Premier Broadband, any experiences?

Cabaal

Their a wireless broadband outfit that offer services in County Tipp, Kilkenny & Carlow. Installation is abit expensive but monthly fee is decent enough but has anybody here had any dealings with them?
http://www.premierbroadband.net/

Cabaal

Bump!
Anyone have any info/experience?

ricey

Don know about them myself bud, but it looks ok.

Drapper

Its part owned by NTR who own IBB ! so more or less the same outfit !

Spocker

Small world indeed - I happened to be talking to Peter O'Keefe, their MD, last Saturday as they had just gotten Dept Of Communication approval for the Community Broadband Scheme in my area in Kilkenny.

He seemed like a nice enough chap and most of the info he was giving out was the "this is the size of the box that goes on your house" and "yes you can make calls for free".

When talking to him I mention I asked would they have a problem if I provided all my own firewall and routing equipment and he said "no problemo, we'll just give you the connection and off you go - should keep the engineer happy with a quick install".

Other than that not much - their package is good 512 up and down for €35 a month and I have already signed up cause Eircom won't be out my way any time soon.

I won't have anything for about two months until they finish their site survey/initial setup but will keep you posted

Cabaal

Dr. Spock wrote:

Small world indeed - I happened to be talking to Peter O'Keefe, their MD, last Saturday as they had just gotten Dept Of Communication approval for the Community Broadband Scheme in my area in Kilkenny.

Not sure if I was speaking to Peter but I had a quick talk to one of the lads at from the company while I was visiting my parents last Saturday as they had a table at a new community center, they had a linksys ATA, VoIP phone and some attenna's in box's etc

But did'ent really get to have a decent conversation with them, the 35e pm is good but the installation is abit steep I have to admit.

Just like to hear from actual people using the service

JimmyL

Another bump!

Thinking of signing up but noticed no p2p! Is that true? Apart from that what is the service like?

Any other info would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Spocker

*Still* waiting for them to do the site survey that was promised last September, since gone with Eircom as they have enabled the local exchange (Callan)

Spocker

Got the call yesterday - they're doing the site surveys in Callan this week.

mrblack

a family I know in Dualla Co Tipp got the service about 2-3 weeks ago. They say that its brill when its up but the network has gone down on them a few times for a few hours at a time.

Mrblack.

JabbaTheHut

I know someone, a few people in fact, that are using Premierbroadband's service for a while now. At first, at around Janurary, it was good. A little expensive to get setup, but that was not really an issue to smoeone who wanted BB in an area where the local exchange was never going to be upgraded.

However, for the last two months, for some people, their speed was cut down from 512k to 256k. Now on their website, it does state a fair usage policy is in operation. And that's only right. But it seems that these particular persons has not gone overboard on this.

One guy told me when he contacted them, he was told he must have gone over or something, but this was early in the month of May. He didn't even get the chance to overcook the bandwidth. Eventually he was restored in the beginning of June, only to be cut down a couple of days after. He had barely used it.

After contacting them again, he was told it would be sorted. Then other people got affected. He has given up ringing them, as he can't get much of an answer from them, and his emails don't get answered.

Some of the other people were told that their channels on their modems to their laptops were on too close a channel to what the service was broadcast on. So they changed their channels, but no difference it seems.

Overall, it sounds like it's not a very good service, with a few disgrunteled customers already.

Cabaal

Spocker wrote:

*Still* waiting for them to do the site survey that was promised last September, since gone with Eircom as they have enabled the local exchange (Callan)

Although its Eircom personally I'd go with ADSL over wireless especially given the geography of Callan (depending on where you are of course).

ADSL in Callan does appear to be very sketchy from what I've seen of line tests, especially on houses on the border of the town limits out the Kilkenny road.

As for Premierbroadband's service those stories seem concerning, sounds like they might be offering selling the service in the area the guy is in and they must not be providing sufficent bandwidth.
I could be wrong but I swore they had a support forum on their website, it appears to have disappeared now so that could be a bad sign customer service wise.....of course they may never have had one and I could be mixing them up with another site.

Spocker

Cabaal wrote:

I could be wrong but I swore they had a support forum on their website, it appears to have disappeared now so that could be a bad sign customer service wise.....of course they may never have had one and I could be mixing them up with another site.

IIRC they did have a forum of sorts, it was the old kilkennywan.org site; I did post a couple of times but there wasn't any traffic from Premier so I gave up long ago. Only recently checked the premierbroadband.net site and spotted the revamp/disappearance of the forums

Have to say re: Eircom no real problems so far; although I am in one of the new estates in town, new lines and all that. I had signed up for the 1Mb package, router was showing 2Mb for a long time and then I rebooted it and went back to 1; ah well can't have everything I suppose...

Have you signed up for anything Cabaal..? It's been a while since you asked the original question....

Cabaal

Spocker wrote:

IIRC they did have a forum of sorts, it was the old kilkennywan.org site; I did post a couple of times but there wasn't any traffic from Premier so I gave up long ago. Only recently checked the premierbroadband.net site and spotted the revamp/disappearance of the forums

so it wasn't my eyes playing tricks on me, I guess either they just weren't getting the traffic to justify having a forum or perhaps customer complaints?

Have to say re: Eircom no real problems so far; although I am in one of the new estates in town, new lines and all that. I had signed up for the 1Mb package, router was showing 2Mb for a long time and then I rebooted it and went back to 1; ah well can't have everything I suppose...

Have you signed up for anything Cabaal..? It's been a while since you asked the original question....

I wasn't looking for info for myself....I've NTL 3MB and I'm happy with it
Was looking into it for perhaps my parents or cousin's, at this stage now eircom/bt etc seem a more viable option for them.

I believe that the communty center (Friary) was looking into getting wireless but they went with BT in the end which they have shared out, although I'm not sure what speed the line is enabled for.

It would also appear (per your own comments) that the new estates seem to be fairing better then older developments, one example is I've seen lines pass in Friary Walk but fail only across the road from the development.

Spocker

Yeah, I think theres going to be an info evening sometime soon Security, Installation, stuff like that...

Might trot along and see if anyone needs some help....

Cabaal

Spocker wrote:

Yeah, I think theres going to be an info evening sometime soon Security, Installation, stuff like that...

Might trot along and see if anyone needs some help....

Its no harm, good for business in the town to be finally able to use broadband and good for home users too....no longer stuck in the 56k days.

Any idea if any of the schools have bothered to actually sign up to broadband and take IT seriously?
I believe either eircom or BT provide schools broadband for free or at a discount under some deal with the goverment.

Spocker

I dunno (I'm going by whats in the latest community newsletter); I assume not cause only the Friary is mentioned as being broadband enabled...

Ponster

Here are their original forums :

http://www.tipperarywan.org/forums/

When you ping www.ucd.ie from Clonmel you pass through 8 private routers 10.10.*.* before you arive on the Smart Telecom backbone and at the moment the 4th hop is looking shaky and is losing a lot of packets so online gaming isn't their main aim for the moment.

Cabaal

Spocker wrote:

I dunno (I'm going by whats in the latest community newsletter); I assume not cause only the Friary is mentioned as being broadband enabled...

Not a total surprise their , such a shame really that they won't provide a decent IT setup in the schools.

I'm betting that the girls secondary will get their first when/if they do decide to go about getting broadband.

Ponster

JimmyL wrote:

Another bump!

Thinking of signing up but noticed no p2p! Is that true? Apart from that what is the service like?

Any other info would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Nope, no P2P allowed. It's not a matter of ports being closed or traffic chaping but if they see the traffic they'll limit your download speed to something worthless and only put it back at your request. It's not the waerz so much as the upstream traffic.

FTP for example seems to be fine with them.

get27

ive been with them since jan of this year and everything was just lovley, living in a place where BB was not available a long long time, but with the last 2 months everything has gone pete tong,i might as well be on dial up 24/7!.I seem to be connected at 256K even though i'm paying for 512K,latley they seem to have blocked all ports, FTP which they said was ok unlike P2P, maybe its my comp but id dought it, BRING ON EIRCOM, "expensive" but its proper.

Lanfear

We have just signed up to Premier and so far have found them to be fantastic.

We moved 6 weeks ago from Dublin and had ordered Magnet 2 weeks prior to that after extensive investigations into broadband options. Eircom had failed the line test for broadband, and Magnet assured me they could supply a super duper ADSL2+ connection to us, a package including phone and tv as well as 3/4 MB broadband. To cut a long and tortuous story short, they couldn't. :eek: This was after daily phone calls, a visit (finally) from an engineer (who was a very nice chap), and promises galore. So we have had no tv, phone OR internet since we moved.

Further investigations and a site visit from IBB which said we failed their line or sight test and I was becoming frantic. Visiting friends to do my online banking and check my mails was heading me towards becoming a social pariah.

My brother phoned me last Friday with the name of Premier Broadband, and I gave them a ring. The guy called out THAT EVENING, and did a line of sight test, which PASSED I could hardly believe how helpful he was, and lo and behold, he could also install Sky for us! He called back on Monday and did the installation, and got broadband AND TV working.

This is the best service I have ever received from an ISP, I have used Eircom, Esat and UTVs broadband packages in Dublin.

The MAN is to be hooked up to our local transmitter in 3 weeks and we will have the option of whatever speeds we want (can afford!!). At the moment we have 1MB which is 39 per month - the installation was 99, well worth it to get online again, have been updating all software on 2 pcs, and downloading lots without a problem so heres one happy Premier customer!

get27

i think we are on about 2 different isp's lanfear, id say your on about premier BB.ie, Premier BB.net which i have offer 1mb lines for 79 euro a month!
But at last everything seems to be ok again, gettin dissconnect abit but not as much, dwnloading at 60K th hole time, still cant really play games though.

Lanfear

get27 wrote:

i think we are on about 2 different isp's lanfear, id say your on about premier BB.ie, Premier BB.net which i have offer 1mb lines for 79 euro a month!
But at last everything seems to be ok again, gettin dissconnect abit but not as much, dwnloading at 60K th hole time, still cant really play games though.

Possibly, get27, although it seems odd that two companies would have the same name?

IMHO, wireless is not really suitable for playing games online - the upload speed is one problem (far too low), as are things like quality of service, round trip time and max pause - check out irishisptest.com to see what sort of service you are getting.

Since moving, I haven't even bothered to try and play online, as I know how annoying it was if you have someone with a slow connection on your team - it just wrecks it for everyone else.

Spocker

Lanfear wrote:

Possibly, get27, although it seems odd that two companies would have the same name?

http://www.premierbb.ie is the site of a company called Premier Broadband Limited based in teh 0502 area (Portlaoise/Abbeyleix) but http://www.premierbroadband.net is the site for a company called Premier Community Broadband Services Ltd. based in Clonmel...

The same but different...;)