Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

Marlow

ED E wrote: »

Disagree.

Problem lies with the Co Cos and ABP/successive governments. The vast majority of homes are commercially served in most developed countries. We need the NBP and fill in tech like TDD thanks to dwelling patterns.

That's the smaller problem. The much bigger problem lies in the lack of infrastructure to bring it out to these dwelling patterns. And the infrastructure that exists either is limited or extremely costly.

This drives the pricing overall up. IF that pricing was lower, it would be more commercially viable to service these dwelling patterns.

The government is now taking their 3rd attempt trying to solve the problem from the wrong end.

I wonder why the previous 2 attempts have failed ??? !!!


Regulate pricing on wholesale dark fiber by ex-incumbent or state owned carriers. Force offering of said dark fiber to wholesale partners. Regulate a way to get fiber roll-out to mast sites without having every farmer trying to push the price up every time it's tried ... delaying fiber builds by 2-3 years.

If all that happens, it will be commercially viable to cover and service every single spot in Ireland. Right now it's only done by niche suppliers, who then get screwed and left in the dark by the next NBP or the next decision of Comreg to change their licensing model in favor of bigger players.

/M

Marlow

Oh .. and the reason large to medium providers get afraid or jump to extreme actions WHEN something like a NBP gets defined is exactly this:

they see, that their profits are directly affected, because somebody else now could get government money to provide in areas, where they do cover, but not sufficient to quality.

So, it is commercially viable by big players .. but not until there is threat !

/M

Gonzo

I still think Comreg or some other body should make the companies advertise fairly and not misleading people.

Eir and especially Imagine emphasize the word fibre in products which are not fibre.

My biggest complaint is most companies especially Eir really misuse the word unlimited. Unlimited should really mean unlimited and if not unlimited, then the FUP or Cap should be clearly stated on product pages/advertisements. All mobile operators clearly state the data allowances in their plans, home broadband plans should clearly state this as well.

Marlow

Gonzo wrote: »

I still think Comreg or some other body should make the companies advertise fairly and not misleading people.

Eir and especially Imagine emphasize the word fibre in products which are not fibre.

My biggest complaint is most companies especially Eir really misuse the word unlimited. Unlimited should really mean unlimited and if not unlimited, then the FUP or Cap should be clearly stated on product pages/advertisements. All mobile operators clearly state the data allowances in their plans, home broadband plans should clearly state this as well.

This is exactly, where I have my beef with the two.

And the way Eir is pricing their stuff is near to criminal:
Like the initial discount for x months with Eir, Virgin, Vodafone and some other most people grasp.

But first something like 45 EUR, then it goes to 53 or the likes and then to over 80. I just tried to find the pricing, but they've changed their packages AGAIN from last week .. because now it's christmas. And they have one price for the product on one webpage and another for the same product in another place on their website.

Imagine isn't an inch better, advertising their broadband fiber speed and at more than twice the maximum speed of what they actually intend to deliver. Nevermind, that the cap they implement is completely inadequate at the speed that they actually deliver.

/M

Ultimanemo

Marlow wrote: »

And the way Eir is pricing their stuff is near to criminal:/M

They charge 70 Euro a month for a 1.7Mbps broadband and a landline I don't use, that forced me to disconnect the line and go for 4G.

George Sunsnow

Yeah the problem again is people don’t understand what fast speed is or don’t care
Like my neighbors with their 3Mb Eir line that costs a fortune
They admitted their security cameras dip in and out but sure isn’t that normal
I’m surprised they work at all

Ultimanemo

George Sunsnow wrote: »

Yeah the problem again is people don’t understand what fast speed is or don’t care
Like my neighbors with their 3Mb Eir line that costs a fortune
They admitted their security cameras dip in and out but sure isn’t that normal
I’m surprised they work at all

They don't know the alternatives.
I understand eir can't connect everybody to high speed broadband, but what I can't understand is they charge big money for very slow connection and a landline that many people don't use, actually very often people on very slow connection are charged significantly higher than people who have very fast connection.

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

They don't know the alternatives.
I understand eir can't connect everybody to high speed broadband, but what I can't understand is they charge big money for very slow connection and a landline that many people don't use, actually very often people on very slow connection are charged significantly higher than people who have very fast connection.

The base pricing is the landline rental, which is 28 odd quid. And that basic cost is there disregardless if you get 1 Mbit/s or 100 Mbit/s. The bigger the connection, the overall cheaper each Mbit/s gets.

But the basic pricing to provide a connection never disappears. Also for all other providers. The reason being: there is no regulated pricing on buying wholesale connectivity across the country !!

If you started with properly priced infrastructure, you could have cheap and expensive services available.

When you start with expensive priced infrastructure, you can never have cheap broadband at the end of that.

It's near impossible to provide broadband for less than 30 EUR/month in Ireland due to the expensive infrastructure. And when you do, you end up with a massively overcontended network and have to add funds from other revenue (mobile providers do that. calls fund cheap broadband pricing and the fact, it being brutally overcontended in areas.)

Infrastructure is so expensive, it was viable for Virgin to build their entire own infrastructure to save a few bob. That's including their own ducts, where they rented ducts before.

This also is valid for Imagine: fiber to somewhere near the mast, license fees for licensed links, mast-rental, license for spectrum to provide customers etc. all make up the base price.

The further out you go, the more it costs. But the initial expensive starting point kills it.

/M

George Sunsnow

Whizzy in north Wexford have a good rep for providing a 10 Mb service that slows to 5 or 6 in the evening but does a better job than lots of rural dsl
They charge €25 for a 5Mb/1Mb and €35 for 10Mb/1Mb No contract

Totally unlimited

https://wi.ie

Marlow

George Sunsnow wrote: »

Whizzy in north Wexford have a good rep for providing a 10 Mb service that slows to 5 or 6 in the evening but does a better job than lots of rural dsl
They charge €25 for a 5Mb/1Mb and €35 for 10Mb/1Mb No contract

Totally unlimited

https://wi.ie

Nothing under 25 EUR though, which proves my point.

It's near impossible to provide broadband for less than 30 EUR/month in Ireland due to the expensive infrastructure.

And their margin on that 25 EUR/package will be very low. The further you get away from Dublin, Cork or Belfast, the harder it gets.

/M

George Sunsnow

They haven’t gone out of business anyway

Marlow

George Sunsnow wrote: »

They haven’t gone out of business anyway

If you consider that cheap, then you've no idea, what you can get broadband elsewhere (not in Ireland) ... time to burst the bubble.

It's the same as Leo Varadkar stating, that houses for 315,000 EUR is affordable housing .. when your average couple with 2 jobs can't even afford that .. nevermind a single person.

And the reason is ? Thinking, it's ok to be ripped off. Because .. sure .. everybody does it. Instead of tackling the basic problem, that is the Dept of Comms and Comreg.

There are a lot of households in Ireland, that can't afford 25 or 30 EUR/month for broadband. Nevermind 60 for Imagine.

/M

George Sunsnow

You need to relocate your mind to Ireland or you’ll get very frustrated
That €25 is about on a par with one of the cheap 18 or 19 stg uk offers (if you can get them) except obviously slower btw
But then as I said that’s people for you

Ultimanemo

Marlow wrote: »

If you started with properly priced infrastructure, you could have cheap and expensive services available./M

That is the problem, the infrastructure is improperly priced, that has to be changed.
Even with that see the price of eir in the link below, the faster the speed the higher the price.
Actually the 300Mb speed with the landline is cheaper than 2mbps with landline

https://www.eir.ie/broadband/1000mb-fibre/

Marlow

George Sunsnow wrote: »

You need to relocate your mind to Ireland or you’ll get very frustrated

Again. That's the mindset, that will ensure, that the problem never gets fixed.

George Sunsnow wrote: »

That €25 is about on a par with one of the cheap 18 or 19 stg uk offers (if you can get them) except obviously slower

Well, those 18-19 GBP will now fall to 11-12 GBP, because Ofcom made BT slash 7 GBP of the landline rental pricing. Still proves my point.

/M

George Sunsnow

Marlow wrote: »

Well, those 18-19 GBP will now fall to 11-12 GBP, because Ofcom made BT slash 7 GBP of the landline rental pricing. Still proves my point.

/M

Maybe
But what’s your point,that other countries do things better than here?
Ireland as I said is a patronism country
It was ever thus and always will be because we do selfish better than anyone else
Ergo there are huge defeciencies and compromises

Boards is full of debate on that,I agree with you on pricing(but don’t believe it’s economic to go as low here as huge countries have economies of scale that we don’t) it’s all related though and discussion on it is only derailing this thread,I’ll leave it at that

George Sunsnow

This might interest the techies,slightly off topic
It's whizzy's kit at Ashkinch
Great view over Arklow across to Gorey from up there

https://www.facebook.com/whizzyinternet/posts/911561345668877

opinionated3

Getting frustrated with imagine lately. Having to switch my router off and on a lot. Getting speeds this evening of 0.25mb. I've had their engineers out twice since being connected back in march. I'm connected to the Ben dash mast in Clare. They won't connect me to the maghera mast despite getting vastly superior speeds on that mast as I'm over the 28km distance from the mast. Told me they would sever contract if I wasnt happy. So they would rather lose my 60 quid a month rather than connect me to a better service. Weird business behaviour to say the least

9726_9726

George Sunsnow wrote: »

This might interest the techies,slightly off topic
It's whizzy's kit at Ashkinch
Great view over Arklow across to Gorey from up there

https://www.facebook.com/whizzyinternet/posts/911561345668877

The "jacks" / "chip van" won't survive. You can buy purpose built outdoor rack cabinets. Why try to fabricate them?

Marlow

opinionated3 wrote: »

They won't connect me to the maghera mast despite getting vastly superior speeds on that mast as I'm over the 28km distance from the mast. Told me they would sever contract if I wasnt happy. So they would rather lose my 60 quid a month rather than connect me to a better service. Weird business behaviour to say the least

Nothing weird there.

At 28km you'll use up radio-time for 3-5 users. That's at least 2-4 other users they can't sell to, if they connected you. That's not feasable for them. Any wireless service over 20km needs to be Point-to-Point (opposed to Point-to-Multipoint) really. And for a dedicated link, you'd need to pay a lot more than 60 quid a month. And I'm not sure, that their LTE service even will cope that well at 20km.

/M

jester999

George Sunsnow wrote: »

Maybe
But what’s your point,that other countries do things better than here?
Ireland as I said is a patronism country
It was ever thus and always will be because we do selfish better than anyone else
Ergo there are huge defeciencies and compromises

Boards is full of debate on that,I agree with you on pricing(but don’t believe it’s economic to go as low here as huge countries have economies of scale that we don’t) it’s all related though and discussion on it is only derailing this thread,I’ll leave it at that

Thats bull, eir increased there wholesale pricing twice in the last 12 months, both these where to pay for the purchase of setanta, this increase has been passed onto both Vodafone and Sky subscribers

George Sunsnow

jester999 wrote: »

Thats bull, eir increased there wholesale pricing twice in the last 12 months, both these where to pay for the purchase of setanta, this increase has been passed onto both Vodafone and Sky subscribers

And what has that to do exactly with the economies of scale building infrastructure in smaller and sparsely populated countries being worse than in bigger more populated ones?

morgana

Got the mail today with access details for the portal.
Just did a quick check of the usage meter, the total used today pretty much tallies with my router's traffic monitor.



So that definitely points to any traffic between midnight and 7am not counting towards the cap.

It also seems to be real time.

km79

morgana wrote: »

Got the mail today with access details for the portal.
Just did a quick check of the usage meter, the total used today pretty much tallies with my router's traffic monitor.



So that definitely points to any traffic between midnight and 7am not counting towards the cap.

It also seems to be real time.

I started a download for 54GB game at some stage Thursday evening
The cap was hit before midnight and I was slowed down

Went back to it Saturday and it had fully downloaded without any slowdown or warning

Second time it’s happened

TireeTerror

Its clear from the portal that midnight to 7am is now not counting towards the 20GB data. I was downloading a game last night after midnight. It says on my portal that I have downloaded 11.22GB today, but only 0.05GB of todays 20GB cap. So what I downloaded after midnight was not counted. Fantastic news!

TireeTerror

UPDATE: So Im just off the phone to Imagine Customer Care. I wanted clarification on this.

They consider 7am to midnight as peak time and midnight to 7am as off-peak. We can download between midnight and 7am and it will not count towards our peak 20GB limit, however the amount we can download off-peak is at Imagines discretion. If they deem that we are abusing off-peak and downloading large amounts of data each night, they will see this and restrict speeds during the off-peak times to combat it.

I explained that I have been staggering game downloads over several nights to avoid the throttling and was told that I could download a game, for example 40-50GB in one night off-peak in the week and they would not have an issue with that, but if I was downloading a game of that size night after night they would.

I personally would much rather have a definitive number so I could make sure I could use this service as to its absolute maximum because I am seriously hampered with the limits being someone who wants to download movies in 4k etc.

morgana

Hmm the measuring seems a bit off though, it now tells me I have used 3.48 GB of my daily 20, and that my total usage today is 2.83!
My router log says a total of 3.29.
Hmm, now at 0:30 am it says 0.93 GB of daily allowance and 0 GB total. Looks like the numbers are inserted in the wrong position and it should be the other way round.

But good news altogether, it mitigates the cap quite a bit.

George Sunsnow

TireeTerror wrote: »

UPDATE: So Im just off the phone to Imagine Customer Care. I wanted clarification on this.

They consider 7am to midnight as peak time and midnight to 7am as off-peak. We can download between midnight and 7am and it will not count towards our peak 20GB limit, however the amount we can download off-peak is at Imagines discretion. If they deem that we are abusing off-peak and downloading large amounts of data each night, they will see this and restrict speeds during the off-peak times to combat it.

I explained that I have been staggering game downloads over several nights to avoid the throttling and was told that I could download a game, for example 40-50GB in one night off-peak in the week and they would not have an issue with that, but if I was downloading a game of that size night after night they would.

I personally would much rather have a definitive number so I could make sure I could use this service as to its absolute maximum because I am seriously hampered with the limits being someone who wants to download movies in 4k etc.

I think what they are trying to avoid is a situation where if too many people on one mast start 40gig downloads overnight that speeds don’t fall down to 5Mb or something meaning you won’t get it done overnight

km79

TireeTerror wrote: »

UPDATE: So Im just off the phone to Imagine Customer Care. I wanted clarification on this.

They consider 7am to midnight as peak time and midnight to 7am as off-peak. We can download between midnight and 7am and it will not count towards our peak 20GB limit, however the amount we can download off-peak is at Imagines discretion. If they deem that we are abusing off-peak and downloading large amounts of data each night, they will see this and restrict speeds during the off-peak times to combat it.

I explained that I have been staggering game downloads over several nights to avoid the throttling and was told that I could download a game, for example 40-50GB in one night off-peak in the week and they would not have an issue with that, but if I was downloading a game of that size night after night they would.

I personally would much rather have a definitive number so I could make sure I could use this service as to its absolute maximum because I am seriously hampered with the limits being someone who wants to download movies in 4k etc.

This is brilliant news and removes my only probkem with Imagine so far

And it was defo the case for me last week even though I wasnt aware of it

northknife

Finally took the plunge last week was connected to Imagine.
Seem to be having issues either with the router/receiver that was supplied or the distance between where I use the internet most.
Am using the internet mostly on wifi about 40 feet from where the box is situated. Internet speed can vary from a high of over 60mbps to a paltry 0.25mbps. While I am getting different speeds nothing has changed in any way: ie I am not using any extra or any electrical equipment in between doing the tests.
Is there a better router/receiver that they could supply to me.
I havent contacted them yet as I just wanted to get some feedback here first from other users.


Cheers.