Irish Broadband - yay or nay?

johnl

Hello all,
I'm planning on signing up tomrrow with Irish Broadband, on one of their business packages, a Breeze one. I am currently using Esat BT's service, but the joke that is 128kb/s upload speed has worn thin over the past few years.
I can't take that anymore, so I'm moving. The increase in the download without increasing the upload was the last straw for me.

So, am I right to consider Irish Broadband?
I have heard horror stories about them, but they were a while ago.
In all my dealings with them so far, they have been exemplary. Still, people warn against going with them, as if they were radioactive.

I'm somewhat wary of this 12 month minimum contract, but 2 months free and free installation are sweetening the deal.

Let me know what you think as soon as possible,
Time is running in.

Thank you,
John Lunney

Vadrefjorde

Hi Joh, i'm in the exact same predicament as you. Currently with IBB, fed up of them and changing to IBB. Have read a lot about the problems they have been having lately on posts here on boards. Finally decided to takke the plunge and faxed my order yesterday morning so i suppose there's no going back now.
I did this beacuse although a lot of people have been complaining lately, the biigger picture is that IBB have a great connection normally and i put down a lot of the problems to their recent upgrade. Esat BT had the same thing a year ago when they had to upgrade their equipment 'cos o.f the influx of customers.



Hopefully i won't regret the switch

Nevyn

When IBB are good they are very, very good, but when they are not it is
more then horrid. But they may treat thier business customer to more care.

johnl

"Currently with IBB, fed up of them and changing to IBB."

I presume you mean you were with IOL?

lazygit

Thaed wrote:

When IBB are good they are very, very good, but when they are not it is
more then horrid. But they may treat thier business customer to more care.

Have to totally agree with this, i have IBB since last summer, it was perfect for 4 months then on 26th December ( typical closed customer service ) my connection died. i was at 56k modem speeds until mid feb. i phoned them every day clocking up more than €100 on my mobile to get it fixed. there engineer assured me that my connection was perfect. and nothing was wrong, i asked to be moved to a different switch and presto all was fixed. there was a problem with a switch in the tower that the engineer missed.

but as said above, since then the connection has been 100%

Evac101

With IBB since just before Christmas and not a single complaint.

johnl

Thaed wrote:

When IBB are good they are very, very good, but when they are not it is
more then horrid. But they may treat thier business customer to more care.

Thaed, that's just the sentiment I've been coming across everywhere. Well, I'll hopefully not have too much dealing with them once it's all set up.
I've handled wily ISP folk before, so I'll do it again, if it means faster upload speeds and a more stable connection.

petes

I have orderd the 2mb breeze package. Whats this with the 2 months free. Im already getting free installation. Am I entitled to the 2 months? I signed up as a residential customer but on the site the 2meg is under business. Hmm not sure will have to find out. 2 months free sounds nice. A very bloody long time to install though was told 3 to 4 weeks(Dundalk).

johnl

Yeah man, you get 2 months free AND you get free installation. So I was told on the phone by one of their techs.
That's what pushed me over. If it hadn't been or that, I don't think I would have gone to the effort of switching, what with having to pay for another installation.
2 months free ain't bad either.

I actually signed up under business, but there seems to be little difference between the two, judging by my conversations with their sales reps. They seem to be interchangeable.

I'm down in Dublin, don't know how long my install will take, but if I get an ETA I will post it.

petes

Right the 2 meg residential is not on the website but on the order form. You get free installation for the residential but not the 2 months free. Looks like from the site you get the oppositefor business(free 2 months but pay for install). Must depend on the rep you are talking to. Surely you have to be a registered business to sign up for the business package or is that me being silly?

johnl

Well, I'm just going by what the guy told me yesterday.
I made it clear that I wanted the 2Mb business, and asked specifically whether or not the deal for 2 free months AND free installation was still in operation. He said it is.
As for being a registered business, the guy I talked to said it didn't matter. Again, I made it clear that I just wanted the business package but intended to use it for solely residential purposes. He said that was absolutely alright.

ssh

I've come to realise that it's better to judge a company by how they react when things go wrong than what things are like when the service is working properly.

On this count, I gave IBB 0 stars. They don't seem to bother checking their support requests thing (a badly configured requesttracker by the looks of things), they have pretty shoddy support hours when compared with the DSL providers and their backbone seems to be in very bad shape.

We moved away from our rock-solid eircom 2048/256 to their 2048/2048. At the best of times, we get 130KBPs (both ways, so uploading is pretty okay). They don't seem particularly interested in getting it beyond that... I'll be moving away at the end of the contract.

sutty

I have to say. I have been on IBB breaze 1024 up and down stream since summer of last year. Before that I was on Netsource. The IBB while can be slow at times. Has never disconnected for more than 6 hours (and that was only once I beleave) the there was the QoS. But thats gone now. Now I got upgraded to the 2mb the other day and its flying along.

When I was with netsource. I was getting regulare disconnects, Outages, caped, Domain problems (I was charged for a domain for about 4 months that I didn't own) and so on.

So from the like 3 times I have had to deal with IBB. Yes they where a pain. But the problems got sorted with out me been taken off line for weeks at a time (and that has happened with Netsource) Long run. I find IBB to be less of a pain and more of an Always on service (sometimes its just not as fast as it can be) but thats mainly down to contention.

Vadrefjorde

johnl wrote:

"Currently with IBB, fed up of them and changing to IBB."

I presume you mean you were with IOL?

My apologies John, one of these days i'll master this keyboard thingy

I opted for the 2MB business package with IBB. I pay for the installation but get the first 2 months free.

Drapper

Vadrefjorde wrote:

My apologies John, one of these days i'll master this keyboard thingy

I opted for the 2MB business package with IBB. I pay for the installation but get the first 2 months free.

Big nay ! up and down like whores underwear !! unreliable

johnl

Hmm.
These are all very mixed messages.
I think I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.
At present my internet connection is slow and unreliable.
IBB should improve on that, if they don't, it's breach of contract time

Thanks,
John

petes

Yep. Im going to see for myself what the connection is like. But all the feedback is certainly useful.

fisab

Agree, the feedback here is very useful, though I too will throw caution to the wind and chance them.
Coming from a noisy 20kb/s analogue line :- if its consistently over 128kb/s uplink and downlink, and the pings are consistently under 100ms, and its up 99% of the time, I'll be very happy.
What are the odds of that happening ?

Sponge Bob

You have a LOT better chance of getting IBB to fix a dodgy signal or alignment than you have of getting Eircom to ever fix your line for you Fisab .

Velcrow

Great for connection and support - useless for pings - that means gaming - my ISDN was more consistent - no joke.

optiplexgx270

yay

johnl

I'm afraid there was a misunderstanding between myself and the IBB rep, who was very nice.
Petes was right.
With the residential you get free installation, with the business you get 2 months free.

Sorry for any confusion caused,
John

williamb

We've had IBB in work for six months, and the service has been pretty much flawless. Speed as advertised, no reliability issues.

I finally took the plunge and got it installed at home yesterday. No issues thus far, speed is fine, quick ping times. Ran various broadband speed checkers on it and they're all impressed with the performance.

So I say provisionally yay (based mostly on the experience in work, in truth), but get back to me in 6 months.

fisab

I'm relying on the hope that the majority of IBB sufferers post here and that the happy customers dont bother.
They have around 6000 customers at present so if there were only 60 bad connections then I'm happy to gamble on that 1%.
Still, the large number of complaints on this board worries the hell out of me. I guess I'll find out in the next week or 2.

petes

johnl wrote:

I'm afraid there was a misunderstanding between myself and the IBB rep, who was very nice.
Petes was right.
With the residential you get free installation, with the business you get 2 months free.

Sorry for any confusion caused,
John

You would be better of going with the residential then. Unless its contended differently? Must check this as the installation is €150 I think and the monthly fee is €40 net.

/edit

Same contention for residential and business on 2mb breeze.

fisab

petes wrote:

You would be better of going with the residential then. Unless its contended differently? Must check this as the installation is €150 I think and the monthly fee is €40 net.

/edit

Same contention for residential and business on 2mb breeze.

Their website is wrong (according to their sales team). The website (as of yesterday) advertises 1M for E36 at 20:1 contention. The sales team state it is a 48:1 contention.
1M at 20:1 used to be E48 but when they dropped the price, they increased the contention.

petes

fisab wrote:

Their website is wrong (according to their sales team). The website (as of yesterday) advertises 1M for E36 at 20:1 contention. The sales team state it is a 48:1 contention.
1M at 20:1 used to be E48 but when they dropped the price, they increased the contention.

Did you look at the website.

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/htmdocs/our_products/Breeze_1MB.htm

I f my eyes dont deceive me it says its contended at 48:1. Maybe they changed site overnight though. But its still 24:1 on 2mb products.

fisab

petes wrote:

Did you look at the website.

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/htmdocs/our_products/Breeze_1MB.htm

I f my eyes dont deceive me it says its contended at 48:1. Maybe they changed site overnight though. But its still 24:1 on 2mb products.

Well the site is inconsistent then, 'cos it says 20:1 on its pricing page :-

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/htmdocs/bb_at_home/pricing.htm

Maybe the use of the word 'average' lets them off the hook.

petes

fisab wrote:

Well the site is inconsistent then, 'cos it says 20:1 on its pricing page :-

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/htmdocs/bb_at_home/pricing.htm

Maybe the use of the word 'average' lets them off the hook.

Did'nt see that. Inconsistent it is.

gsand

i have the 2meg off 3 rock...finally

and its very good imo, much more reliable and consistent then any of the other ibb stuff ive had before. i havnt had any drastic contention issues and this is off the standard 48 euro package.

peterk19

Ordered 2MB breeze today do you have any idea how long they take to instal it?
Pete