I got Irish Broadband because I fought for 2 and half months with Eircom to get an ADSL connection.
For all this time, they weren't able to tell me why the phone cables weren't able to support the higher frequencies of the ADSL (compared to voice calls frequencies).
I fought claws and fangs, tried every departments, even internal lines, pretty much everyday for 2 months, and all the answer I was given each time was "It is not a guaranteed service and we are not obliged to provide phone lines that support ADSL".
The problem in this country (and many others), is that as long as you reserve yourself the right to display a disclaimer in tiny prints at the bottom of an agreement, you can do whatever you want. This is a joke (and the issue is not only about Eircom here).
But I ask you (the same as I asked them a hundred times) : if the quality of my phone line is so bad that I cannot get the services that my neighbour avails of, is it normal that I pay the same monthly recurrent charges as my neighbour for the line rental ? Anyway, my landlord, (who works in Eircom as a the person who maintains and monitors the quality of service of their public webservers) got in touch internally with the product manager for Eircom residential ADSL and after being sort of brushed off several times was discouraged with getting their service, and agreed to order Irish Broadband Breeze 2MB (the standard package , no the "lite" one).
After a little waiting of almost 4-5 weeks because the order paperwork had been misfiled or something, I had an installation team at home (3 days ago), very kind, who seemed professional enough installing the antenna.
These are pretty much my first days, but at (late) night time I'm getting an average of 1700 kilobits per second downstream and 1900 kilobits per second upstream.
In day time, it's not that good though, I get away with a very variable speed of 900 to 1500 kbps downstream.I usually get much more upstream speed than downstream speed, at times even 2300 kbps. I am not going to complain about the upstream, it's absolutely excellent to me, since 1/ they advertise 2000 kbps, 2/ i also take into account the TCP/ATM packets overhead (8-13% ?), 3/ I need a lot of upload for my web and FTP home servers.
Also i drop a few packets, and sometimes the whole connection goes dead (around 2-3 times a day) and then comes back after a minute or two, but i think that this is more likely due to : a) my bad quality WiFi LAN adapters, b) the fact that i do not have the optimal drivers for my WiFi LAN adapters, c) denied attacks on my router-firewall ?, d) a weak signal due to the layout of my house and the positionning of the different network nodes.
For information, I am in Dublin, I connect to the Ballymun access point tower. There is a new mast in Botanic in my direct line of sight, just a few meters away, that gives me a much stronger signal, but unfortunately, the technician said it was still in testing, he called his colleagues to see if he could connect me on it still, but they didn't know the information. Question : Once you're hooked to an access point, can you request to Irish Broadband to hook you up with an other one later on ? Has anyone ever done it ?
Anyway, overall I'm not complaining, I just wish the downstream speed was a bit more consistent. About their services, I have never called the technical support yet, so i can not pronounce myself on their service, but I know that the installation team, was kind, professional and seemed competent enough; the two sale people that I have the direct line of are very nice as well and most of all very reliable. Each time they said they would do something, they did it very promptly. And everytime I left them a message on their answering machine, they always called back 5 to 10 minutes later. I have never experienced this with Eircom people (even if I made them promise 4 times in the conversation to call me back within 2 days to let me know about the status of my request - even if it's to tell me that they still don't have any info - and I find this very refreshing and pleasant.
In summary, I am happy about the interaction I had with Irish broadband people (even though a small mistake has been made in the order) and I am almost satisfied on a technical basis (but I will have to follow this because it can change at anytime).
PS: I am originally french and I just called my brother in Paris to brag about my connection. He laughed at me saying that now, providers there offer 8MB/s packages for just 29.99 euros, including free and unlimited voice over IP and digital TV and for a contention ratio of none to 8:1 (for info the breeze 2M/s package is around 50 euros with a contention ratio of 24:1 and likely to increase soon). You can explain this easily if you know that France Telecom/Orange (national historically public phone operator, equivalent to Eircom here) had to degroup its backbone about 6-7 years ago, if my memory serves, and here it's just recent... But still, times have changed since I left Paris, lol ....
IBB ... Whats it all about really............. 
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