Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

MrLucidLJ

Just a few questions about this service, some could have already been asked but I am new to this thread. So the initial setup cost to set this equipment up is €150 do you have to pay that up front or could it be spread over your bills for 18 months? From making your order how long does it take for the service to become fully operational after the engineer comes to set it up?
Does the €60 a month only cover the broadband cost or are there any other extra add on's with the price plan? You mentioned there is a 20 gig cap per day which seems reasonable and that equates to 600 gigs per month; you mentioned the fact of throttling the speeds what speeds do they go to, does it throttle the speeds only for the day you go over and are there any extra costs incurred for going over the 20 gig a day cap ie a monetary value per mb you go over.

irishchris

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

Just a few questions about this service, some could have already been asked but I am new to this thread. So the initial setup cost to set this equipment up is €150 do you have to pay that up front or could it be spread over your bills for 18 months? 100 euro upfront and 50 added to first bill From making your order how long does it take for the service to become fully operational after the engineer comes to set it up? depends whether mast is active in your area
Does the €60 a month only cover the broadband cost or are there any other extra add on's with the price plan?price covers your broadband and national calls You mentioned there is a 20 gig cap per day which seems reasonable and that equates to 600 gigs per month; you mentioned the fact of throttling the speeds what speeds do they go toI was told drops to 5mb but others mentioned drops to 1mb/s, does it throttle the speeds only for the day you go over Yes and speeds and allowance reset that night at midnight and are there any extra costs incurred for going over the 20 gig a day cap ie a monetary value per mb you go over No speeds are simply throttled but no monetary cost for going over .

Answered above as best I could in bold

MrLucidLJ

irishchris wrote: »

Answered above as best I could in bold

Thanks man really well answered I don't think you could have answered it much better. So basically when we hit the 20 gig threshold speeds are capped to between 1-5mbps. So for example if we download a lot in the first few hours of the day we are capped until midnight but could download as much as we want on the reduced speeds without incurring monetary loss sounds good. I like the fact you pay €100 up front and €50 on the first bill. You said national calls is that only to landlines and not mobiles?

MrLucidLJ

irishchris wrote: »

Answered above as best I could in bold

Forgot to ask in the reply there do you have the service and if yes what are your thoughts on it?

irishchris

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

Thanks man really well answered I don't think you could have answered it much better. So basically when we hit the 20 gig threshold speeds are capped to between 1-5mbps. So for example if we download a lot in the first few hours of the day we are capped until midnight but could download as much as we want on the reduced speeds without incurring monetary loss sounds good. I like the fact you pay €100 up front and €50 on the first bill. You said national calls is that only to landlines and not mobiles?

Yep you could download away but speeds will be pretty slow for doing it. Seems though from 12am to 7 am does not count towards the 20gb allowance so if you had any big downloads they could be queued for between those hours and still have your daily 20gb unused.

National calls are only free to landlines.

irishchris

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

Forgot to ask in the reply there do you have the service and if yes what are your thoughts on it?

No I don't have it yet unfortunately. I signed up in April but with couple delays by imagine the mast still has not been switched on yet. Latest I have heard is that it is to be switched on this week and have been promised I will be first to be connected off this abbeyknockmoy mast. Will keep this thread updated on whether they keep to this latest promise.

morgana

Lol, Irishchris beat me to it - never mind, still gonna post it ^^

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

Just a few questions about this service, some could have already been asked but I am new to this thread. So the initial setup cost to set this equipment up is €150 do you have to pay that up front or could it be spread over your bills for 18 months?

No idea. A matter of asking. I think somebody here got the 50 Euro fee waived.

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

From making your order how long does it take for the service to become fully operational after the engineer comes to set it up?

They won't leave your house without a fully working service. You will be shown the working connection with speed tests.

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

Does the €60 a month only cover the broadband cost or are there any other extra add on's with the price plan?

The only extra cost would arise from the phone service if you go over the 1 hour per single call or use premium numbers incl. 1850 etc.
Other than that, you pay 60 Euro.

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

You mentioned there is a 20 gig cap per day which seems reasonable and that equates to 600 gigs per month; you mentioned the fact of throttling the speeds what speeds do they go to, does it throttle the speeds only for the day you go over and are there any extra costs incurred for going over the 20 gig a day cap ie a monetary value per mb you go over.

There have been no reports yet of actual throttling occurring, agent statements vary from throttling meaning 4 to 5 Mbps to 0.5 Mbps. Need data here people :P
Throttling should only apply from the time you go over to midnight of that day. No charge for any overuse, just throttling.

Also there is the issue of data throughput not being monitored between midnight and 7 am - i.e. anything downloaded in that time will not count towards your daily cap. Again contrary statements from reps - some saying yes other no - but recently it seems to point to true (also some anecdotal evidence from one person here).

I will probably put that to the test tonight :P

Forgot to ask in the reply there do you have the service and if yes what are your thoughts on it?

Yup have had it since end of February and no complaints. Had some problems, but got solved quickly (check this thread, all details hide out somewhere in here :P). Speeds are holding up very well, again see above for links to speed test history.

MrLucidLJ

irishchris wrote: »

Yep you could download away but speeds will be pretty slow for doing it. Seems though from 12am to 7 am does not count towards the 20gb allowance so if you had any big downloads they could be queued for between those hours and still have your daily 20gb unused.

National calls are only free to landlines.

Thanks for the extra information there. Thats good to know as you said if you have things to download that are large between these times as it doesn't count towards your 20 gig allowance. Also is there a page that keeps track of your allowance or as the user do we have to keep an eye on that? And the thread said you are allowed unlimited VOIP that excludes the mobiles I assume?

MrLucidLJ

irishchris wrote: »

No I don't have it yet unfortunately. I signed up in April but with couple delays by imagine the mast still has not been switched on yet. Latest I have heard is that it is to be switched on this week and have been promised I will be first to be connected off this abbeyknockmoy mast. Will keep this thread updated on whether they keep to this latest promise.

And how big is the place you live in? I am in a small town in Cork around 3k. Hopefully you will get sorted soon and not messed around till the end of the year to sort this out. I have one other big question. Are imagine funding this whole thing or are they using other masts from 4G providers like Three & Vodafone or have they gone out and set up their own equipment? If they have set up there own fair plays because the initial costs would be huge. How good do you find their support to get back to you with updates about your area?

MrLucidLJ

Thanks for getting back to my questions there. I didn't mean that about checking the quality of the service but that is good to know they wouldn't leave until they showed adequate speeds before they left. I mean when you order online until the time the engineer comes how long roughly is that process from your own personal experience and from others on here?
Thats good to know about the phone calls as well that its like other providers where if you use premium and go over the hour, that you could be charged. So no one from using the service has actually seen throttling occur? Have you tested the theory of throttling on your own service to see if this is applicable? Yes a guy there just mentioned there is no data cap between those times it would be interesting to see if that is the case as a test perhaps and the good of the thread lol

morgana

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

. I mean when you order online until the time the engineer comes how long roughly is that process from your own personal experience and from others on here?l

My own experience is probably not typical as I was an early adopter (Bweeng mast), they actually rang me (see my very first post of this thread) - I had exactly one week between agreeing the contract and the actual install.

MrLucidLJ

morgana wrote: »

My own experience is probably not typical as I was an early adopter (Bweeng mast), they actually rang me (see my very first post of this thread) - I had exactly one week between agreeing the contract and the actual install.

Thats pretty quick then a week from order until they come out. So you have never tested going over the 20 gigs to actually see if there is any throttling? Also is there a page on their site when you become a customer to track your data usage or as the customer do you have to do that yourself?

irishchris

MrLucidLJ wrote: »

And how big is the place you live in? I am in a small town in Cork around 3k. Hopefully you will get sorted soon and not messed around till the end of the year to sort this out. I have one other big question. Are imagine funding this whole thing or are they using other masts from 4G providers like Three & Vodafone or have they gone out and set up their own equipment? If they have set up there own fair plays because the initial costs would be huge. How good do you find their support to get back to you with updates about your area?

Fairly rural will dispersed population in my area but the hill which the mast will be seems to have a very large coverage catchment area. As far as I know it is all their own equipment but they use others existing infrastructure such as rte nl masts. Their technical support according to many on here is excellent but in terms of getting updates on new install i have found it to be pretty poor. They rang me several times initially but once i agreed to the contract and paid the 100€ I have not received any calls other than when I have rang them up to follow up. Initially it was supposed to be live start of June, then mid June then was told mid July but one agent last week told me the mast will be live end of the coming week so fingers crossed. In all my dealings with them though I have found them to be extremely courteous

morgana

No I have not. Had no reason to, lol. But big game downloads will come soon enough, lol.
I asked about that and there is none - the rep wasn't sure if there would be one either, again this dates back a few months.

If I remember it I'll check my own routers' data throughput record (Asus Nt-R66U - connected to their equipment's WAN port) - but that function is fairly limited and I'm not sure how accurate it is. Don't think i've gone over 15 gig yet :P

ED E

If you want precise data monitoring then SNMP is your man. Getting a router that advertises SNMP data will limit your options a bit in the SOHO bracket and you'll normally want an always on agent to do the recording. Networx is a nice bit of freeware for this.

Ruffty^

My mast was already live (Galway). I signed up start of this month and was told install team would be onto me within 14days, I was contacted 6 working days after that and it was installed the following day.

Like I said earlier, I downloaded 44gigs between ~00:00 and ~02:00 the other day and no issues. I have not tried big dl during the day so I cannot confirm throttling, but they have explained you will be throttled to 2 or 1 meg bandwidth.

In terms of monitoring your usage, they never mentioned any method of doing that to me. No mention of a website to view usage or past bills or anything like that. Would be handy.

Like Morgana, I have my own router I can check if I am concerned about my 20gig cap.

Gooser14

Ruffty^ wrote:

Like Morgana, I have my own router I can check if I am concerned about my 20gig cap.

Hi, What router are you using & why do you find it necessary to use your own router?

morgana

Asus RT-N66U (which I already had from my previous setup) - because the WiFi is much stronger and it has advanced features such as NAS (essential for my backup strategies), guest network etc.. Also you have full control over your own router.
It is my no means necessary to use your own router, just some of us prefer to for various reasons.

Ruffty^

I have a Netgear N300 (old+cheap at this stage) plugged into the Imagine wn-600, the only reason I'm using my router is for better wifi. I have the wifi on the wn-600 disabled.

SCOOP 64

Ruffty^ wrote: »

I have a Netgear N300 (old+cheap at this stage) plugged into the Imagine wn-600, the only reason I'm using my router is for better wifi. I have the wifi on the wn-600 disabled.

Is it that simple to do, so if the wifi is no good i can just buy another router and plug in it and use this for wifi, service to be installed Monday, so not tried yet.

Ruffty^

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

Is it that simple to do, so if the wifi is no good i can just buy another router and plug in it and use this for wifi, service to be installed Monday, so not tried yet.

post 515
That post is what I did.

When you have it installed and are connected via wifi to the image wn-600, just open a command prompt and type in "ping 192.168.22.1 -t", that is typically what the imagine router is on. You should be seeing replies <10ms and almost 0 timeouts. I was getting high replies every now and again and also some timeouts (loss), this was while I was doing nothing on the network.. so I swapped it out and have been much better since.. almost always 2/3ms reply and extremely little loss, not to mention better range and speed.

You don't need to do this immediately, sure try the one they give you, you may find it good enough..
Maybe I got a particularly crap router from imagine, or I had put it in a stupid place in my house with hidden high voltage cables and steel beams all around it!!

irishchris

So no word back with update from imagine. Sent email on Thursday and Friday asking for updates but nothing. Starting to regret signing up 9 weeks ago

irishchris

irishchris wrote: »

So no word back with update from imagine. Sent email on Thursday and Friday asking for updates but nothing. Starting to regret signing up 9 weeks ago

Bizarre but just got a call there and getting it installed tomorrow morning. Will keep the thread updated on how it goes

ED E

irishchris wrote: »

Bizarre but just got a call there and getting it installed tomorrow morning. Will keep the thread updated on how it goes

MrLucidLJ

irishchris wrote: »

Bizarre but just got a call there and getting it installed tomorrow morning. Will keep the thread updated on how it goes

Hope you get it sorted and get it in tomorrow and if not by the end of the week. The very latest without taking the piss would be end of next month. I contacted them through Facebook chat and here are some of the messages they said:

"Hi Liam, Unfortunately you're not in coverage yet but the good news is now that you have registered online we will contact you when we have you covered,"

"I don't have dates yet but we have updates on Facebook all the time, so keep your eye out and because you've registered we will contact you to let you know."

"To be honest with you Im not sure of the exact number of how many people in each area would need to register but future site have already been earmarked, so the more interest we get in for those, the quicker we can get them up and running. New sites are also in the plan. We have 100's of people registering all over rural Ireland everyday and we want to get as much of rural Ireland covered as possible."

It seems it might be a while until I get it which is grand because I am in contract with another provider till next summer. Wonder do they have sales agents who go door to door in certain areas to try see if the interest is there and move ahead? Wonder would it be a good idea to do self promotion in my town and get people interested in it I know and then they can influence others to follow suite and get it into the area.

irishchris

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

Got a call from imagine coming Monday to test signal and hopefully fit up, so will still have 10 days cooling of period left, pretty quick service, only draw back i will be at work ,wife will be in, I would like to ask a few questions and to test that everything works on all devices. what devices of my would they test ?
Do you have to have a passcode, that you have to put in when you connect to a device , or can you request not to have one, with Permanet i asked not to have one because if i remember there was a problem with i think Xbox and password so never had one, also when you have visitors they can just connect without asking for password.
(live out in sticks ,so no problem with neighbours getting free wifi).

Ps, hope they keep there word on the €50 weaver, because girl on phone didn't know what i was talking about and nothing on account about it.

Let us know how you get on today with this mate. Due to have mine installed tomorrow. Do you know which mast you are being connected to?

um7y1h83ge06nx

So i got a spiel from Imagine that there is a limit of 400 connections per mast when they got in touch with me after filling our their online form.

Is this correct or were they trying the hard sell to get me to jump in quickly?

ED E

Ahmed Narrow Beer wrote: »

So i got a spiel from Imagine that there is a limit of 400 connections per mast when they got in touch with me after filling our their online form.

Is this correct or were they trying the hard sell to get me to jump in quickly?

Thats been reported many times and hopefully is true. Any more than 400 per mast (assuming thats 130/sector) is into serious contention.

um7y1h83ge06nx

Ah okay, thanks. Guess I need to have a good think about it so, they said they would ring back on Wednesday.

Would they be able to get more masts up in the same location? The mast I would be using, Woodcock Hill between Limerick and Shannon would be in high demand if this takes off.

ED E

They've only got a certain number of band allocations, its not really possible to put 3 masts on the same hill and triple the bandwidth, instead you put a new one in between two existing sites and split the coverage areas in half. Another poster has reported they are exclusively using existing high site providers so they'll only be going where theres already infrastructure.

While Imagine support seem to be on the ball now I still have no faith in any telesales department, if they're at 10% or 90% capacity they'll still sell it as "nearly sold out" to make their own lives easier.