{"id":10262,"date":"2010-01-12T09:51:20","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T09:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=10262"},"modified":"2010-01-12T09:51:20","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T09:51:20","slug":"how-bad-is-vodafone-ireland-home-broadband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=10262","title":{"rendered":"How Bad Is Vodafone Ireland Home Broadband?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very.\u00a0 Awful.\u00a0 A disaster.\u00a0 I regret ever switching to them and am counting the days to the end of my contract when I can switch to someone else.<\/p>\n

Broadband is critical to me because I work from home.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had no problems with performance before now.\u00a0 I switched from a 3MB ADSL line with BT Ireland to a 7MB ADSL line with Vodafone Ireland.\u00a0 For you non Irish people, that sounds pathetic.\u00a0 It is.\u00a0 We live in an IT stone-age in this country and it is far from the \u201cdigital hub\u00a0 of Europe\u201d that politicians like to claim.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t I switch to a business service?\u00a0 Because they cost a FORTUNE.\u00a0 Your 30MB broadband connection is probably cheaper than my 7MB one.<\/p>\n

It started of with a brutal purchase process where I had to gain attention from online rants to get marketing people to come in and save their reputation.\u00a0 Customer \u201ccare\u201d failed to resolve the issue so I had to go nuclear.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the daily outages.\u00a0 Vodafone sets the DHCP address scope for your router\u2019s external interface to have a maximum life of 24 hours.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t a smooth renewal process like normal DHCP.\u00a0 Oh no!\u00a0 Instead your router loses communications with the Internet for 3-5 minutes.\u00a0 I\u2019ve usually found this happens when I\u2019m in the middle of an RDP session doing some sensitive administration task on a server or when I\u2019m in the middle on an online form with a session timeout.\u00a0 Vodafone\u2019s line on this is \u2026 most ISP\u2019s do this and it\u2019s perfectly OK.\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 No other ISP I\u2019ve been with has done this.\u00a0 And no it\u2019s not OK in a time when we\u2019re trying to promote home\/remote working.\u00a0 Their other line is that most people turn their routers off at night.\u00a0 No they don\u2019t, you filthy liars.<\/p>\n

When you go from a 3MB to a 7 MB connection you expect a performance increase.\u00a0 I know there\u2019s contention to consider but \u2026 I\u2019ll explain.\u00a0 When I got the service I ran some speed tests.\u00a0 I got 6MB out of my 7MB line.\u00a0 OK, it\u2019s ADSL.\u00a0 Downloads from Microsoft were nice and fast.\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 But web browsing \u2013 oh does it suck.\u00a0 And it\u2019s completely random.<\/p>\n

I follow the NFL.\u00a0 Sports pages have plenty of images.\u00a0 On my 3MB BT Ireland line the pages downloaded fast.\u00a0 On my 7MB Vodafone line they are painfully slow to download \u2026 often taking 30 seconds.\u00a0 I\u2019d expect that from dial-up.\u00a0 I recently signed up to go to a conference in the States.\u00a0 I had to do the ESTA online process for the visa waiver and the page wouldn\u2019t load.\u00a0 Friends could get to the page but I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I ended up changing the router, changing DNS and eventually doing it via RDP and our data centre at work where I could access the page with no problems.<\/p>\n

I called up Vodafone Ireland Customer \u201cCare\u201d.\u00a0 The muppet there refused to escalate the call.\u00a0 His little menu only told him to reset router (done), change DNS (done), change router (done).\u00a0 I used multiple PC\u2019s.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t even understand the problem because his fragile little mind was just too weak.\u00a0 I went online and targeted @VodafoneIreland on Twitter.\u00a0 I was promised a callback.\u00a0 I got a call at 15:00 on a Friday.\u00a0 That person said an engineer would call me at 18:00 to investigate.\u00a0 1 week later and no call back.\u00a0 I targeted Twitter again.\u00a0 Eventually a call came to investigate but for some reason I was able to get on the ESTA site now.\u00a0 Hmm.<\/p>\n

Last night I had a 90 minute outage.\u00a0 OK, outages happen.\u00a0 Of course, I would expect not to be charged for that 90 minutes.\u00a0 I had no service when I needed it.\u00a0 They failed to provide service so I should not be billed for it.<\/p>\n

Afterwards I decided to go onto the Vodafone Ireland Online forum.\u00a0 It was time to see what others were experiencing.\u00a0 It appears I\u2019m far from alone from the rubbish experience.\u00a0 Lots of people are complaining.\u00a0 I decided I would try to sign onto this forum and join in on the fun to vent my spleen too.\u00a0 A funny thing happened \u2013 the sign-in and registration pages weren\u2019t responding.\u00a0 Maybe it was my \u201ccan\u2019t load some pages issue\u201d?\u00a0 I waited until this morning and tried again.\u00a0 The forum wasn\u2019t even loading now.\u00a0 Maybe my problem was getting worse?\u00a0 Now I tried an anonymous proxy because that would bypass the random Vodafone Ireland broadband pages not loading issue.\u00a0 No response.\u00a0 Could it be that Vodafone Ireland pulled the site to prevent people from complaining?<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my advice to people:<\/p>\n