Smart employee happy to answer questions on bb rollout

SeaSide

Drogheda's MAN is under construction so maybe later this year and Carrigaline is in the most recent list of MAN towns so maybe next year

KDX

I'm trying to sign up but its asking for the "Eircom Account Number/UAN" ....
.... I'm with Esat BT, do i have to be with Eircom ?

dub45

have to say that I am not enthused about signing direct debits at such an early stage of the process particularly as it is going to be a couple of months at best before the first customes get signed up.

Having thousands of direct debit mandates lying around with bank account details on them is surely not in anyone's interest.

Why are Smart insisting on this at such an early stage? surely it is only creating potential problems for them. What assurances have people that a proper security system is in place? Will people who do not proceed have their direct debits returned to them etc etc etc.

Praetorian

I'm interested in the Balbriggan, Rush, Lusk and Skerries exchanges. Roughly 60,000 people reside in those towns.

Adey2002

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Adey2002. Hold on a second there now. Reselling eircom services is using bitstream.

That is absolutely not what we are doing. The only piece of the eircom network we use is the copper pair into your house. No eircom electronics, so to speak. You need a copper pair into the house.

You can order that via us and we can order it from eircom on your behalf, or you can order it directly from eircom. Either one.

Garfield.

So, if I know what the eircom number used to be at this address (which I do) would that mean I can just order from yourselves without having to get eircom first? If not, how would I order that through yourselves if a number is required to sign up?

gsand

lol i see the issue of excessive use/possibly capping in future is being avoided. i can see a new thread ala netsource 'unlimited usage' turns into 16gig shortly after rollout.

Sponge Bob

SeaSide wrote:

Drogheda's MAN is under construction so maybe later this year and Carrigaline is in the most recent list of MAN towns so maybe next year

Lots of MAN installations basically are or will be stranded as there is no fibre TO the town while there may be fibre IN the town or at least ducting. Kiltimagh has a MAN but is not on any list from SMART is it.

Unless there is ESB fibre TO the town then you can probably forget about it.

Manorhamilton is on the ESB network and HAS a MAN but is not on the SMART target list

The ESB has lots of maps here for y'áll .

http://www.esbtelecoms.ie/infrastructure/national_maps.htm



Mans 2004 and Mans 2005

HTH

SeaSide

Nice map here too

http://www.monaghan.ie/images/broadband/DroghedaMap.gif

The last round of Regional Broadband proposals were required to include connection to a national backbone.

Dr Bolouswki

My biggest concern would be ping times. Can you gaurantee sub 80 ms?

My line passes the smartcom test (terenure) but consistantly fails the eircoN test, and they cannot tell me why....

We never use our landline for phone calls - would this make any difference?

tuxy

Dr Bolouswki wrote:

My biggest concern would be ping times. Can you gaurantee sub 80 ms?

i dont think you will find any isp's that gaurantee pings

Dr Bolouswki

Ok then, but I'm currently with IBB who are ignoring my emails and after a period of relatively consistant sub 100ms I've been getting varyingly 200-999 in game pings for the alst two weeks... unplayable.

I'll rephrase question to

"Is the service sutiable for online gaming and the faster pings that gaming requires?"

Clanc

Hi Garfield, any idea if or when Navan might be connected?

By the way, good to see you're still keeping the Spirit (!!)

pwd

Hi
What happnens if you mofve during the contract? Can you continue the contract atthe new address? I don;t suppose you can have it on a month-by-month basis nstead of having to sign up for a year at a go?
Thanks

kinkstr

Ive just been to te smart telecom website and tested my line, unfortunatley it said it isnt available in my area and no date as to when it is available, just wopndering when will this service be available in the Wexford area?

regedit

Garfield,
Can you confirm that once I have gone through the online authorisation, the next step is to send in the DD mandate form (DL from your site)? and what address/fax number do I need to send it in.

Secondly, I think you should offer a higher UL speed. 128 is realy poor. I can understand that this is a measure to protect yourselves from insane P2P users but I am more than sure that most of the ones on the other side of the law use satellite connections. I her that VOIP doesnt function very good at 128...

Enduro

Garfield,

Keep up the good work. I hope that you, or some other representative from Smart continues to participate in the forum after your service starts rolling out.

I also have an issue with timing my switchover to your service. However, I'd like to suggest a potential solution that might work for a lot of people. If you could provide a dial-up ISP service that can be accessed using a smart Telecom Number, then people could sign up to Smart's CPS telephony service and use this new number for dial-up internet access This would allow users to keep internet access (albeit much slower, but sufficient for email + general browsing) using a free dial-up number (once they've signed up for smart telecom and can avail of smart 2 smart). It would also make it much more likely that people would switch over immediately to your CPS product, rather than waiting until their exchange is unbundled. Indeed the more I think about it, this would be a great marketing strategy for getting people to switch to Smart Telecom phone services, even if there was no immediate possibility of them getting smart broadband.
Just a thought....

I'm also one of the people who thinks you should increase the upload to at least 256k, if for no other reason than your own marketing. Smart broadband is almost a no-brainer, and the upload speeds are the main reason for the "almost". I think you yourself can see that there is very strong interest from more technically savvy users in having faster upload speeds. You're likely to loose quite a few of these potential customers because of this. Increasing your upload speed to something more obviously proportional to the 2Mb downloads speed would make Smart broadband almost impossible to refuse. I'm sure you don't need me to explain to you the obvious marketing benifit of having virtually every tech savvy user (and Journalist!!!) in the country having the opinion that Smart broadband is their recommended broadband product. They are likely to influence the purchasing decisions of all their friends/relatives.

Longfordian

Garfield,

Thanks for coming on the boards and taking all the flack. Unfortunately I live in an area not served by any of the fibre networks. My exchange is BLEA in Longford. However I am not giving up hope as my home is located about 100m from a national primary school which is due to be wired this year for broadband. I see that Smart telecom is wiring over 1,000 of these schools though I could not find a list of which schools. Is there a possibility to piggyback on this service? Do you intend to offer a wireless service in remote areas such as mine? I have direct line of sight with the school so if they have broadband why not the neighbors?

Culchie

jbkenn

Longfordian wrote:

Garfield,

Thanks for coming on the boards and taking all the flack. Unfortunately I live in an area not served by any of the fibre networks. My exchange is BLEA in Longford. However I am not giving up hope as my home is located about 100m from a national primary school which is due to be wired this year for broadband. I see that Smart telecom is wiring over 1,000 of these schools though I could not find a list of which schools. Is there a possibility to piggyback on this service? Do you intend to offer a wireless service in remote areas such as mine? I have direct line of sight with the school so if they have broadband why not the neighbors?

Culchie

Off topic, dont hold your breath, the vast majority of rural schools are getting giddyup satellite "broadband"

jbkenn

Lawdie

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

The reference number does NOT equate to your position in the queue. I don't know how the ref is generated. I'll find out. You'll definitely be in the first 100K.

Garfield.

Good to see Smart coming onto the boards and facing the public.

I also received the standard your interest is registered reply, with a reference number. What concerns me is that the reply does not state clearly that the receipent is going to receive the offer, as you (Garfield) statted in the first posting.

On the Smart website, I can't find the listings of what exchanges are been activated and when, I checked my own line (which is currently on broadband) and got the no plans for your area reply.
Can you directly link the plans to the thread Garfield.

Finally, upload is important, just look at any traffic manager and you will see the two way flow of data, I find 128k pretty poor for home working and email. Yes its better than dial up, however I would be willing to match the current charge of €39 for the free line rental and 1024/256 or better. Let you guys do the math!

Longfordian

jbkenn wrote:

Off topic, dont hold your breath, the vast majority of rural schools are getting giddyup satellite "broadband"

jbkenn

Jbkenn,

Is this the half-assed system where you download from satellite but you must be connected by regular landline dial-up connection for uploads and navigation? If so that seriously sucks. The govt. minister promised broadband which is always on.

off topic: has anyone tried that onspeed.com software which promises to speed up your connection fivefold? I just moved back from NYC and the lack of broadband is killing me. I'm used to streaming video and all that other good stuff........

Sentinel

Garfield,

Some questions/points please respond:
You are providing VoIP services from your DSL Modem/Router.
Which is transparent to the Home User ie. they put the same POTS phone they have at home into the phone port on the box and voice calls happen as normal.
I assume then like the POTS phone at home, when Electricity to the home fails there is power provided through the port to the phone ie. the -50DC is passed from your kit in the exchanged through the phone cable throught the 'dead' modem/router to the phone?
Imagine no power and no access to emergency services etc if phone doesn't work - no doubt you couldn't contemplate this.

Also can you provide assistance if need be to the Gardai to track crank callers -and other serivces the Telco can and is obliged to provide eg. Lawful Intercept?
Will CLID, Voice mail, 2nd Caller be provided as most people take these services for granted from their voice line supplier?

You mention ADSL2+ and providing 2Mb downstream as though this is a massive bandwidth. ADSL2+ in Italy provides 12MBDownstream @ €20 permonth and up to 50MB where line quality allows. Now why would the average home user and casual internet user care about this - well as you are probably well aware - you need at least 4MB ( and usually 8 ) to the home downstream to receive or be provided with video services. So you may be limited by sticking with and signing up to Smart Telecom if another provider comes into the market with Triple Play = voice, video, data to the home - which is inevitable.

Also for the home worker the Upstream rate is important when for example you are uploading files - 128K upstream is no better for file transfer than ISDN with 2B channels connected. It is still in the Dark ages in terms of upload and will perpetuate the frustration of the home worker.

I am personally frustrated with the lack of vision of the socalled Broadband/voice/data providers and alternative carriers in ireland 128K, 256K 512K 2Mb whatever - capped or not capped who cares - it's all narrowvisioned short term make money quick - no one is going after the big picture.
For sure you'll say video is regulated and very difficult to sign up the studios for access to movies, programmes etc.
Well the sooner the better a Content Provider such as SKY comes into the market to provide triple play services the better via satelite/DSL or DSL or fibre to the home or whatever - then there'll be something to be excited about.


thanks

james1234

Nice product, pity about the upload speed.

If you want to revolutionise BB in Ireland, you might as well increase the upload to min. 256 in line with most other countries.

Good to get a rep from any ISP on the boards, see, we're not all that mean here on boards.ie!

Just hope March/April really means March/April!
Spent 3 1/2 months trying to get IOL BB connected switched over from u.tv, despite IOL quoting 20 days conenction time on their website

Do you foresee any free trial periods before comitting to a year contract, like most other ISPs?

jackofnotrades

As a gamer, musician and student the upload speed is important to me. i'm always uploading project work and other things i'm working on so i can download it later from college, i upload and download mp3's a lot too, not to mention the faster my upload speed the faster i can send information to game servers.
I know huge download speeds are important to some people but i tend to play games and upload/download small-medium size files and browse the web, i wouldn't mind trading some of that download speed for upload.

Up that upload speed to 256k or more and you've got a customer.

Saruman

Only saw this thread and its on 11 pages.. so sorry if this has been answered Garfield.. Anyway. Im not sure how long we are with esats broadband.. but we recently signed up to ESAT for the phone too as its cheaper than eircom.. and while calls are cheaper.. it seems monthly charge is odd.. anyway... Do you sort out the changeover process for the telephone part yourselves? Esat did it when we moved from eircom.
I think we have to do the BB ourselves though. am i right?
Guess it all depends on how easy it is to get away from esat now.

Gonzo

i think 256k minimum upload is very important too, the 128k upload i have with eircom broadband is painfully slow when im trying to send large emails and its a complete bottleneck when im trying to play xbox live and have counterstrike running on my pc at same time, the upload just lags both out coz is it so limited.

GarfieldConnoll

Hi,

There's about two pages worth of posts that I need to reply to. However, I'm taking the rest of the day off.

I'll be on over the weekend, or Monday.

Just letting people know that I am not avoiding questions.

Garfield.

popinfresh

hmm, I think u should charge 35.99 a month. The advertising speaks for itself

"
Broadband
4 times FASTER
4 euro a month LESS

(and no download caps)

then add more detail down here"

That'd be an eye catcher..

jdsiiken

Hi Garfield
Nice to see you on boards.

Is the free line rental for life offer locked to the line or the customer ? That is, if I move house can i still avail of the offer ?

GarfieldConnoll

popinfresh wrote:

hmm, I think u should charge 35.99 a month. The advertising speaks for itself

"
Broadband
4 times FASTER
4 euro a month LESS

(and no download caps)

then add more detail down here"

That'd be an eye catcher..

I think 'No Line Rental' should be in there too.

pauld

Garfield,

Hi, I have eircom phonewatch at home and I note that your website says the service is not available to phonewatch customers.

I have spoken to phonewatch (pw) today and they assure me that they can install a splitter at the main phone socket (where the line enters the house) which would then enable broadband and phonewatch to both work on the same line.

pw advised me to sign up to your service and when I receive the equipment from you, I should then contact pw. They will send out an engineer (75e) who will install splitter and ensure that the broadband connection and pw works

I realise this question may be outside your area but are you aware if what phonewatch says re the splitter is true. I really would like to avail of your service!

Many thanks
Paul