Best but also least expensive Broadband

tea and coffee

I'm looking at the "€30 per month" standalone type ones. Three, Vodafone and the like.
I don't want tv package bundle (no-one watches even when we had it), I just need internet.
We are heavy users with gamers. At the moment we hotspot from our phones and it works but it's annoying as I have to leave my phone centrally for the kids so they can play.

Are these the best value? Which of these is the best value while also having reasonable speeds and lots of data ("unlimited")
Thanks

KildareP

Depends really on your definition of value.

Personally, I'd be looking at €40-€50 a month and going with a wired connection.

€30 is going to be mobile broadband territory only - could be great, could be terrible, and your experience can change drastically by the hour. Equally, it can be fine for months or years on end then a new housing estate springing up nearby could see you go from great to absolutely horrible overnight. That, to me, represents poor value.

Case in point - outside my rural village had terrible wired broadband for years, 3G/4G speeds were <1Mb each evening. Then OpenEir came along early last year, cabled everyone up with FTTH and 3G/4G speeds jumped within weeks of them going live to a consistent 50Mb+ (eir mobile) up to 100Mb+ (3) 24/7 (no Vodafone mobile at all here!).

Since then there has been a glut of building going on, loads of new houses coming on the market, lots of people moving in. Except Eir haven't cabled them up yet, lockdown had kicked in and now 3G/4G is back down to the low single digits for speed each evening again with latency into the hundreds of milliseconds as everyone piles onto their mobile data for internet.


Personally, I'd be looking to the "smaller" guys like Digiweb, Airwire, Pure Telecom. €40-€50 a month for proper wired broadband, no misleading discounts or gimmicky promotion periods and small enough to have customer support that still care. Speeds rarely fluctuate from the day they were when it was first installed unless there's a fault and latency usually in single digits.


That said, you can keep in/around €30 a month and still get a "proper" wired broadband connection if you want to play a continuous switching game back and forward between Eir and Vodafone every 12 months.

Prepare yourself for heartache if anything goes wrong (both are diabolical at customer service) and prepare yourself for the most expensive broadband packages if you forget to switch at the end of the discount period.

joe123

Pop your eircode in either of the below links to see if what type of speeds you can get.

https://www.vodafone.ie/home/eircode-checker

https://www.airwire.ie/index.php/avail will also tell you if you can get other services. FTTH being the best choice, then depending on speeds FTTC/Part Fibre.

If your out of luck there, then your likely going to get copper broadband (which is terrible for online gaming if multiple devices are being used including smartphones etc) or fixed wireless.

Vodafone/Eir/Sky all do offers around 30 euro a month but their customer service is dog****. Ive heard horror stories from Eir and Vodafone arent much better.

Pay a bit extra for the same speeds but you will get far better customer service from the likes of Lightnet or Airwire.

tea and coffee

Ok so I have been offered the following:

Pure Telecom. 100mbps with fibre. No connection fee or charge for modem. 25 for 8 months and 45 for 4. 12 month contract. 1tb fair use.

Digiweb. 1000mbps with Siro. 49 connection fee. No charge for modem. 25 for 4 months and 55 after. 12 month contract. 2tb fair usage.

I'm not sure why the vast difference in speeds. On Pure site they seem to interchangeably use 100 and 1000.... it's quite confusing.

I have 3 xbox / console users, and 4 other heavy internet users. What would you go for?

dam099

tea and coffee wrote: »

Ok so I have been offered the following:

Pure Telecom. 100mbps with fibre.

Thats not full fibre to the home, there is no such FTTH profile. It looks like a Fibre to Cabinet package (VDSL) and will be up to 100mbps. Actual speed will depend on how far you are from a cabinet.

If you have SIRO available and multiple heavy users I would be going with SIRO. Are you sure Digiweb fair usage is 2TB? All reports I have seen and their webpage for it suggest 1TB which might be an issue with your usage profile.

tea and coffee

dam099 wrote: »

If you have SIRO available and multiple heavy users I would be going with SIRO. Are you sure Digiweb fair usage is 2TB? All reports I have seen and their webpage for it suggest 1TB which might be an issue with your usage profile.

I was told it was 2 but you're right it's 1 on the website.

Peanut2011

I've had Pure Telecom before and service was consistent and the customer service was always the same person I dealt with.

However I think I had a business account as it was originally provided by my employer and I kept it when I left that job.

I do know when I was discussing options to reduce cost that personal connections had a lot more users sharing the line than the business ones.

Hope this helps.