm officially without broadband now... /yay

BeerWolf

Ripplecom's cut me off last night...

Living just a bit from Dublin, and I can't get broadband [3G and Satellite doesn't qualify as "Broadband", to which the NBS considers it as!]... Checking up IrelandOffline's map and other wireless serivices, none cover me...

Got to love the infrastructure of this country! :pac:

SpaceTime

Why did Ripplecom cut you off?

Is Digiweb Metro available in your area?

Most (not all) of the FWA services have quite tight data caps though. I think Metro's 100GB / month or something like that.

Also, if you define where "a bit from Dublin" is a bit more, people might be able to figure out some options for you on here. Quite a lot of knowledge on this forum.

BeerWolf

Why did Ripplecom cut you off?

Because they considered me not worth the hassle after a year's worth of dire services, with a complaint every few months. They're a fecking useless company, and an even worse CS!

Is Digiweb Metro available in your area?

Nope

Most (not all) of the FWA services have quite tight data caps though. I think Metro's 100GB / month or something like that.

I'm aware of this, I'm still waiting for a response from Net1.

Regional and Wicklow Broadband were a no go.

Also, if you define where "a bit from Dublin" is a bit more, people might be able to figure out some options for you on here. Quite a lot of knowledge on this forum.

I'm living in the Wyestown region by Oldtown, Co. Dublin - it's near Ashbourne.

Moonbeam

do you have a phone line?

BeerWolf

Moonbeam wrote: »

do you have a phone line?

Yup, but DSL service would be 0.x-1MB at most. And that's just the range constrained - I'd imagine it'd be a lot worse when you take into account the quality of the phone lines in this area.



To add insult to injury - the Eirgrid laid out infront of the house, running along the road, has fibre cables! T_T

SpaceTime

BeerWolf wrote: »

Yup, but DSL service would be 0.x-1MB at most.

Are you certain of that? How far's the exchange?

Looks like on the eircom wholesale map you're in the hinterland of three exchanges.

Ballyboughal which seems to be a small rural exchange support nothing except possibly basic ADSL
Ashbourne which supports ADSL2+ and NGB etc and is e-fibre enabled with about 25 cabinets by the looks of it covering all of Ashbourne
Garritstown which also seems to be NGB enabled.

BeerWolf

SpaceTime wrote: »

Are you certain of that? How far's the exchange?

I've called a few DSL services, they've all given the same answer.

Anyways;

From Garristown's: 3981m

From Oldtown's: 2448m ( uSwitch lists Oldtown capable of getting up to 70MB... fs )

From Ashbourne's: 4588m

SpaceTime

So you're basically in a very rural area in reality. Proximity to Dublin doesn't really help matters in that respect.
Those towns may well be have UPC. It doesn't mean a rural location in the locality will have it.

BeerWolf

Guess I'll just have to suck it up, and get 3's Broadband Pro 60GB - Mobile WiFi package (up to 21Mb, 60GB Cap, for €35/month) ...

But it's friggin 3G !!! I'm a gamer, this isn't ideal at all

Reading This Thread isn't very assuring either...

SpaceTime

Could Digiweb Metro cover it with a very high antenna?

You might need to have a chat with someone about options - it may cost you a lot more than standard installation though or you might have to provide a mast yourself.

Net1 seem to cover your area too.

http://www.net1.ie/pages/?title1=coverage

Dublin's not listed but the coverage map shows coverage right down into Swords.

BeerWolf

Could Digiweb Metro cover it with a very high antenna?

You might need to have a chat with someone about options - it may cost you a lot more than standard installation though or you might have to provide a mast yourself.

Did ask them about Metro, they said it wasn't available - I might try my luck again with them and suggest the above as such

Net1 seem to cover your area too.

http://www.net1.ie/pages/?title1=coverage

Dublin's not listed but the coverage map shows coverage right down into Swords.

Yeah, just waiting for a response off their engineer to see if it's viable to send someone out.

SpaceTime

Good luck with it. You seem to be on the edge of the footprint of several small exchanges.

The only way of really ensuring coverage in areas like that would be for some kind of extra support for the FWA operators.

It's never going to be done with DSL over very long phone lines and the patterns of housing are too scattered for total reliance on that kind of technology.

I mean ADSL and FTTC will work fine for anything down to a small cluster of houses that would be big enough to justify one cabinet. However for one off rural housing the only solution is going to be wireless really.

The only other strategy might be pinning fibre to ESB distribution lines but aerial fibres and junctions to fibres aren't straightforward or cheap enough to make the capital expenditure justifiable and I can't see rural dwellers coughing up say €3000 for wiring.

BeerWolf

I mean ADSL and FTTC will work fine for anything down to a small cluster of houses that would be big enough to justify one cabinet. However for one off rural housing the only solution is going to be wireless really.

There's plenty of houses in my area, it's not like I'm ALONE here, with 26 houses around the 'block'.

The only other strategy might be pinning fibre to ESB distribution lines but aerial fibres and junctions to fibres aren't straightforward or cheap enough to make the capital expenditure justifiable and I can't see rural dwellers coughing up say €3000 for wiring.

I'd be more than happy to pay that to get fibre

Kencollins

BeerWolf wrote: »

I've called a few DSL services, they've all given the same answer.

Anyways;

From Garristown's: 3981m

From Oldtown's: 2448m ( uSwitch lists Oldtown capable of getting up to 70MB... fs )

From Ashbourne's: 4588m

I don't see why you can't get a decent service from Oldtown Exchange? With that distance your attenuation should be less than 40. That would defo sync at 5mb, giving you 4mb down.

Is there a confirmed line fault? Eircom should be able to rectify it, there would be no reason to have a less than 1mb service with that distance from the exchange

SpaceTime

Some of the smaller exchanges out that way only possibly only support ADSL up to 7.6Mbit/s
So, it's possible you're getting quoted for the 1, 3 or 7 mbit/s products too.

They actually do still sell 1mbit/s ADSL 1.0 service!!!!

I read somewhere that Oldtown may not even support DSL at all!

http://www.independent.ie/regionals/fingalindependent/news/no-broadband-service-plans-for-oldtown-27807278.html

Seemingly Oldtown only serves about 100 lines. It's probably just a little cabinet in a field somewhere or something.

You may be served by one of the other near by exchanges though too. It's hard to tell without asking your neighbours really. If you could ask an immediate neighbour what their phone number is, you could work out which exchange it is too.

BeerWolf

That's curious, cause uSwitch gives a whole list of available broadband for Oldtown with Vodafone listing upto 70Mb

SpaceTime

I would say they've just got the wrong data.

Only Ashbourne seems to have FTTC cabinets rolled out up that direction.

That being said, there were a few cases in Cork City where very small exchanges serving a couple of housing estates that had been put in during the 2000s and had no ADSL services got full E-Fibre services as part of the rollout of their parent exchange. So, the cabinets just went up in that area too.

In a lot of cases those very small exchanges are just cabinets themselves really that are fed back on fibre or a microwave link to a parent exchange. They're not really 'exchanges' in the true sense of the word, they're just a distributed part of the nearest major exchange.

It's possible that FTTC is planned for up there, but it definitely doesn't look like it's available at present anyway and if you're that far away from Oldtown it might not even be any use to you. They could just do something like add 1 or 2 cabinets in the area to serve a housing estate or whatever.

In general FTTC isn't much use to properly rural customers. The e-fibre/VDSL speeds drop off really quickly the further you get away from the cabinet. After about 1km it becomes rather pointless.

BeerWolf

Tempted to move to the US just to get their Google 1GB connection there for a mere €50 -.-;

Heck, could even opt their Free broadband option and get a better connection than here...

SpaceTime

BeerWolf wrote: »

Tempted to move to the US just to get their Google 1GB connection there for a mere €50 -.-;

Heck, could even opt their Free broadband option and get a better connection than here...

You won't get that down the country in the USA either. It's in a select few relatively major urban areas only and only in continuously built up areas of those handful of communities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber

Rural broadband in the states can be absolutely terrible. (I've experienced it).
Two friends of mine in rural areas like that are using 56kbps dial up modems. ISDN isn't even an option and there were no FWA options either.

If you move into any of the urban areas near where you live, or Cork, Galway, Waterford, Limerick, Sligo etc you can easily avail of 150Mbit/s from UPC and up to 70mbit/s from eircom etc even in Ashbourne down the road from you.

Ireland's not THAT bad for broadband tbh. It's just the usual urban vs rural areas divide that exists in most countries. The US is actually worse in many ways because they do not generally state fund anything like that.

We're not wonderful at the whole broadband thing either but there are very decent speeds available in most towns and cities at this stage and things have improved dramatically in the last couple of years and especially with that FTTC rollout having begun.

Freddy Smelly

emobile will be offering 4g hubs by xmas that should get you speeds around 20 - 30mb/s

Freddy Smelly

SpaceTime wrote: »

Ireland's not THAT bad for broadband tbh.

lol it is bad, in romania & france and many other eu countries you can get 1gb dn 200mb up!!!!!

creep

Can you pick up 4G? I'd go prepay with 3 for a while and see what the signal is like. Three isn't the greatest in a lot of areas if you look at the three thread. Not usable during peak hours for a lot of people and useless download speeds depending on where your living

https://store.meteor.ie/4g/ Not available on a dongle yet sorry

bealtine

Freddy Smelly wrote: »

emobile will be offering 4g hubs by xmas that should get you speeds around 20 - 30mb/s

In your dreams...

Gonzo

SpaceTime wrote: »

Ireland's not THAT bad for broadband tbh.

Step outside of an urban town/city boundary and the horrible reality of Ireland's broadband really sinks in!

BeerWolf

Well, I've just asked me neighbour, that's about 100m away from me, if I could use her net so I can check up on me email.

I'm rather surprised she's getting DSL with 2.6mb and 40+ pings off Vodafone! :eek:

I'll actually give them a ring myself and give it a try - got a 7 day no obligations cancellation if it's not good ain't it ?

Better than nothing atm >_<

Freddy Smelly

bealtine wrote: »

In your dreams...

4g meteor/emobile is already available in dublin, carlow and athlone cork and galway will be able to get it next month


4g vodafone goes live in kilkenny next week

bealtine

Freddy Smelly wrote: »

4g meteor/emobile is already available in dublin, carlow and athlone cork and galway will be able to get it next month


4g vodafone goes live in kilkenny next week

I'm well aware of that...
What I am disputing are the claimed speeds not the availability, it may indeed be
speeds of around 20 - 30mb/s at launch but that won't last long once people start to use the network.
Even eircom themselves don't even claim speeds like that

BeerWolf

Meh, seems my friend's on a seperate phoneline that is within reach of an exchange and mine isn't...

They suggested the 4G instead, so I've signed up for the 7day trial. Got it in this morning:









Curiously, it's showing I'm 100 miles from Dublin and 50 miles from Galway ? Wth o.O

bealtine wrote: »

I'm well aware of that...
What I am disputing are the claimed speeds not the availability, it may indeed be
speeds of around 20 - 30mb/s at launch but that won't last long once people start to use the network.
Even eircom themselves don't even claim speeds like that

You're telling me... Vodafone's advertising it for speeds of "(theoretically) Up to 100mb download 50mb upload". :rolleyes:

bealtine

BeerWolf wrote: »

Meh, seems my friend's on a seperate phoneline that is within reach of an exchange and mine isn't...

They suggested the 4G instead, so I've signed up for the 7day trial. Got it in this morning:


You're telling me... Vodafone's advertising it for speeds of "(theoretically) Up to 100mb download 50mb upload". :rolleyes:

Are you sure that's 4G? The only thing better is the ping time

SpaceTime

Given how small the allocations of spectrum are, I'm not convinced that these speeds are attainable when the number of users increases.

bealtine

SpaceTime wrote: »

Given how small the allocations of spectrum are, I'm not convinced that these speeds are attainable when the number of users increases.

Exactly the point...the only way these "wonderful" speeds can be attained is in the minds of the marketing departments of telcos.
The reality will be very different, in fact not much better than current 3G offerings