chorus Broadband

Drexl Spivey

Hi all,

I didn't see any recent threads on Chorus BB.

www.chorus.ie

Does anyone have a feedback at all on this service? I am in Celbridge, Co Kildare.

I was with UTV before, and I was happy with their service but I hate paying line rental.
It would be great to get rid of eircom once and for all


Cheers,
Jeff.

GregusManus

Very limited areas of availibility could be the reason, Thurles, whoKilledkenny and Clonmel, and just recently Nass and Cork have been added (or is that a work in progress??).

kaizersoze

If it as reliable as their tv service then I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Spent all last weekend looking at a blank screen again. Ever try living with a woman addicted to Big Brother and all the soaps with no TV....it's not nice

J-blk

kaizersoze wrote:

If it as reliable as their tv service then I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Spent all last weekend looking at a blank screen again.

LOL - that's what I told him, off the boards.... Had TV with them back in Limerick. Every single Bank Holiday weekend (and I mean, EVERY single one), the connection would be f****d. Answer always was "We'll send someone out on Tuesday"... Class. NTL TV in Dublin rules by comparison.

Never knew they did BB till yesterday, chatting with Jeff Bond, but if the TV service is anything to go by...

juliuspret

Well about a year ago they were advertising a BB service for Cork/Bishopstown where I lived then.
It was to be active by October 2004...hahaha...nothing ever happened AFAIK.

They are a joke of an operation with only a couple of town BB enabled.

Their parent company now/will own NTL ireland soon so they might upgrade all Chorus customers to what NTL currently offer in Ireland before the end of the decade if were lucky.

Their only BB offer is:
Cablenet Broadband 1Mb:
• 1024k downstream; 256k upstream
• No telephone line required
• 24 hour online connection
• 20GB download limit
• Up to 5 email addresses
Thats a bit of a joke for cable!!!

Marcopolo85

juliuspret wrote:

Well about a year ago they were advertising a BB service for Cork/Bishopstown where I lived then.
It was to be active by October 2004...hahaha...nothing ever happened AFAIK.

They are a joke of an operation with only a couple of town BB enabled.

Their parent company now/will own NTL ireland soon so they might upgrade all Chorus customers to what NTL currently offer in Ireland before the end of the decade if were lucky.

Their only BB offer is:
Cablenet Broadband 1Mb:
• 1024k downstream; 256k upstream
• No telephone line required
• 24 hour online connection
• 20GB download limit
• Up to 5 email addresses
Thats a bit of a joke for cable!!!

Whilst at the same time: http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_cable.html

juliuspret

Yeah...its truly laughable.

Then again Chorus BB cant have more than a 1000 customers anyway...due to their own incompetence!!!!

Hellrazer

Chorus are crap.

When we moved into Celbridge 5 years ago we got a letter in the post from Chorus offering us Digital Tv and Broadband with the usual "register your interest" form.

I did register 5 years ago and still have no digital TV or Broadband.
I even still have the letter at home which Ive faxed to them on numerous occasions asking why I still havent received these services 5 years on!!
"Apparently" They`ve hit Naas and the "roll out" will be in Celbridge "shortly"

juliuspret

They were advertising BB 5 years ago........hahahaha!!!!

Hopefull whatever cable company is created from the amalgimation of Chorus and NTL Ireland fires all of the Chorus management and put NTL Ireland's management in charge of everything.

We might then see some progress.

How many homes/people can receive cable TV anyway....500,000 people....that would bring direct competition to eircom and cause them to actually be competitive!!!!

Solair

Don't confuse Chorus Digital MMDS and Chorus Digital Cable service quality. The digital MMDS service can be pretty roapy in areas with poor / weak signals. However, I've been watching their digital cable service (at work) and it's as reliable as anything else. Haven't had any problems with it so far anyway.

It's impossible to generalise about them as they are the product of the merger of several smaller cable and mmds operators who all used different technologies and infrastructure. So, parts of the network are terrible, other parts are excellent, all depends on who rolled it out in the first place and how old it is.

As for their broadband roll out plans, chorus had pretty big ones. They spent a lot of money laying ducting and fiber optics in lots of areas of Cork (and elsewhere) to upgrade the network from creeky old coax to fiber/coax hybrid. Unfortunately they went into receivership halfway through the project and the whole thing was halted. So, in most areas the old analogue cable networks are still in service. Their wireless powernet service never got off the ground at all. Their cable telephony service seems to have only ever been rolled out on a trial basis in parts of cork city too.

Chorus and NTL Ireland will become UPC Ireland once they get over a few legal hurdles so hopefully, they should get access to some more funds and will see some improvements in service. They will also benefit from signifigant economies of scale when they do merge the two companies including giving ex Chorus customers a better range of channels on digital cable. From what I gather, Chorus has a single digital headend in Limerick and they give digital cable customers the same narrow choice of channels that their MMDS customers get (MMDS being bandwidth restricted) so, there's really no major advantage to being on cable with them! Basically, it seems to be a single digital system regardless of what way you receive it.

I will say one thing though, their Cork predecessor, Irish Multichannel (Cork Multichannel) has to be one of the worst, most incompetant, nastiest, rudest company I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. They adopted a take it or leave it attitude to customer service and were utterly horrible to deal with. We had regular billing error problems with they would just flatly refuse to sort out. Eventually we just got completely sick of them and asked them to remove the decoder and MMDS antenna. They refused!

So, our sky installer removed it and I simply presented the two decoders and a very moss-covered slightly wet MMDS antenna to their receptionist and asked her to write me a receipt, which she did.

I swore at that point that I would NEVER deal with them again even if it meant giving up ITV and C4. Switched to sky and have never looked back, I may give them a try again *IF* I hear some good things about the new company's customer service.

I really dont think Irish Multichannel / Cork Multichannel actually deserved anyone's business!

Kare Bear

I had chorus t.v. before and it was totally ****e.:mad:

Never go near chorus t.v.

Solair

I know in Cork anyway, that a lot of people switched to Sky Digital once BBC 1/2 appeared on it, just as a matter of principle!

Multichannel / Chorus developed such a bad rep. for customer service that there were many very bitter customers just waiting for an opportunity to get rid of them.

I'd suspect that they lost a hell of a lot of customers to sky digital!

It's a case of what goes around comes around! Treat people like *&£&"! and they'll run you out of town at the nearest opportunity!

juliuspret

The analogie Cable from chorus...when compared to Sky Digital is absolutely shockingly bad.

They will need a massive marketing campaign to retrieve customers, if only for Cable broadband.

Sponge Bob

juliuspret wrote:

They were advertising BB 5 years ago........hahahaha!!!!

Chorus are infamous. They PROVIDED the first or second BB service in Ireland in the Swords/Malahide area. It went LIVE in 1997 or 1998 .

Chorus then decided to turn this service off in 1999 or 2000 to replace it with ....... nothing as the poor punters found out .

They have been coming very soon to Limerick and Cork ( and Celbridge it seems now) since about 1999 .

They always were a dreadful company, absolutely awful in every single way

kaizersoze

When I dealt with them first they were Horizon Multichannel, then they morphed into Irish Multichannel and now they're Chorus. Not much else changed. Crap then and crap now

WezzyB

Sponge Bob wrote:

Chorus then decided to turn this service off in 1999 or 2000 to replace it with ....... nothing as the poor punters found out .

When I was working in Swords, the company had it in the Plaza, Main Street, it was pretty good until cmi/cablenet were bought out by chorus. We started getting serious problems with them in 2001, they had there servers located in an unmanned room in an industrial estate and whenever anything went wrong they had to send someone out to fix it, which took its time.

I am not sure when we actually stopped using it but it was after 2000 iirc, maybe they stopped accepting new customers then, because of there impending new broadband offering.... 5+ years in the making

bk

And the horrifying thing is that a read an article today that said when NTL:Ireland and Chorus merge, they will close the NTL customer service center in Waterford (with the loss of 180 jobs) and use the Chorus call centre in Limerick instead :mad:

I recently got NTL cable and dgital TV, their CS and sales staff were the best I have ever experienced. Absolutely top notch service.

Only yesterday I called Chorus sales to inquire about their digital TV service for my sister. The sales woman couldn't get me off the phone quick enough, she was very abrubt and obviously didn't want to answer my questions.

In comparison when I signed up for NTL BB 3 mnoths ago, first of all I got through to sales immediately, second the sales lady was very patient, frendly and courteous, she answered all of the (many) questions I had, many of the questions were quiet technical (Linux compatibility, etc.) and she answered them all knowledgeably. Top class.

BTW needless to say my sister is going to get Sky Digtal service instead of Chorus.

Sponge Bob

They also had a wireless BB service called powernet , in both Limerick and Cork. That was turned off a few years ago. They told one Boards user that they HAD to turn it off in Cork because it was interfering with the Radar out at the Airport or something.

Remember this thread with Many Fond Memories of Chorus

juliuspret

If it was interfering it was because chorus couldnt operate it properly.

Useless bastards.

Is there Digital cable still done through dishes on the roof or have they finally upgraded their actual cable network to allow digital cable???

Their marketing machine will have to work overtime to save it!!!

parsi

Solair wrote:

I will say one thing though, their Cork predecessor, Irish Multichannel (Cork Multichannel) has to be one of the worst, most incompetant, nastiest, rudest company I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. They adopted a take it or leave it attitude to customer service and were utterly horrible to deal with. We had regular billing error problems with they would just flatly refuse to sort out. Eventually we just got completely sick of them and asked them to remove the decoder and MMDS antenna. They refused!

So, our sky installer removed it and I simply presented the two decoders and a very moss-covered slightly wet MMDS antenna to their receptionist and asked her to write me a receipt, which she did.

Ever since my first bill from them in which they charged me extra and forged my application form to justify, it I refused to go on direct debit. And I always paid them late and refused to pay the late payment fees. When I got Sky I brought in the decoder and a letter and got a recept for it. I told them at the time that my liability to them ceased on that day and I was damned if I was going to give them any notice and wasn't going to pay them anymore than the half-month that was due. Strangely enough they accepted it.

I think everyone in Cork has a Multichannel story...

J-blk

Wow... pretty consistent thread. Not one good thing to say about them from anyone...

Poor Jeff Bond is gonna be shocked - he's stuck on dialup at the mo (Ahhh... the pain....). Still, he'd be worse off with Chorus by the looks of it, so this thread should steer him clear!

juliuspret

Has anyone here got Chorus Broadband in the 3 towns where it is setup???

Solair

I'll find out if anyone I know has it in Cork City. I know Chorus definitely had telephone customers over cable and stuff for a while. Digital cable isn't available universally in Cork, it's only in limited areas. The rest of the city has those horrible old 1980s Jerrold decoders that don't even provide analogue stereo never mind sorround sound.

I mean, on new infrastructure with decent hybrid fiber-coax networks they could actually provide a potentially decent service.

As they stand, it's just dire!

juliuspret

Yeah I heard that stupid add on the radio...Chorus Telephone service or something.

Stupid bastards...people are beyond that stage and are moving onto VoIP now FFS.

Yeah had one of those Jerrold decoders myself in 2004...their MMDS(dish on the roof) had the same type of decoder in the early 90's.
They certainly got their money's worth!!!

Cablesurf in Dungarvin http://www.cablesurf.com/ should be a template for chorus...if only they didnt have assholes in charge!!!

SkepticOne

Chorus actually shut down a broadband service when they bought up a cable system in North Co. Dublin.

juliuspret

All this Chorus bashing is makeing me depressed.

Is there anyone here who is connected to Chorus??
If so do a speed test at www.irishisptest.com and take a screen cap.
Upload the pic to http://www.imageshack.us/ and post the thumbnail here.

The last time I researched their broadband was when they were offering 1024/256 and it would be interesting to see if they actually offered said speeds.

Drexl Spivey

J-blk wrote:

Wow... pretty consistent thread. Not one good thing to say about them from anyone...

Poor Jeff Bond is gonna be shocked - he's stuck on dialup at the mo (Ahhh... the pain....). Still, he'd be worse off with Chorus by the looks of it, so this thread should steer him clear!

Damn it, I will have to choose between UTV Clicksilver and EsatBT then ... (Eircom has a cap on uploads!!! and Digiweb is $$££)

I would have given Chorus a go if there was no contract. I don't wanna be stuck for a year!! Nobody in this thread is an actual Chorus BB user, this would have been an interesting feedback.

Hey blk, it's hell to have to resort to dial up!! Especially for an Internet addict like me Luckily I am using a wireless modem, so I don't have to stick my puter against the socket (Bluetooth Class 1 , Zoom Dial Up Modem, I thought a gadget freak like you would like to know the details )

Thank you all for the answers and if you have another BB offer to suggest please mention it (although there are other threads on the subject.)

Cheers.

juliuspret

Pick BT unless you are interested in the Free Offpeak Ireland/Uk calls for the extra €15 or so thats you have to pay more than BT in their Line Rental+BB bundles.

Though Chorus BB is still interesting...no one here has first hand experience of it...so it may be a good service if you can get it.

For vanilla bitstream DSL BT is the weapon of choice!

Sponge Bob

Chorus BB is supposed to be technically OK and was priced OK up to a year ago but is expensive compared to BT nowadays . They have not innovated or kept up and expanded the bandwidth like NTL have.

Chorus the company and Chorus the customer experience are the most truly awful of the awful in an truly awful industry sector.

The best compliment I can pay Chorus is that Comreg only came up with one good idea to regulate Chorus which was to unilaterally give up regulating Chorus because Comreg could do nothing with them and Chorus were always beyond caring about Comreg anyway and made sure that Comreg knew that .

That salient regulatory triumph whereby one will be fully deregulated if one is absolutely consistently totally utterly awful is what I will always remember Chorus for ....no matter what they are repackaged as in future .

juliuspret

So Sponge Bob you are happy with Chorus...hahaha!!!

Damn those lazy bastards for being so incompetent and not having the balls to compete.

But could someone who has Chorus do as I asked above:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2992741&postcount=26

We might then have a better idea of what at least Chorus are capable of, technically at least.

Overlord

Howya,
I'm in Clonmel and have been on chorus broadband since november approx.
no trouble with the service that i can recall. speed has been upgraded to 1mbit down. Routing is bad to ireland though. everything gets routed straight through Uk regardless of destination. An inex connection would be nice. hope the thumbnail works:

juliuspret wrote:

All this Chorus bashing is makeing me depressed.

Is there anyone here who is connected to Chorus??
If so do a speed test at www.irishisptest.com and take a screen cap.
Upload the pic to http://www.imageshack.us/ and post the thumbnail here.

The last time I researched their broadband was when they were offering 1024/256 and it would be interesting to see if they actually offered said speeds.