I was until the end of January a customer of
IBB's Breeze 2MB "service". Due to a combination of good luck and high-quality negatives, I now spend about 3 weeks out of 4 working in Barcelona and 1 back "home" in Cork (in theory, anyway.)
I've posted here before about my
IBB speeds (I did a sample SpeedTest every day for a month), and the download speeds were complete pants, never rising about 500k, averaging 200k, and more than 8 days out of 30 of sub 56k levels. As detailed elsewhere, no emails were ever responded to, and I just didn't have the time to waste waiting for them to answer the phone (8 calls, varying on-hold durations from 20 minutes to 45 minutes.) Obviously, spending 600 euro a year for this rankled, so when I moved, I arranged to cancel my service at the end of January. Since I wasn't going to be there to let them remove the aerial, I removed it myself and returned it to their Cork office up by the airport (getting receipt, etc.)
The feeling of being shot of these incompetent shower-o-hoors is great, you won't regret it!! Alas one month later, they're still taking 48.40 a month direct debit, so I spent another 25 minutes on hold today sorting that out. More next month, no doubt.
As an example of how things work in countries with non-third-world telecoms infrastructure (and Spain only just qualifies), I pay E38 inc VAT for ya.com ADSL 2+ 20Mb down / 512kb up + free calls, etc. etc. It's one of the more expensive services, but had the best reviews. The most I've seen is 8 Mb down, but I've gotten over 6 Mb to IrishISPTest fairly often. The supreme irony - I was getting 10 times more speed from Barcelona to Dublin than I got from Cork to Dublin with that completely useless shower
IBB (which I'm reliably informed stands for "I've Been Buggered.")
The service has been down only one day in over 4 months now (touch wood), and ya.com seem to will credit you for their downtime -- if you phone them. Then there's the weather :-)
So now I'm looking for something for the 1 week in 4 that I'm in Cork. I don't have a landline (I did have BT Broadband back in 2004, but my line went from being ADSL-compliant to voice-only overnight, and neither BT nor EirCon could figure out what was going on, each blaming the other.)
So that leaves me with DigiWeb - kind of expensive for the usage I'd be getting out of it - or (oh God no) RipWave; I could afford the 19 quid a month for the 1 week's worth of use... Is it any good? Does Cheap mean Nasty? I'm in the Sundays Well/Shaky Bridge area of Cork city if there are any RipWave users in the area with experience to share. Or indeed any wireless ISP...
Any other suggestions for wireless ISPs? Or maybe my best bet is to knock on neighbour's doors asking if they're online and would they mind if I just...
Sorry for rambling on, and ta muchly for any suggestions...