Is it worth leaving UPC?

Antifa161

All we use is the internet, no TV or phoneline.

We pay €48.73 per month for what is apparently 15Mb broadband. That info is taken from a bill in 2010 (they don't send them anymore). I recall UPC did do work on the lines in the whole area a few months ago, I hoped it meant an upgrade but haven't noticed one. I get downloads of around 1.2mb/sec max via FTP when nobody else is using the connection.

Now I've noticed Eircom offer a 70mb unlimited "e fibre" deal for €50, but €35 for the first 6, so we'd be making a saving already.

Then again, UPC offer a deal now that is 50mb unlimited for €37.

I am in the Galway City area.

srsly78

Use a cable to do a proper speed test, testing over wifi is useless. Testing while other people are also using the internet is also useless.

You can view your UPC bills online.

In most places UPC offer much better speeds than other providers. If you are in the opposite situation then yes it can make sense to switch.

Antifa161

srsly78 wrote: »

Use a cable to do a proper speed test, testing over wifi is useless. Testing while other people are also using the internet is also useless.

I haven't mentioned anything about speedtests? I only mentioned the real speed I get over wifi when nobody else is using it - which makes more sense than a speed test.

You can view your UPC bills online.

Can't remember username or password

In most places UPC offer much better speeds than other providers.

If Eircom's is also fibre then they should be able to match UPC's advertised speeds, no?

srsly78

There is no username or password until you sign up for it: www.upc.ie.

Again: do not test over wifi. All you are seeing is your max wifi speed, you could be on 100mbit UPC and not even realise. UPC have bumped most customers up for free, I got bumped from 15 to 30 a few years ago.

There is no point getting better internet if your wifi is a load of rubbish tbh, sort that out first. See sticky posts above.

SpaceTime

Eircom use FTTC (fibre to the cabinet). It's a phone line to your house and data is carried by VDSL2 signals.

Speed is dependent on your distance to the nearest eircom cabinet on the street. Very few people get 70mbits most get about 40-60 max. This may improve a bit when they switch in vectoring (active noise suppression) but, still it won't be as good as UPC

UPC use a hybrid fibre coaxial network. This is fibre to a node and then coax to your house. Coax is much higher bandwidth than simple telephone wiring and it's shielded. So you'll normally get the speed that you're paying for.

If you're speedtesting though make sure you're on a wired connection to the Ethernet port on the modem. WiFi can result in slower speeds depending on how it's configured.

UPC is using better technology than eircom though. I wouldn't change if I were you.

johndoe99

have you been in contact with UPC? what do they have to say. If your limited to a speed of 15mb, ask can you get the price lowered. You can still get access to view your bills, contact UPC, on the UPC thread and explain your situation.

If you were bumped up for free a while back, you may just need a new router.

SpaceTime

Some UPC areas haven't been rewired yet, so you can find the odd location with less speed.

The upgraded areas do 200Mbit/s

Contact their customer care though or post on the UPC forum before you make any decisions to switch.
Also tell them you're actively considering moving supplier too.

BTW : several companies offer 'fibre' over the eircom network so definitely shop around if you're switching!

Eircom, Vodafone, Magnet, Digiweb and UTV all do it.

Antifa161

Thanks some good info here. tbh as much as I'd prefer better speeds it's the cost we're thinking about, although there's no way I'm downgrading to a package with limited bandwidth! I will get onto them. Personally I think it's obnoxious that they can still be charging us €50 a month for 15mb when they are offering other people 50mb for €37!

SpaceTime

If you went with one of the FTTC providers (eircom & its wholesale customers like Vodafone etc) you'd be looking at about 40-68 Mbit/s

The only problem is that if you've currently no active line you'd have no idea exactly how fast you might get, it would be pretty decent speed though.

If you happen to be able to spot your local eircom cabinet you might have a better idea.

The closer you are the higher the speed.

There's a crowd sourced map on this thread:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056919149

You could look up your own address and see how close you are.

sparky63

Having 200mbps or 70mbps or 30mbps, what does it mean to most of us?. I have efibre 50mbps, previous to this i had 5mbps. Have to say, 5mbps was grand. The two differences i've noticed are, films download much faster, and my son reckons his xbox online gaming is quicker. Funny how he never lost interest in xbox online when we had slower speeds. Browsing on the interenet, no different. I've asked this question to many other people with different service providers and they have similar answers. If a provider could offer us infinite speed, most would jump and look down their nose at providers of less, but in all honesty what do we do that requires these speeds. Would all the servers i download from, my wireless connection or my pc be able to utilise fully what speed i have. I remember reading that if a provider could offer 50mbps, people would want more. If they could provide 200mbps, people would want more and so on. Cant wait till i can get 1GB
ps, because i'll have the fastest speed to do..... em... emm.

srsly78

It makes a huge difference when there are multiple users. Also you can watch higher quality video and so on.

andy1249

Having 200mbps or 70mbps or 30mbps, what does it mean to most of us?. I have efibre 50mbps, previous to this i had 5mbps. Have to say, 5mbps was grand. The two differences i've noticed are, films download much faster, and my son reckons his xbox online gaming is quicker. Funny how he never lost interest in xbox online when we had slower speeds. Browsing on the interenet, no different. I've asked this question to many other people with different service providers and they have similar answers. If a provider could offer us infinite speed, most would jump and look down their nose at providers of less, but in all honesty what do we do that requires these speeds. Would all the servers i download from, my wireless connection or my pc be able to utilise fully what speed i have. I remember reading that if a provider could offer 50mbps, people would want more. If they could provide 200mbps, people would want more and so on. Cant wait till i can get 1GB
ps, because i'll have the fastest speed to do..... em... emm.

5mbps "was" grand at one stage , heck I remember getting 512K on my first "broadband" package and thinking it was grand !

Technology marches on though , and 5mbps is not grand anymore.

These days kids get the schoolbooks loaded onto ipads , Consoles , phones , TV services , flight bookings , shopping , social networking et. al. all require more bandwidth and as the content gets richer will require more still .... so bandwidth needs to go up.

I occasionally work from home , as does my wife , we require rock steady voip and high bandwidth access to company servers , 5mbps wouldnt cut it , I remember switching from Eircom to UPC when the best they could do was 8mbps and it wasnt enough for both of us to connect and hold a conference call ...

5mbps is not a decent package anymore , and 50mbps will very shortly be a minimum for the average family ..... even that wont be enough when the likes of netflix , lovefilm , spotify upgrade content to UHD and Downloading Games instead of buying discs becomes the norm.

Technology doesnt stop , and broadband needs to keep pace .... the quality of broadband on offer is now a significant measure of any countries wealth index , as it partially defines how good a service it can provide in a modern technology driven economy.

srsly78

People are also completely unaware of upload speed. 5megabit down probably only means 0.5 megabit up on these packages. This is incredibly frustrating, and basically means no video calls, incredible wait times uploading stuff to dropbox or whatever and only 1 person can watch youtube at the lowest setting.

dub45

Just be careful - UPC do not bump you up for "free" unless you consider their requirement to enter into a new 12 month contract (which they often do not make clear to the customer) as being "free".

bazlad

To answer your questions, yes 48 euro is incredibly expensive if you are just using broadband.
For 2 euro extra, as a new customer you get Broadband (at 150mb) Digital HD TV package, and unlimited landline calls.

Does that make you feel special as a long term customer now?

Alun

bazlad wrote: »

To answer your questions, yes 48 euro is incredibly expensive if you are just using broadband.
For 2 euro extra, as a new customer you get Broadband (at 150mb) Digital HD TV package, and unlimited landline calls.

For the first 6 months, yes. After that it goes up to €80 pm. Plus it's now 200Mbit/s.

dak

sparky63 wrote: »

Having 200mbps or 70mbps or 30mbps, what does it mean to most of us?. I have efibre 50mbps, previous to this i had 5mbps. Have to say, 5mbps was grand. The two differences i've noticed are, films download much faster, and my son reckons his xbox online gaming is quicker. Funny how he never lost interest in xbox online when we had slower speeds. Browsing on the interenet, no different. I've asked this question to many other people with different service providers and they have similar answers. If a provider could offer us infinite speed, most would jump and look down their nose at providers of less, but in all honesty what do we do that requires these speeds. Would all the servers i download from, my wireless connection or my pc be able to utilise fully what speed i have. I remember reading that if a provider could offer 50mbps, people would want more. If they could provide 200mbps, people would want more and so on. Cant wait till i can get 1GB
ps, because i'll have the fastest speed to do..... em... emm.

I'have the UPC 150mb package. Downloaded a 6gig file War Thunder in about 3 mins. If I was on 5mb it would probabley take 90 minutes. Theres one reason to upgrade !

SpaceTime

The thing is though that as the internet moves forward and more people worldwide have access to very high speeds, then the content will make use of those speeds.

For example, we've an e-fibre setup with about 40mbit/s (all the line will support due to how far we are from the cabinet) and Sky On Demand HD content doesn't always work without buffering!

You'd be amazed at how much bandwidth you can use when you start streaming HD and stuff like that.

For me, the massive advantage is having a decent upload speed. It's really noticeable compared to our old ADSL2+ connection which struggled to get 600kbps upload. On this e-fibre connection we're getting more like 11Mbit/s upload.
If you're uploading say a large PDF document or an audio file (I do some audio work) it's like day vs night! There's just no comparison whatsoever.

We also get pings <20ms vs over 50ms with our old ADSL2+ line. So, it's made using VoIP a practical alternative to the regular phone line. Blueface's working absolutely flawlessly on this setup.