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IRISH BROADBAND USERS are being routinely delivered slower internet connections than they are advertised, according to an official EU report.
A pan-continental study released by the European Commission has shown that the average Irish broadband connection offers download speeds that are only 84.7 per cent of the capacity a customer is actually paying for.
In terms of the actual speed versus the one advertised, this is the fifth-worst record of any of the EU member states.
Upload speeds are even worse, and average at only 72.5 per cent – the third-worst of any member state.
Ireland’s broadband connections also take longer to open popular websites during peak hours – with only one country, Cyprus, having a slightly longer wait.
Irish users connecting to Google, Facebook and YouTube had to want an average of 2.24 seconds for the pages to finish loading – even though those web companies make heavy use of Irish data centres, which should mean a quicker connection.
By comparison, users in the Netherlands waited only 1.05 seconds for the same pages to load.
The survey also found that Irish connections had the second-highest ‘jitter’ – where connections are subject to momentary lapses so that data speeds are inconsistent.
This means Irish users have slightly more difficulty in using voice-over-internet services like Skype. Only Italy has a higher jitter rate.
The data is not entirely negative, however: it showed that Ireland is slightly below the EU average in terms of packet loss – the rate at which small pieces of data are lost somewhere during a connection, corrupting the data being transferred.
Ireland also performed well in DNS failure rates, meaning it was relatively rare for a person’s broadband connection to have trouble identifying how exactly it should connect to the desired website.
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Eircom the worst culprits for false advertising.
The fact that up until recently they were marketing 8MB broadband as “next-gen” really shows their incompetence and ignorance.
Meanwhile South Korea is close to 1GB broadband
…not to mention semi-state style arrogance.
And at 50 a month too…ridiculous
Line rental alone is stupid, even if you don’t use it once. I told them to go away. Now use blueface and a local Internet provider.
Alan: Korea? Look closer :) 1 Gb/s and symmetric Internet in Poland for approx 40 Eur a month.
That maybe true but they also have North Korea to contend with so it evens out.
Cablewatch is by far the worst. Advertise 10mb get less than 1 and never more than 2mb. Went to comreg and they weren’t interested. Useless
fizi I was not aware of that thanks for the info :)
Google fibre is already there.
Shane: not google fibre, just local cable provider. Another implant called Dialog run 1 Gb connection for residential customers in Poland already back in 2010. Of course availability was and is quite limited to certain areas in large cities, but still impressive. I’d imagine countries like Sweden or Germany must have even better if not same technology then :)
Implant = company. Sorry.
Yeah and rumour has it those bankers were using eircom phone lines to ring each other. Collusion!!!
Next gen 8mb really means next gen 0.9 mb, thiefs
This page took forever to load.
Try living in the countryside. My average speed is about 300Kbps…
I’m in dublin and I’m not that far off it at the folks house. 500Kb
Advertising “Up to X Mb” needs to be banned – only allowing “speeds of at least X Mb” or “Guaranteed X Mb” (think latter is UPC’s method) would solve the problem.
UPC tells me I can get “up to 50MB” with my broadband package. It usually hovers in or around the 30MB mark and I’ve never once seen it over 35. Talk about misleading.
If they’re going to use the old “Up to X Mb” there should be a compulsory addon that they must by law deliver at least a minimum of that at all times or the provider pay the user. Now what’s the chances of that?
Had a quick look – seems you are right about UPC – my mistake!
Paul, are you connected to your modem using wifi? If so, that could be your bottleneck (unless both router and client are n rather than g).
It’s usually a wifi connection. On occasion I’ve connected my laptop directly just to test the speed. That’s when I’ve gotten 35MB.
35mB is nothing to be sniffed at.
I’m perfectly happy getting 35MB but when I’m told I can get up to 50MB I can’t help feeling ripped off. How can they say “up to 50MB”? Surely “Around 35MB, but usually 30MB” is more accurate.
Have u tried another device?ever thought its not upc but ur laptop???
UPC increased my BB from 60M to 100M last month. Two separate tests both show 100m (one was 102). But if connected by wifi drops to 75 to 80.
Paul change servers on speedtest.net and you see differences all the time and do ensure you’re wired to router to test
I’m shocked! I cannot believe any Irish business would deceive their customers! What next? The banks can’t be trusted or politicians are liars?
Ireland where it doesn’t do what it says on the tin
Chancers, the lot of ‘em!!
Most Irish broadband users don’t understand these numbers but know there being ripped off and overcharged. It’s just part of life in this country.
Very true, the think the bigger the number the faster the connection without understanding contention, bandwith etc.
I think the law in Ireland is that providers only have to advertise maximum obtainable bandwidth. Always look at the contention ration when choosing a connection, if its 20MB/s at 20:1 you’re effectively sharing the 20MB with 19 other users! Lower the contention the better!
My latest speedtest for eircom gave me 2.6Mbps, it’s a disgrace how bad they are. You would think in this day and age we should have much better speeds than that.
I was only getting 1-2 at most from Eiecom. Slightly better than dial up
Shane is that a test on a 3 meg package or 8meg package?
You would get a better service on a piece of wet string …. No wonder company’s don’t want to be here when a racing pigeon is faster than there connection speed.
There is laws coming in by 2016 to top false advertising from these companies and this also applies to data caps, thank god.
Signed up wit Eircon last week for 8 mb, all that’s available where I live, received the router yest, 1.8 mb, wtf?! My dad lives next door and can get 8 off the same line!!??
Em when you say next door, how far away is next door? if its more than 30 mtrs away forget my suggestion.
But if its within that distance you could grab a pair of WiFi repeaters. My setup is i have one wifi repeater in my house bouncing on my signal to a neighbour whos is 30mtrs away, They have a second repeater in their house sucking in my signal and bouncing it out to the rest of this house.
My broadband is an 8 meg package – My tests usually come in around 7.5ish and my neighbours after the setup is around 7ish. Of course we share the bill ;-)
These are the repeaters i’m using. They were €50 each last year, but probably around €40 now
http://www.versusuk.com/products/downloads/WiFi%20Repeater%20Manual.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhlfkGYoshw
It’s about 200 mtrs away.. But I was living in a mobile home on site and ran a cat6 from his router to my own and had 7mb, the irony being, now I live in a house with my own line I get 1.7mb?!
Crazy stuff
Ah shi*e. Another solution so, This is what i’d to do myself to better my broadband connection, Order a new line, Usually free through eircom, when ordering tell them its for broadband. You have a month to say you either want to keep the line or not. Ok, you lose your old phone number but you will fix the problem.
If you are lucky enough when eircom come out to install the new line they might (just might) have a go at fixing your existing line, that way you wont lose your old number and you wont need the new install.
This is advice from a guy who has had to deal with broadband problems from clients around the country for the last 13 years. Basically I know my stuff when it comes to phoneline bband connections. i dont know much else though..
they all must be with eircom service is atrocious.
Lest we forget, this is the result of the state-owned telecoms infrastructure being handed over (by FF) to short-term profit driven speculators. Anyone remember that photo of Mary O’Rourke at the NYSE?
Don’t you just love the efficiencies of private enterprise!
It’s the mobile networks who annoy me when they advertise “All you can eat data” or “unlimited data” when in fact it’s neither all you can eat nor unlimited. I used to be with Vodafone who advertised “unlimited data” which in fact was 250mb per month, I moved to 3, who advertise “all you can eat data” then cap you at 15gb, which is better but still not “all you can eat” they don’t tell you when you have exceeded the limit so you end up paying something like €1 per mb when you do. I have been badly stung by Vodafone, loosing €70 credit in one day.
Why are these companies allowed get away such false advertising? I know there is fair usage and all that but unlimited does mean unlimited not 250mb.
The reason I left Vodafone was because two bloatware apps used to kick in when I reached my limit, meaning what credit I had dissapeared in no time. I complained to customer service about this, they ended up giving me the unlock code for my phone way before they should have as I said I was calling Joe Duffy. You have to love Joe Duffy sometimes :-) only sometimes though..
150 Mb UPC 24/7. Never fails.
Good but I’ve seen faster, not in Ireland though :)
You’ve entirely missed the point! Have you ever speed tested and if so what’s speeds are you actually achieving?
Mist likely you’ll pull an average of 25MB on the UPC lines, regardless of what bundle you pay for.
I have UPC 30 meg and speedtest.net comes back with 30 every time I test it. Of course real life downloads vary as its not just me that counts, but also speed of those who I am downloading from. Either way I am getting what I pay for. I haven’t tried faster packages like 50 or 100 meg as I don’t need it, 30 is hurricane already.
Can anyone tell me what’s the best upload speeds that you can get on UPC?
Chief: in their fastest package it’s 10 Mb for upload speed.
Nice, Thanks fizi
Except geographically..
I have 150mb with UPC and i consistently get up to 159mb on cabled connection, never a problem, i can get 92mb on Wi-Fi, that is normal as you wont get the full speed on Wi-Fi, its the best in ireland at the moment, if you are getting low speeds on Wi-Fi it could be the Wi-Fi card in your PC is not capable of running speeds that high, then you have a PC problem not a UPC problem
150mb download package gives an upload speeds of around 10.5mb if cable connected, and its consistent
i have 3 broadband one of the worst ever .when i call about it all i get is an foreginer~who cant speak english so sick of it
Just signed up to UPC fiber broadband 150 Mbps I have wireless laptop , iPad, PC, etc: I have done the speed test quite a few times.. And only get on average 8mbps even lower at peak times.. Call them and they checked it out and tell me it’s the pc,laptop,and wireless that are at fault if I plug into modem I may get 20mbps. When I was with eircom I was getting about 3/4 mb with an 8mbps deal. They tell me now that I’m liable for a charge if I cancel . Feel ripped off.
To stop, sorry.
With Eircom (being legally robbed) and thinking of switching to Sky (UPC not available where I live). Has anyone gone over to them yet?
**CK you Eircom. and 3 mobile broadband. your robbing, false advertising b4st4rds
I’m with eircom and we get 0.8 mb, if we’re lucky. 0.5 most of the time and that’s connected through ethernet cable. Considering that Waterford city is only 5 miles away, it’s a really terrible service.
I think the government should roll out fibre broadband like electricity was in the 50′s. short term outlay, long term improvement. The NBS doesn’t even cover our place!
It took me 4 hours to make this comment!!!!!!!!
I find 3 very good
I switched to Sky from Eircom and its far better. Saying that, we probably pay more in Ireland for crap broadband than any other European country.
just wondering…how is it better???
m.
Its a better deal. I saved €20 pm from switching. Broadband and landline bundled together. Also its a little faster than Eircom. I live in a rural area and eircoms signal was good whereas sky’s us excellent.
Easily the worst ISP in the entire country is Imagine. Thier Wimax is a perfect example of false advertising, just check out what customers are saying about them here http://ratemyisp.ie/ratings/imagine/
Legislation is a joke, it allows BB providers to mislead customers by saying “speeds up to xxxMb” it’s money for old rope, if pubs were allowed to operate like this you might pay for a pint but the publican could give you 10fl oz (1/2 pint), crazy .
We live a few miles outside a major town. A few years ago, Eircom rang us offering us broadband (I think they were offering 3Mb at the time), saying enthusiastically that it’s now available in our area.
There was a slight problem with this. Eircom hadn’t touched the cable running along our road in 20 years. Back in the days of dial-up, we were getting speeds of 36kb/s, and the line got so bad that we couldn’t hear anyone on the other end of the phone, so we got rid of our landline phone.
Best. Company. Ever.
Thank you Michael Lowry, for providing us with the optimal competitive infrastructure when we needed it most… ESAT – BT – O2 – 3 an Irish alchemy turning letters into numbers.
We can be grateful that a similar competitive structure will be in place once the water bills are in the post…
Bog Band the Irish equivalent to Broadband
I’m 2.3 k from local exchange.. Rural area.. Get 10.5 Meg.. Happy with it… Waiting for efibre, should get 40 Meg + !!
Me first!!
haha!! hi ferg!
Sure, it’s Ireland why would we expect anything else. We are routinely over charged, over taxed and lied to and we still put up with third world services, banana republic government, and the law to protect the rich and we’ll connected. We should be thankful that we are allowed to breath the air for free still. So long as it is good and fast in the Dail and Dublin (because we all know the whole world begins and ends there) us peasants in the rest of the country should be happy with carrier pigeons as far as they care. (The sarcasm wasn’t too subtle, was it?)
Con Reg are a Quango with no power. No interest in people’s problems just in big pensions and wages. They do nothing. They allow their friends to market their products which don’t deliver. Only in Ireland would a CEO survive in that position with their track record. The taxpayers help fund Eircom and now UPC charge the earth for a bog standard service. They have the ability to provide much faster speeds but will only roll it out yearly with increased payment. Robbery.
Lots of misunderstanding going on here…in general DOCSIS (cable) delivers what it says, if it doesn’t there’s a problem in the area or with the local cable.
DSL delivers an “upto” service with line attenuation (usually defined by distance) weakening the signal to your premises.
Mobile internet (not really broadband) is a shared medium, unlike the other two and the more people that connect to your cell site the slower the speed you will get sometimes even getting so bad as to get no connection at all (CDMA Cell breathing)
All of this is well trashed out on http://www.irelandoffline.org and our forums on boards.ie : http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?forumid=60
There are a number of experts on all these issues there…hope this helps
Funnily enough I’ve just had a phone call from someone stating they were from Eircom,duly informing me that our phone bills will be massive this month owing to a virus affecting download and upload usage.Then as he was about to tell me what they were doing about it,they were cut off! Hahah
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