Regional Broadband speeds? advice?

[sally1]

Hello

I got regional broadband (wireless / apparently government subsidies help with the costs) installed earlier this month in north Wicklow, and sometimes it seems like ages for pages to download. I paid for a 2 meg download 1 meg upload connection on a contention ratio of 30:1. Here is my average result:

138 kbps (18 KB/s) 63kbps (8KB/s) 44 % 331 ms 1646 ms

I contacted my provider and he explained that my 2 meg connection can possibly be cut thirty ways, if everybody is using their computers at any one given time; but that would drag my download down to 66kbps, which is practically dial-up speeds. I did a test at 2:15 in the morning, which is obviously off peak, but my download speed was still only 154kbps. Surely there isn't 13 people leaving their computers on all night downloading. Crikey!! I am paying 50 euro a month for this!!

I am new to this, so can somebody please give me some advice? My provider says that their contention ratio is better than average, but another member on this forum has posted downloads of 1700kbps on a 2 meg download. But thats 12 times my speed, how is this possible? is his contention ratio 1:1? I can't imagine he's paying over 600 euro a month for it. What is the norm I should be expecting? Many Thanks.

[zosimus]

Hi, like yourself I am often amazed with the huge difference in speed's between people on the same basic package, even on tests taken at a quiet time. I am on 2 Meg UTV in Cork City. Check speed during the day & (touch wood!) speed seems to be pretty consistent. Average of last 10 tests is

210 Kbs 24 Kbs 99% 31 m/s 140 m/s

PC is an old P3 nearly 6 years old & using ZYXEL P630 USB Modem

regards John

[raymoll]

Got regional a few weeks back too, same story and same response from the nice man at Regional. I find is suspect to think that 30 of us in north wicklow all use up the internet to our max capacity at the very same time.

Instead I think they use good software to ensure we all get an average experience most of the time at least cost to them.

Its frustrating the stance they take on this, but until there is more competition and choice there is not much we can do but go along with this. Being a comunity scheme I expected it to be less comercial, but Regional seem to be very by the book in their responses to my slow speeds.

[sally1]

Thanks for the comments,

I've been digging around for information on my/our problem and it seems that Comreg likes to hand out licenses for providers like smarties , yet when a consumer has a complaint against one of these cowboys it throws up its hands and says it can't help you. I pulled this response they gave to a complainant from another board regarding problems with IBB:

At the retail end, we can act as mediator only, to ensure an Operator
provides a customer with a response. Irish Broadband has provided you
with a response, and even if you are unhappy with that, it is a
contractual matter and we have no remit over contractual matters. If
you signed up for a service, and claim you are not getting that service
as per the terms of the contract, we are unable to direct Irish
Broadband in any way. We are not in a position to take this matter any
further so if you wish to pursue this, you may wish to seek legal
advice.

So basically that reads to me as ' tough $#it buddy, not my problem'.

Mary Harney's comments about customers shopping around come to mind!

I'm still getting the same speeds (or worse)with Regional as posted above even though I work odd hours and check the speeds at all sorts of times.
So I'm concluding that Raymoll's suggestion about sneaky pieces of software is correct or that North Wicklow suffers from a serious addiction to broadband and insomnia. Does anybody know anything more about this software? Like what's it called, is there regulations against its use? I'd like to hit Comreg over the head with it. I'm sick of people trying to wipe my eye.

Many thanks

[i_gothere]

Originally Posted by zosimus

Hi, like yourself I am often amazed with the huge difference in speed's between people on the same basic package, even on tests taken at a quiet time. I am on 2 Meg UTV in Cork City. Check speed during the day & (touch wood!) speed seems to be pretty consistent. Average of last 10 tests is

210 Kbs 24 Kbs 99% 31 m/s 140 m/s

PC is an old P3 nearly 6 years old & using ZYXEL P630 USB Modem

regards John

I'm currently with UTV (well for next few weeks until I move to Kilworth (arghhhh)); and I've found the most frustrating thing with that same modem is that when it gets warm, it stops working right. I have had the luck of borrowing (temporarily, sadly) a friend's personal adsl modem for a few nights, and found a dramatic change in performance. Might be coincidence though; but highly visible issue when you're mid-game and get disconnected 4 times in the space of 10 minutes