Author: Padraig Fahy

Today (7th February 2013), Sky announced the launch of it’s Irish version of their Broadband.

Just like every other ISP in the country. Buying off Eircom/UPC and reselling it. That’s the way it has been for the longest time.

Sky are trying to give us what we can get on the line (They claim ‘up to 24Mbs’). I thought “Brilliant. Now I can get REAL speeds and actually use what’s on the line”.

So, I went ahead and tested the line with their “tool” and found out that I can receive a reasonable 14.4Mbs. That’s about 2x MORE than what I have been getting from Eircom and Vodafone for the past couple of years!.

Eircom and Vodafone always says ‘Up to 8Mbs’ because of what’s on the line.

Now, I know that regulations are in place for Reason X, Y and Z but COME ON! There is 14Mbs available on that line and all you can do is provide 8!

Why not either do 1 of 2 things:
1) Give us at least 10MBS guaranteed with the other 4MBS being used for Upload! (Hah, like that will ever happen)
2) 8MBS download (like what has been given to us), but with more upload speed. I can’t believe that we are hungry for upload. Not to upload illegal content or anything (I don’t upload illegal content at all…), but for syncing services like DropBox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Mega. ANYTHING!

(Gahh, I have started ranting about upload speeds……..here we go)

I live with my parents and there is 2 “main” users of the internet on a daily basis. Myself and my father.

My dad does internet stuff and some college work, so he uses DropBox to backup everything and to easily submit assignments and that to his tutors. All well and good. Oh and he uses Skype too! So what happens, when he is browsing Facebook, Syncing documents on DropBox and using Skype at the same time…No bandwidth for Padraig.

Now, I am the power user in the family (Surprise Surprise) and I use services like Steam, Origin, Razer Synapse (for the Keyboard), Outlook and other tools that use bandwidth. And I also love playing games.

Let me take a example shall we. I was playing Team Fortress 2 one night and I was happy as a pig in shite. While playing away, I notice my ping jumps from 60ms~ to about 600ms~ and me jumping around the place like a headless chicken.

When I took my headset off to go and reset the router, I could hear my dad in the next room talking to Skype, so I had to disconnect from the game and went to talk with friends on TeamSpeak. NOPE! That wasn’t going to happen. Because there wasn’t enough of bandwidth on the connection to output to the internet, everything lagged and then the network crapped itself.

So, where and I getting at here! Irish broadband NEEDS more upload to accompany more than one service. 0.5Mbs is NOT going to cut it anymore. We have moved on from the days of IRC as a main way of communication. We are now using Smartphones, laptops, computers, tablets that all use the internet for outputting information and we just don’t have the upload bandwidth to keep everything working.

Sky, is not going to be doing anything different. FTTC is probably (but not) going to solve this. I don’t think the whole FTTC is actually going to work. Our infrastructure is so messed up, that it will be 2030 before we will get faster internet!

Will this blog post change anything that happens with our broadband? Of course it won’t. ISP’s don’t listen to the “hardcore” users and don’t give 2 monkeys about what we think. All they care about is that they get money so they can provide the shittest internet in all of Europe.

TL;DR – Irish Internet Sucks and always will be and no ISP can ever change that! Nothing has been done before about it and it looks like nothing is going to be done about it now.

/rant

So, yesterday, I was about to order my Dell Inspiron 15″ that was on Clearance for €379 which I thought it was a pretty good price for the spec given.

On Monday night, I checked to make sure that the product was still there. It was.

When I got home on Tuesday (after placing money in the bank), I proceeded to go to dell.ie and purchase the laptop. OMG! It wasn’t there anymore.

So, I rang Dell and asked about said laptop and they said that it was off the market and that he would talk to the Finance dept. to see what would be the best deal for me.

After a few mins, the guy got back to me saying that the laptop could be got for €380. While he was explaining the specs of the machine. The call dropped T_T

I immediatly rang back trying to get the Indian guy who I was talking to. I didn’t get his name, so I couldn’t get back to him. I was put through to some Indian Woman, who told me that it was impossible to get me the laptop in question for the €380 that I was quoted by the previous sales person.

After about 10 mins being on the phone to this woman, she wasn’t having any of it and she started quoting me laptops at all different prices and specs. I just gave up with Dell.

I went to dabs.ie and bought a Toshiba Satellite C850 with very similar specs for about €380 to the door.

I was hoping that I could have been a new Dell customer, but hey, if they want to change the site every few days, fine by me….

Anyway, I have a new laptop coming next Monday, so I am happy enough in the end 🙂