Skytel Broadband

[Daragh_OBrien]

Hi,

Is anyone else using Skytel Broadband in Wexford (off Forth Mountain, I'm in Castlebridge). I am with them and have found their service increasingly patchy. The connection speed is well below the 2MB synchronous I would expect, with uploads slower than dial-up at times.

The service was excellent when I got it first but has degraded. A few weeks back I got a call from them re: my antenna 'switching itself off' - they were to call me back about it (I was away at the time) but nothing since (and I've been too busy to follow up myself).

The best diagnosis I've gotten from them re: my service issues is that there are trees in the way - but surely if the LOS was blocked it wouldn't be blocked intermittently, and it certainly wouldn't be coming on and off at certain times - I find I tend to loose connection during working hours and get it back on Saturday afternoons or in the wee small hours of the morning.

They were very good but seem to have lost the customer service (and connectivity) that they had previously.

Are there any other reliable providers servicing the Castlebridge area who I might be able to switch to? I need the service to work via VPN from home and to connect back into my home network via a VPN solution when working away from home (or just on holidays ;-) ).

Not interested in P2P too much, except Skype.

[Trigger]

Maybe you should try Permanet?
I'm using Skytel too and it started out great but lately its been slow.

[Daragh_OBrien]

thanks for the reply trigger. Glad to hear I'm not alone. I was getting paranoid. ;-)

I'd looked at Permanet before but perhaps I'll have to take another gander... have just done and their service seems to be quite competitive. Maybe they'll take away the two other WIFI antennae I have on the roof already (Skytel was my second attempt with local providers).

Do permanet work off of Forth Mountain as well (logical given line of sight) or do they have other base stations in the area?

Actually got 1.3mb download from Skytel on Saturday afternoon. Upload was only 64k though.Then it died completely from Sunday. Pity I'm paying the guts of €60 for a 2MB connection.

[Trigger]

Originally Posted by Daragh_OBrien

thanks for the reply trigger. Glad to hear I'm not alone. I was getting paranoid. ;-)

I'd looked at Permanet before but perhaps I'll have to take another gander... have just done and their service seems to be quite competitive. Maybe they'll take away the two other WIFI antennae I have on the roof already (Skytel was my second attempt with local providers).

Do permanet work off of Forth Mountain as well (logical given line of sight) or do they have other base stations in the area?

Actually got 1.3mb download from Skytel on Saturday afternoon. Upload was only 64k though.Then it died completely from Sunday. Pity I'm paying the guts of €60 for a 2MB connection.

On the speed tests on this website it says I'm getting around 2.67mbps but anytime I download something it is usually around 90-140kbps. I'm happy with it mostly though, I still wouldn't go back to dial-up.

I don't know if Permanet work off of Forth Mountain. I'm paying for the 1mb connection. I haven't had really any major problems with my service lately but I had to call them to get a fixed IP address as I couldn't get a connection.

Quick question, when you payed the first monthly fee and the connection fee, did they(Skytel) take it out right away or did they wait a while? They haven't taken the 160(installation and monthly fee) out of my mother's account yet.

[Daragh_OBrien]

Trigger,

To be honest I've found their Direct debit to be as erratic as their service. For example they took less than EUR 30 from my bank account this month, even though I'm set up on 2MB which should be 59 lids a month.

Perhaps they are only charging me for days when the service works

However if they aren't keeping an eye on the money side of the business I'd be concerned that they might not have an eye on contention issues - I saw one post here about Skytel where the guy had worked out his contention ratio on a 14:1 advertised contention was actually nearer 24:1 (which would make sense in my context).

I'd suggest phoning them and asking them to confirm that they've taken the money. they will appear on a bank statement with the wonderfully cryptic reference "nnnnnn DD" , where nnnnn is your account number on the first invoice they would have sent you.

I'm looking into permanet a bit more closely now... if only to have a back up plan.

Interesting you had to get a Fixed IP as well - that was the first step I had to take with them to get the connection working as there was another operator in the castlebridge area who seemed to be interfering with their service (or so they said). Fixed IP suited me better anyway.