Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

ED E

They've put you on the 60Mhz that everyone else is meant to be on. All the other subs in the area are using spectrum that belongs to Vodafone/Eir/Three but you've got the new kit setup for the stuff they actually have rights to.

This gives them about 125Mb down and 30 up in a normal setup but they've changed the RB allocation so its all for down and upload suuuuuucks.


If Imagine act the maggot this situation might persist for a while. If they behave your service will begin to crawl once all your neighbours join you in the single lane M50.

Slieveardagh Hills

Wondering if anyone on here is with Imagine near Ballingarry, South Tipperary? Apparently, they have a mast there for the last few years but can't find information on its exact location.

Looking at switching the parents over from ADSL2+ which struggles to stream video at times. Given that the NBP is years from reaching them, figured it was time to bite the bullet as even the worst speed tests here seem to beat our 3.5Mbps Down / 1.1Mbps Up during off-peak times.

NakQuada

Latency through the roof for me on the Athy mast. It's been like that for nearly 3 weeks now. Ping tests show 200+ms

Gonzo

NakQuada wrote: »

Latency through the roof for me on the Athy mast. It's been like that for nearly 3 weeks now. Ping tests show 200+ms

I'm not sure the Athy mast has ever worked properly, been complaints here about that mast since day 1.

Braytek

North Wexford

Huntline

West Roscommon

d31b0y

Braytek wrote: »

North Wexford

North Wexford myself. My slowest speed that day was 27.8mpbs

Mortelaro

d31b0y wrote: »

North Wexford myself. My slowest speed that day was 27.8mpbs

Depends on which mast,you are Barrackcroghan
They could be the other one on Sieve Bhuí near Carnew

d31b0y

Didn't realise there was two.

Mortelaro

d31b0y wrote: »

Didn't realise there was two.

Yup
Awful difference in speeds on the two
Slieve Bhui seems way over subscribed,it overlooks craanford and serves a lot of the Gorey rural area down to Camolin and parts of Ferns

dam099

d31b0y wrote: »

North Wexford myself. My slowest speed that day was 27.8mpbs

Looks like only 2 points measured that evening/night though, 6pm and then after midnight so probably not the absolute peak (at 6pm the kids are out from school so would expect its getting more congested but lots of people not home from work etc, I would expect 8-10pm could be much worse).

d31b0y

dam099 wrote: »

Looks like only 2 points measured that evening/night though, 6pm and then after midnight so probably not the absolute peak (at 6pm the kids are out from school so would expect its getting more congested but lots of people not home from work etc, I would expect 8-10pm could be much worse).

There was another at 7 which came in at 37.4mbps, it's hidden behind the banner. SamKnows boxes (which is what that is) take tests at times when traffic is low on your local network. Those tests correspond with right before my wife started streaming stuff for the evening and I was on xbox live, but I reckon the speed wouldn't have deteriorated much if at all after 7 for me.

Of course, it's all a moot point as Mortelaro pointed out, it's most likely a different mast.

Ultimanemo

Recently it is good in Galway
One random test hosted by Vodafone

hadenoughofit

Hi all. Imagine are pushing for customers for a new 4GLTE mast in Sallins (a few km north west of Naas) - presumably to cover the relatively high density areas north of Naas that lost out on SIRO.

We lost Digiweb Metro when they closed the mast, and need a service - but....

Imagine while claiming the usual 'up to' 150Mbps flat out refuse to guarantee any even basic level of performance for their fairly saucy €59.99/month approx - and want a 2 year contract which includes no release mechanism. Which basically amounts a commitment to pay them €1,400 over the period. The T&C could hardly be written to more explicitly leave them free to provide any level of service they care to.

It will no doubt run fine initially, but the question is what will happen as traffic levels start to increase.

That alone surely begs serious questions of Comreg, it's incredible that use of the term broadband in advertising doesn't legally bind the provider to delivering a guaranteed (it wouldn't have to be all that high) minimum level of performance...

They claim max 450 subscribers on the mast, 150 per sector, and that it's some better tech than on the old masts - that historical performance levels will not apply. They are under new ownership, but it's not inspiring to read peoples' comments on service levels.

1. Has anybody got any especially medium term experience based views on how these new masts are likely to perform?
2. The comments about impending loss of licensed frequency range (?) don't inspire confidence, is this likely to change the situation?
3. If the worst comes to the worst is cancelling the direct debit having built a file of speed tests demonstrating a problem and failure to deliver a fix over say a couple of months likely to be feasible without contractual reprecussions?

We don't need a high performance service, if it was guaranteed to reliably stay above say 8-10Mbps download it wouldn't be too bad. It's understood too that extreme weather conditions such as torrential rain or a promptly repaired breakdown can cause very short term problems, which is OK too.

4G mobile broadband with Eir using an antenna and good router is the alternative, but that comes at a similar cost and has its peculiarities too...

Gonzo

hadenoughofit wrote: »

Hi all. Imagine are pushing for customers for a new 4GLTE mast in Sallins (a few km north west of Naas) - presumably to cover the relatively high density areas north of Naas that lost out on SIRO.

I would have thought much of the Naas, Sallins, Prosperous, Clane areas you mention would be well covered by Eir FTTH in the rural areas with so much ribbon developments and FTTC/Virgin in the build up areas?

god's toy

They have contacted the wife saying they are in Rathdrum now (Does anyone know the transmitter they use there??) saying the same things like only 150 connections and unlimited download. Anyone know the FUP they use?
Only getting 15mb with Eircon and it's not going to get any better any time soon. Want to believe they could be better, hell 30mb would be very welcome is it was always there.

Marlow

1 TB FUP .. it's in the fine print.

/M

hadenoughofit

Hi G We're a shade outside of the built up areas, and the fibre hasn't been brought up the roads.

Quite why I've no idea. I can can count over less than 2km of the order of 30 houses on their own sites almost next door to each other and a medium size business. Our road isn't even marked green on the 'map'.

Seems as thought it's basically down to cherry picking...

tsue921i8wljb3

hadenoughofit wrote: »

Hi G We're a shade outside of the built up areas, and the fibre hasn't been brought up the roads.

Quite why I've no idea. I can can count over less than 2km of the order of 30 houses on their own sites almost next door to each other and a medium size business. Our road isn't even marked green on the 'map'.

Seems as thought it's basically down to cherry picking...

Not to accuse you of being remiss but have you checked your Eircode on

http://www.airwire.ie/avail

or

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

It's just that you mention maps and none of them are totally accurate regarding coverage.

hadenoughofit

Thanks Navi.

Airwire initially said we could get a VDSL service for a decent 20 - 30Mbps speed, but upon further checking decided it wasn't a runner. Not quite sure why as the information was vague.
Eir say no fibre availability at our address...

Marlow

hadenoughofit wrote: »

Thanks Navi.

Airwire initially said we could get a VDSL service for a decent 20 - 30Mbps speed, but upon further checking decided it wasn't a runner. Not quite sure why as the information was vague.
Eir say no fibre availability at our address...

When you said it was not a runner ... who did you check with ?

/M

hadenoughofit

I spoke to one of their sales guys M.

My impression was that the problem was possibly that our copper line has been disconnected since we've been on a web based phone for years. There's about a 50m gap between our bare pole and the nearest wired one.

There may also have been some uncertainty over where the exchange is located. The initial thought was 0.5km away (good), revised to possibly 1km away. (marginal)

All rather fuzzy.

It's next to impossible to get hard info on this stuff without knowing somebody in the business it seems.

Truth be told I think a lot of the problem is that if it's not 100% straightforward the service providers don't bother...

Grab All Association

god's toy wrote: »

They have contacted the wife saying they are in Rathdrum now (Does anyone know the transmitter they use there??) saying the same things like only 150 connections and unlimited download. Anyone know the FUP they use?
Only getting 15mb with Eircon and it's not going to get any better any time soon. Want to believe they could be better, hell 30mb would be very welcome is it was always there.

I wouldn’t give up a rock solid 15mb ADSL2+/VDSL for Imagine. As mentioned last week on here, the contention will only get worse in future. You could probably supplement this with 4G/Yagi Router setup with a Three PAYG AYCE tethering.

Gonzo

Grab All Association wrote: »

I wouldn’t give up a rock solid 15mb ADSL2+/VDSL for Imagine. As mentioned last week on here, the contention will only get worse in future. You could probably supplement this with 4G/Yagi Router setup with a Three PAYG AYCE tethering.

I would agree with this. Imagine has delivered a very mixed bag of results, with most customers getting well below the advertised speeds. Some customers are barely getting 2 or 3 megs in the evenings - so I'd hang on to the ADSL2+ first and try Imagine. If the service is crap, you can always cancel Imagine immediately and still have your 15 meg line.

The major thing that effects speed with Imagine is contention, line of sight issues and modem problems/networking going down.

Marlow

Gonzo wrote: »

The major thing that effects speed with Imagine is contention, line of sight issues and modem problems/networking going down.

And there's been the odd issue reported with DNS. But that's easy fixed by using Google, Cloudflare or Open DNS.

/M

BJG524

ANyone in the West Limerick area have any experience of this service?

We really have v few options in the area and are lucky to get 2mb with current provider.

Imagine superfast is coming online here in the next 3 weeks so feel like i have to switch and give them a go as surely cant be any worse but everything i read is v negative!

Appreciate it wont be the 150mb they advertise but if i got 20mb it would be a massive improvement

The people saying it slows massively at peak times, what speeds are we talking? Down to unusable or still double digits?

thanks

hadenoughofit

I tend to agree guys that a rock solid but slower VDSL service would be preferable to something potentially unstable.

The difficulty at the moment on VDSL is that Airwire have been extremely slow to respond, and have transitioned from 'no problem' to blurry noises on the technicalities. The general thrust now is to steer us away from pushing for it.

Part of the problem may (?) be that Eir are not keen to do anything about bridging the 50m gap from the next (connected) pole down to our long defunct telephone pole. Or it may be that they don't want the hassle of trying to get Eir to reconnect it.

Or we may in fact be a bit too far from the exchange - it's never been definitely stated where it is, and the various estimates of distance have ranged from about 700m to over 1km. Becoming further and more likely to cause bother as the discussions progressed....

Thinking it might be worth calling Eir about a VDSL service, and/or going back to Airwire and trying to force some action.

On Imagine. It's disconcerting that the T&C commit no defined minimum level of service. The absence of an exit clause and the demand that customers sign up for €1,440/two years to the new masts makes it a big punt - that's not the behaviour of a company keen to stand over the quality of their service.

On the other hand we've had several conversations with a sales guy, including the last where he called us. He's done his level best to convince us that it's a high speed service. The literature while with the usual marketing waffle of 'up to' still talks of speed of 150Mbps. An interpretation of the fine print in the T&C surely cannot in law (consumer or otherwise) sweep these marketing and sales claims off the table - they have to be a part of the contract too.

Which means that the basic of consumer law to the effect that a product or service must be fit for purpose must carry weight - and likely result in a scenario where pulling the plug on a direct debit if it turns out to be abysmal is feasible without reprecussions.

Or not? Does any body have a relatively professional view on this?

Airwire had a presence on this forum. Is this still the case? How is it accessed?

tsue921i8wljb3

My own experience was of being an Imagine customer since 2007 on a 3Mb service. I got upgraded to LTE in 2016 and I found it a large improvement over the previous service. eir FTTH became available to me and I switched to that in 2018.

You tend to hear the worst opinions of services on forums like this and Facebook. Those satisfied tend not to post. If you have nothing else available to you, and it sounds like that is the case, then I would go for it.

In the event of things going badly it is likely that Imagine will want the full contract paid if you cancel. Whether you could take them to something like the Small Claims Court I am unsure of. Hopefully you get a decent service and it doesn't come to this.

god's toy

Grab All Association wrote: »

I wouldn’t give up a rock solid 15mb ADSL2+/VDSL for Imagine. As mentioned last week on here, the contention will only get worse in future. You could probably supplement this with 4G/Yagi Router setup with a Three PAYG AYCE tethering.

Gonzo wrote: »

I would agree with this. Imagine has delivered a very mixed bag of results, with most customers getting well below the advertised speeds. Some customers are barely getting 2 or 3 megs in the evenings - so I'd hang on to the ADSL2+ first and try Imagine. If the service is crap, you can always cancel Imagine immediately and still have your 15 meg line.

The major thing that effects speed with Imagine is contention, line of sight issues and modem problems/networking going down.

Thanks for the reply,

(I think) I can see the mast they are using from my house as a new one went up only a few months ago it's about 8km as the crow fly (they said the mast has just gone up a few months and it's about that far away so would be in perfect line of sight from the roof of the house too)
Does anyone know a list/map of their masts?


The thing is they have never been in my town before so they have no one here to cram into the 5G network as older customers get bumped out of there spectrum into 'ours'. Said it's limited to the first 150 connections only... can connect us in 3 weeks from now.
Is that 'per node' as in they will keep adding 150 each time it's expanded?
Wife is really pissed with Eircon as she finds working from home a pain, she's pushing for this change.

Eircon said they can do nothing about my line and the NBP won't help us at all...not in a blue line so we are stuck

Probably will test with Imagine but keep the old line for a month after...

Gonzo

BJG524 wrote: »

The people saying it slows massively at peak times, what speeds are we talking? Down to unusable or still double digits?

thanks

For most people it slows down to single digits but i've seen speedtests posted on their Facebook page (later removed by Imagine) as low as 0.007 megs which is dial up speeds. Unlikely you'll get as low as that, but letting you know Imagine's Service isn't the magical 'fibre' like experience they claim and speeds can vary massively from one end of the day of the other. Very expensive product too at 60 euros for such an unstable service.