Getting broadband from your mobile operator is a very tempting proposition as I have mentioned previously. It allows you to finally get rid of that landline you so rarely use (and pay a fortune in monthly charges for) and mobile broadband means you can take it with you when you travel – no more looking for wifi hotspots.
However, reading FrankP’s experience with 3 Ireland’s mobile broadband offering I think I’ll hold off on going the 3 Ireland route for mobile broadband for now.
I spoke to Frank this morning after reading his post and I asked him about the speed of the connection – he said:
1288 kbps right now
yesterday it was 504 kbps when I checked
10th it was 612 kbps / 1141
9th 334 kbps
8th from 30 to 70kbps
This is quite a bit different from the promise on the 3 Ireland Broadband page:
speeds of up to 3.6Mbps – smooth surfing guaranteed
Is Frank’s experience with 3 Ireland unique or have others had similar issues?
Paul Giltenan of Choice Communications has promised me a review O2 broadband modem to trial so I’m looking forward to seeing how that works. I wonder are O2 customers having similar problems – they are, after all, using the same Huawei usb modem.
And if this is a more general problem than 3 Ireland Mobile, should Comreg be getting involved? Of course we all know the telcos find Comreg about as intimidating as Bambi.
Why would ComReg even get involved?
3 say they are offering up to 3.6Mbps and that is what they are doing.
It’s fair crap here outside Ennis. At busy times of the day the speed is terrible for me, 30-40kbps and the lag is bad as well. Max I got is 1400kbps. It was completely goosed there last Friday and I rang them and they said they had network problems. They seem to be upgrading the network alright, before I had a UK IP everytime I connected, now it’s Irish.
Hi Tom,
(I work for one of the companies who is building the 3 Ireland ISP to speed things up :])
1. Comreg have nothing to do with it. If 3 guaranteed 3.6Mbps then they lied.
What they did guarantee is “smooth surfing” – which of course is marketing spin.
As to what Georgie’s comment, the reason it was goosed was because the switchover to the Irish hosted ISP was happening 🙂
After that, I can’t say very much..except, when all is working, it will be better than it was…
hth,
bernard
Hi Tom,
I have one, as I have no alternative where I live.
I must say I am generally happy with what I have. Yes, the throughput varies – but this happens with all cell-based mobile data connections.
I peaked at 2.8Mbps, and average somewhere between 90K and 300K – a darn sight better than dial-up.
Damien Mulley has a couple of threads going on at his site regarding Three and the 3G Broadband offerings.
rgds Dave
@Bernard – they promise speeds of up to 3.6mb as well as saying smooth surfing – has anyone ever achieved 3.6mb? if not, then this is misleading advertising surely.
By the way Bernard, when you say, “when all is working…” – any idea when that might be? Tomorrow?Next week? 2008?, 2019?
Forgot to add name details earlier.
– well I have no real idea about their advertising/marketing. I haven’t read their website in ages. Since I don’t work for them directly, I can’t really comment.
But that would seem like symantics to me. The other operators (also clients of ours) have similar wording on their ads, so I wouldn’t think this is directly a 3 issue.
– Tomorrow..no. Next week….potentially. From our scope the work that has been carried out has been successful.
The next step will be up to the client themselves.
Now the initial teething problems need to be corrected (packet flow mismatchs..dotting Ts crossing the Is :)) by 3.
Bandwidth for userplane data (mobile originated stuff) has been increased alot (almost 1G), and instead of being routed to the UK before going out to the Internet, it now peers to Irish ISPs, I guess thru INEX (don’t quote me on that!).
Dave’s success with download speeds probably lie in the possibility that he is the only customer on that particular Node using 3G data 🙂
hths
bernard
Got the 3 modem a few weeks ago and have been using it since. It’s not broadband, it’s barely above dial-up, but it is handy enough; or at least it was until last thursday in the UK when it stopped letting me read google mail and started complaining about tcp errors instead. Which was a bit annoying because I really needed email at that point. It’s still not letting me connect to gmail either.
However, for web browsing it’s not so bad. Useless for torrenting or youtube or anything like that, but for things like google reader, it’s not unusable.
Still going to drop it like a hot potato as soon as wired broadband becomes an option.
Hi Mark,
Excellent! Contact 3 about that error. I also had a problem doing an ftp transaction from a number of ftp servers (ftp.openbsd.org being one in particular).
I know about that gmail problem. I noticed that also. From what we have been told, its being fixed.
bernard
Hi Tom,
I’ve had a disastrous experience with 3 (and by looking at the sticky http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055115306 on boards, I’m far from the only one!). Not only is it incredibly slow – I frequently got 1% of the advertised speed – but it’s also utterly broken:
– I couldn’t access gmail,
– I could only access yahoo mail sporadically,
– I couldn’t use rsync (MacPorts relies on rsync to keep the port collection up to date),
– I couldn’t use subversion (the most commonly used source control system these days).
Most of these problems come from sockets timing out. I have contacted their Customer Support and got to talk to some really friendly people. None of them provided any help. Three are selling a service that they cannot provide. I strongly recommend people stay away from this service until Three get their act together.
I switched to O2 and so far I have been very happy with it. The speeds are once again far below what is advertised (although I did manage to get close on various occasions) but at least the service is working.
My main problem is that a lot of the time the modem won’t even mount… modem invalid is a common error message for me.
The speeds are certainly not at the higher end of what they advertise, but when I can get online at the moment, the speeds for browwsing are fine. I’ve downloaded a few files fine too.
But I keep getting modem invalid, and this constant mounting/dropping issue I don’t know. It’s REALLY annoying…
ps – I thought about switching to O2, but €40 a month?? Come on…
Frank,
isn’t O2 €30 a month if you have an O2 account? Could you move to them being your mobile provider?
Just to let you know, Today FM on 100-102FM are to interview Three on the current sad state of affairs on the Last Word tonight at about 6pm.
In terms of the mobile originated traffic increases that Bernard speaks of it would seem to me as a mobile broadband addon user that these increases are being achieved by stopping my streaming (can no longer stream from any source beyond Three since the upgrade) and by hosing FTP.
Well, before getting the datamodem I looked into which mobile operator I wanted to be with for my phone, and Vodafone won out… I don’t really want to open that can of worms all over again, just because their modem monthly charge is ridiculously overpriced…! 😀
Why is it cheaper for O2 customers? Is their a reason or is it a marketing gimmick?
But isn’t the data modem a seperate service even for O2 customers? Or did I misunderstand their offering (or for that matter triple play!)
Triple play would be the offering of more than one service (in “traditional services: voice, data, and tv).
Here I would wager the mobile operators want to get into the triple/multi play business of offering voice, data, and XXX..
(of course this is my personal opinion and not the opinion of someone who pays for my holidays 🙂 )
bernard
I still don’t get it, sorry! What’s the rationale to offering the broadband service cheaper to existing customers if it’s not just to get people to move to O2?
Where does triple play come into the pricing structure?
Also, isn’t triple play about the provision of three services over the one connection, and isn’t the data modem a seperate connection even for existing customers?
Hi frank,
I can’t talk about any particular operator specifically..but *from a technical point-of-view* the data service is being offered over the same network (from the base stations out in the streets to the mobile core network where the traffic leaves the mobile phone network and goes out to the Internet/whereever) as the voice telephone calls.
With regards triple play and pricing…well the “idea” of it is when a provider gets a number of your services (eg tv, and internet, or tv, internet and telephone…whatever) they will bill you all at once, and slightly/alot cheaper.
Have a look here: http://tinyurl.com/2hw24t
A company in Galicia (Northern Spain):
· llamadas a fijos gratis
· internet 6 megas sin lÃmites
· 100 canales de tv digital
69 €/mes
ahora 39 €/mes 3 facturas
free calls from your house phone/6Mb Internet without cap (or course what is 6Mb?? up..down?)/100 tv channels.
70euro per month.
Thats triple play!
And now they are looking at the possibility of opening a mobile network…MVNO so people can roam onto them for cheaper rates.
…
Just a quick note: to get the €30/month rate you need to be on bill-pay with a contract of at least €35/month, otherwise you’re back to €40/month.
Right. A move to Northern Spain it is then!
@frankp: you got that f*$%ing right!
As a help to understand triple play have a look at this good economist article: http://tinyurl.com/ykfow4
Hope that helps a bit..
The article has it bang on when they say ““Convergence†is the telecoms industry’s new mantra. Whether customers really want it is another matter”…
Do customers really want one bill from one provider?
Its too much tie in in my opinion.
Thanks bernard!
Three don’t offer any outgoing mail servers either… NOT good in my current situation where I can’t mail out because of ip address being listed in xbl.spamhaus.org…
More news on this… head of PR and Communications got back to me…
I tried using 3 for Skype a few times. It worked once so-so, but twice since terribly, even after the upgrades they did last weekend. A 3 Ireland sales person told me the upload speed isn’t that fast and so Skype may not be that good. They said its a download service really but they ‘may’ improve upload speeds by next year.
Does anyone know what 3 really are promising? Shall I cancel my trial and wait until next year to get my money’s worth?
Hi all,
Have my 3 data modem just under 2 months now….
Started ok, ‘better than dial-up’ speeds most of the
time. (I get 0 – 1.5meg at home)
Initial problems…..no 3 provided smtp for my email….
So I set up an authenticated one on an ISP we use….not ieal
but solved…or so I thought…
I have had speeds up to 3.6meg (visiting Tralee)…
but the service can be VERY bursty so momentary figures like this can be meaningless.
Back to this week….
3 reported speeds ok, but internet service Cr*p.
My SMTP times out…many internet pages too.
For example ebay.ie works fine but ebay.co.uk not….
FTP not working for all but one of my ftp servers….
This morning my pop3 wouldn’t work (Collection of emails)
even though my ISP reported no errors.
Have been reverting to my 56k dial-up to use email etc.
I am NOT a happy trooper!!
Peter
Speeds *should* be better now…..
ive stabilised my start up as follows on xp sp2.leaving firewall on etc no stoppage of internal services.
First of all we’re essentially dealing with a mobile phone so when it powers up it has to execute the location update procedure to sync with the network HLR/MSCVLR. (IE when you turn on your usual phone it takes a while for the 3 logo to come up.) That procedure also needs to happen with the modem ( so theres a timing issue that needs to be dealt with )
so what i do is use the USB cable in a front port on the PC ( for ease of access, not any technical reason) and disconnect it at PC start up.
When the PC has booted and stable then i initiate the 3 modem client. This will result in an “invalid modem” dialogue. I would expect that as theres no modem connected.
I then plug in the usb cable and that seems to do two things. a) initiates windows plug and play port recognition functions and b) powers on the modem which in turn starts the mobile location update procedures. Once the power is available to the modem , then windows recognizes the port usage and b as the location update completes the client recognizes the modem and consequently recognizes the usim and network services as can be seen from the client dialogues. This is confirmed as and the profile loads in the client as hspd.. and the connect button goes blue.
by using this procedure my modem fires up fine on virtually all start ups.
my belief is that the Modem client drivers are poor quality and should account for network timing in relation to windows boot / pnp up procedures but i would hope the next few versions of drivers will correct most of that.
On the speed front then we all suffer from contention ratios and i belive in the 3 modem case its probably more about channel capacity than the theoretical single user data rate. I suspect that the 3.6 qouted rate comes from the maximum HSPDA bearer capacity and not the OSI Presentation layer rates delivered to your pc screen .
It would be interesting to know from 3 which transport layer they measure to provide the “supposed” data rate given on the Client.
These “Supposed” rates will be significantly lower than the bearer rate on the air interface as all the packets concerned with air interface , fixed transport packet routing and error correction are needed to be accounted for.
So in summary .. i dont work for 3 but was a part of very large red mobile network technology organisation and UMTS with HSDPA together with MPLS packet Cores are extremely complicated … even if we do take it all for granted. So bearing in mind Eircom seem to have no intention of ever bringing broadband to my neck of the woods, currently they wont even support twisted pair connection as ive got a fixed wireless access techonolgy for my ordibary phone. The 3 mobile broadband service gives me on average 10 to 15 time the rates of dial up so im generally pleased
I would acknowledge theres a lot work needed to be done on:
: RNC / Base station/Channel rollout
: Packet core connectivity & configuration
: Email and other customer services
but that takes a large capital infrastructure budget and time.. But would i prefer to wait until its perfect.. no not really
John
Hi Bernard,
Possibly the are…today. The 3 network itself can be
fast, but connection to ‘outside’ the network is variable.
I still have had to revert to my dial up (56k POTS line)
today for the following reasons:
1. POP3 conectivity only works sporradically…
works fine on any other internet connection (eg. 56K
dail up, LAN connection via numerous other BB
providers…I’ve Laptop which is often connected
at customer premises)
2. SMTP not working (as previously mentioned, I use
a secure SMTP which had been working fine with
3 HSDPA till this week).
My SMTP works fine on any other internet connection etc.
3. Ebay issue now better, but whether I’ll get into
any given site is unpredictable. (Ebay used to
illustrate the problem!)
Sometimes ‘refresh’ gets me in, other times not…
(Possible ISP/interconnect or congestion/interconnect
issue.)
4. http://FTP…..argh!
I was pretty happy with the service till this week (even
had got over the crazy 3 lack of SMTP) but now…..
Most of it looks like 3 interconnect to other ISP issues
plus some crazy service config.(?)
Tech support, while polite, is very poor. But then one
should not have to call them as much as I have had to.
Take care,
Peter
Another dissatisfied customer. Link speed is variable. High latency. Web pages hang and bittorrent nearly impossible to use. I’ve experience the same hardware problems with the modem as some other people are reporting. I will be returning my 3 modem shortly. What a shame… Has anyone done comprehensive testing of the service?
Are 3 throttling protocols other than smtp and http? What are the root causes of the problems everyone seem to be reporting?
Bernard – everyone on Three seems to be assigned the same IP address… when I asked Tech Support said they thought this was normal for mobile broadband providers… could this really be the case? Surely there are a host of issues with that!?
I’m asking you because you seem to be in the know…!
More on my latest call with Three here…
Hi Frank,
“everyone on Three seems to be assigned the same IP address… when I asked Tech Support said they thought this was normal for mobile broadband providers… could this really be the case?”
Everyone User Equipment (user) having the same IP address is technically impossible. Each UE needs a unique IP.
Although if there was multi users with the same IP this could be a different issue. IP allocation is done through a different system.
I would guess the IP they/you are talking about is a proxy address.
I don’t think that Support guy was right.
“They also told me that an IP conflict issue which was stopping access to sites like Gmail should now be resolved.”
I know what they mean and this was slightly different.
I can’t really go into detail as these are still being fixed.
But the same *user* IP notion is definately wrong.
Can you tell me if you have experienced any increase in download speeds?
hope that helps,
bernard
Hi Bernard,
My last post seems to have dissapeared….but, as others are saying…as you seem to be in teh know….
Will or when will teh following be stable/fixed?
1. SMTP (mine works on any other internet connection other
than 3 Mobile, up to end of last week it also worked on
teh 3 network)
2. POP3. This week my Outlook and Outlook Express have been
randomly been unable to connect to my POP3.
This also is something that has happend this week.
3. Website browsing to sites that I had no problem
with till this week.
4. FTP to work again….
I suspect that all the above may be as a result of the ‘upgrade’. But…..
I’ve probably spent nearly as much as the monthly rental on
calls to 3 Tech Support on this with no resolution.
Thanks in advance,
Peter
Hi Peter,
With regards when 1-4 will be fixed _my_ honest answer is I don’t know, as I don’t work in that area of this network.
Sorry I just don’t have that information.
I can only tell you that they will be fixed (otherwise they’d be mad!!).
I would say these issues are partly as a result of the upgrades, as this is brand new infrastructure being put in place (there is always teething problems with new systems, anyone who says otherwise is a lier! Why was Google Mail in invite only beta for so long?!).
All I can say is when all is working well it will be a really good service (from my point of view anyway)..
Doesn’t help your situation, but sorry!
bernard
(My own views, yada yada, not the views of my employer/customer..)
Hi Bernard,
Many thanks for the reply.
I agree….having been at the delivery end many times….
very few upgrades go perfectly smoothly!
I’ll wait and see, if its only for a week or so and
the service really does improve it will be worth it!
Before the upgrade roll-out (which I presume was before
this week) teh 3 service was not too bad at all…not
all it was sold to be…but not bad!
So I live in hope!!
Take care,
Peter
Hey Bernard, for the first time today I reached an all time high of 2083kbps, my speeds at off peak times have been better than most peoples, ranging in the last week between 1493kbps and at peak times as low as 365kbps – all better than the first days I got it at about 30-60kbps and much better than most who have been getting a high of about 365kbsp I hear!
I’ll post a blog post about speeds when I get a chance…
Hi Peter,
Yes, unfortunately I can’t give you any help about.
Frank: well good to know the speeds have improved. They would have increased since yesterday evening. (something changed:) )
Have a good weekend,
bernard
Well, as an end user who has also a tech related profession I have the distinct sense that there was at the very least a total lack of communication between the techs who undertook the upgrade and Three and it seems that Three were totally caught out when the boards.ie thread exploded on them.
One has to wonder what testing was done on this ‘new infrastructure’ before it went live. Right now as an end user I feel that I did the testing and no, Three don’t pay for my holidays!
I still have no FTP or POP3 access to GMail and as a broadband addon user, no streaming media. There is not much point having increased speeds if these basic facilities aren’t working.
I was delighted to see Three entering this stagnated market and I really hope they can redeem themselves here.
I think that their tech arm has to come under scrutiny at this point on the testing front and their communication with the rest of Three.
I think I have a valuable tip for the FTP problem….
I was getting an error retrieving the directory listing while using WS_FTP until I enabled the ‘passive transfer mode which WS_FTP mentions may be needed to cope with some firewall/proxy configurations.
That solved the problem, at least with my own web site.
Hope this helps.
Seamus
Yup, passive ftp working today in a rolling fashion apparantly – wasn’t working for me earlier, is now….
i have had 3 mobile for a week and it is a disaster. it shows connected at 3.6 Meg but downloads as low as 30 kbs.
it cannot use outlook or outlook express.. are they serious !.none of this is advised to the user. i brought it back and was assured that they had “problems” but would be ok in 48 hrs. it is NOT. service polite but know nothing about anything.i would strongly advise against buying until gremlins are killed off. it goes back tomorrow, within the 14 day return period.
No joy even with passive mode.
I am sure this whole mess will all be fine eventually, but the point is, the testing is being done now, so I am ready to jump ship to O2 where at least they ain’t gonna pop this ‘upgrade’ crap on you all of a sudden…
BTW Bernard, good input and thanks. A pity the guys at Duh-ree aren’t on the ball though…
I think the the big problem for 3 is that they’ve oversold the product. I have never seen anything like the 3.6mbs they claim and I doubt many people have. Also, like many I’ve regularly observed the connection just getting stuck. But, it mostly works for me and my modest expectations.
If they advertised it as a cost-effective, flat-rate, sometimes faster alternative to GPRS (O2 charge €5/mb!) with a transparent roaming tariff on their European network, they’d have plenty of satisfied customers.
I’m off to do some timing of the Tour of Ireland cycle race and then the Tour of Britain, so by then, if they mostly keep their promises, the gadget will have surpassed anything I could have done with O2’s over-priced GPRS and expensive hotel WiFi hotspots.
Mostly, I think their market positioning is over-ambitious.
I remember about 24 years ago spending four days constantly on the phone to a sys op trying to connect my computer via modem to it’s Dublin based counterpart. We finally got it working, and never had a problem after.
Some quarter of a century later I have had possibly the worst technological experience since, and that is saying something.
The 3 broadband service is truly the worst thing I have encountered, and that includes a period many years ago were I had to hand machine code a computer from scratch every morning as it had no external backup. It is beyond shoddy, it is dreadful, no ftp, sporadic service, long periods where the top speed is 22kb/s, dropouts, argh the list could go on. I was prepared to put up with a lousy service initially as it was starting up, but this is beyond a joke. I waited four and a half hours today for a google search to finally pop up on my screen. I have enough of a sense of irony to see the funny side, the search was for ‘3 mobile broadband shite’…
P.S. Some issues with Fasterfox possibly methinks for all those using it…
Bernard, the IP address issue I mentioned earlier, it would appear, is to do with NAT… I can’t email out because the single public IP address is blacklisted…
I believe this may also be the cause of the FTP issues, though I am not entirely certain of the exact cause.
Wikipedia says something about it I don’t quite fully understand!
Any thoughts? 🙂
Anybody tried a Wireless-G Router for 3G/UMTS Broadband on eiter Three or O2?
3 is a load of shite. Can’t access anything with it. Downloads are a disaster, emailing a joke, and i cant even access MSN to tell people why i cant reply to emails. Apparently there is some trouble with a proxy that i don’t know about. I’m gonna kill that dude in carephone that recommended this crap to me.
Just got a message back from comreg there, thought it might be of intrest to you:
Hi Patrick
Sorry for the delay answering you – we have been liasing with 3 about recent events with their broadband services and they have advised us of the following:
3 have explained to us that after they launched their 3 broadband service in May, the sales and usage of their service exceeded their intitial expectations and at peak times they quickly realised that customers were experiencing reduced speeds. They moved forward their scheduled capacity upgrade and have now upgraded the overall network capacity and implemented a new Internet Service Provider.
Subsequent to this upgrade, they became aware that some customers are now apparently having several issues with our broadband service. they have been working around the clock to resolve those which are within their control. Please note there are only now two specific areas where a few customer consumer complaints have arisen which fall within their service – access to certain sites and IP addressing. These are a result of their configuration with their new ISP partner and can be changed.
The first was the ability to access sites like Gmail. The issue related to the passing of security information between the sites in question and the users of their service. they can report that these issues have been identified and fixed as of last week. Some customers have reported other issues, which occur in certain circumstances, such as access to FTP sites, VPN, NetMeeting and certain streaming sites – 3 are working to resolve these residual issues, which relate to IP address management, as quickly as possible.
Well at least it seems like their doing something
This use of the word ‘residual’ really amuses me at this point. A broadband service without proper SMTP, FTP, streaming and these issues are regarded as residual? Surely they are fundamental to any service that claims to be broadband.
Immediately after the ‘upgrade’ they referred to these issues as ‘Legacy’ problems. Only the terminology has changed, not the service judging by my own experience and that of those on the boards.ie thread.
As far as I can see, the only thing that has fundamentally changed at Three is that they now realise they have a PR disaster on their hands.
So Ireland has mobile broadband?
I have seen the current offers and there is a limit of 10 GB. Even taking into consideration that I can go over the 10GB limit and pay 5 cent per mb (from 3 anyway), this limit is far too smal.
O2 offer a 5GB limit and Vodaphone offer a 10Gb limit and also upto 3.6 Mbps speeds.
Anyone aware of any plans to offer a realistic limit like 35 Gb or bigger.
10GB is tiny, every oher ISP in the EU has a download limit of at least 40 GB on average.
I work as a stcok broker so i would have to download approx 14Gb every month to do my job. Since I am on the move a fast connection along with a realistic limit is a must.
The 3 offers from O2 , vodaphone and 3.ie are just a bunch of marketing crap. VOIP is actually banned from Vodaphone and O2 mobile broadband service (read the small print for the services). Rumor is that Eircom demanded that VOdaphone and O2 state this in their terms and conditions because Eircom would lose business.
I just bought the 3 Broadband today (had NTL speeds of 6) but I thought I could deal with the 3 speeds at a cheaper price.
Was I wrong, This service is terrible, it’s slow, it’s lagging. I cannot access hotmail, I cannot access MSN messenger, It takes forever to load a page.
I then came to this site and seen some people saying that we all have the same IP address on 3, so I thought I’d test it out. I went to wikipedia, edited a page and then click on the history, my IP was there – if you click on your IP it will show you every page that your IP has edited on Wikipedia. So I it, and what do you know, thousands of pages came up that where edited using my IP address, so I’m not the only one on this IP – this bothers me for reasons like Security, Internet Banking etc.
I use google earth a lot, not a chance on this thing it just freezes. I’ve had it about 5 hours and it’s going back tomorrow as soon as the store opens. Thank god you get a 14 day train, I want my full €200 back (was made pay the extra €50 deposit for this bit of crap).
Looks like I’ll be on the phone to NTL to be hooked back up.
Hi….
Still bad:
Browsing (cannot seem to get into my eBay account for example).
Outlook sending DOES NOT WORK…….
(Migrated to Thunderbird as a work-around….but shouldn’t have to do that…’lost’ a pile of emails in my inbox in the
process)
Browsing is very instable…..still needing multiple clicks
Haven’t bothered to try FTP as being able to send emails is
pretty fundemental to the internet and my business…
The Internet God must have a sense of humour though…
Have not been able to get onto the 3 Ireland website…
Still very frustrated,
Peter
@peteraok: Three are making a fix and it is on the way for the SMTP errors.
I can’t give anymore information/help on that at the moment. Sorry!
bernard
Hi Bernard,
How are you?
Thanks for the info above.
FYI, as 3 have not got a functional SMTP at the moment
I have been using a secure SMTP of my own.
Till the upgrade started it worked fine on Outlook and
OE.
When teh upgrade started it only worked sporadically
on Outlook. Still works on OE.
But has only a 1 in 1000 shot of working in Outlook.
Works with Thunderbird though…
With a bit of luck, the SMTP being initiated by 3 will
solve the Outlook problem.
IMHO 3 should have had it from the start anyway.
POP3 Email is one of the basics of Internet/Broadband…
Take care,
Peter
Update: 5.45pm 28th August 2007….
Now even Thunderbird will not send using my Secure/password protected SMTP…..
I’ll be out of business soon…either because I am not replying to emails or because I’m paying 3 for a crap service and still having to use 56K dial-up to use the internet….
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!
7.45pm 28th August 2007…..
Just spent over 30 minutes on the phone to 3 Tech support
in India.
Again polite….but….
This eveing Tech support tell me that the 3 service should never have worked with Outlook….and that I’d been told this within a week of buying into the service….
While this may be true, within a few days of that call (the one a few days after getting the modem) I was assured by:
Carphone Warehouse (they called 3 for me) then by
3 Tech support (they called me back days later) that I could indeed use Outlook if I used a secure SMTP…I set this up and it worked fine till about 2 weeks ago….
If there had been ANY doubt about the ability to use Outlook I would have cancelled within the 14 day trial period as Outlook is ‘mission critical’ to my usage of the internet.
Roll on this evening’s call, after being told by tech support that my modem and the price plan I’m on do not support Oulook I told the techie that in that case the service is of no use to me….I need to cancel my subscription….and how come it was working till two weeks ago???
‘Please wait while I transfer you’….
Discussion with another rep….to and fro’ing with her and tech….
‘Tech support say that Outlook doesn’t work with your modem, but all “major” email cleints do”
What’s Outlook? A fly-by-night newcomer????
So I told her that I had migrated to Thunderbird to get around teh recent Outlook issue…it had been working for teh past week…but stopped sending (with the same problem as Outlook) this evening. POP3 is working SMTP not on these email clients…
Reply ‘Outlook will be working within days’
I’m giving it another week.
From being a great fan of my 3 service I am turning into the exact opposite….
Peter
I took my modem back to the store yesterday (I posted above), when I explained to the guy in the 3 store why I was taking it back, he advised me that it all should of worked fine and he has not heard of anyone else with any problems with the service and with the full light on it should be running at the full advertised speed.
Regardless, I handed it back and got my money back – bar the deposit, have to wait for it via a Cheque.
Happy to say I’m now back on my super fast NTL. Would of loved the 3 to work as it was such a nifty little modem.
Now Outlook Express won’t send too…it’s like 3 Ireland is adjusting their network to block services/programs as they find out about…
Can onbly navigate to very narrow list of webpages (can’t navigate to this one!)
But I have found a stable and consistent solution!!
I’m now back on my 56k dial-up and don’t have to multi click webpages to navigate sucessfully, ftp works, outlook, outlook express, thundferbird, ftp etc all WORK!!!!
Peter, very annoyed 3 ‘customer’.
For those of you who are absolutely furious with Three, both USB broadband customers and phone mobile broadband addon customers I thought I would let you know that the NCA (National Consumer Association – http://www.nca.ie) are taking an interest in this matter and are actively seeking feedback from Three customers.
They seem to be much more able in this regard than the toothless wonder, COMREG so I would urge all of you to contact them and tell them your individual stories.
Have just done so.
Be careful about hitting enter to do a line break….
It submits the complaint!!!
My firts complaint reads:
‘Hello,’ !!!
I got carried away with the second, but the gist is there. I hit return for a line break while detailing Tech supports responses, so most are missing, but the problems are submitted.
The 3 ‘service’ is virtually totally non-functional rigt now…can’t even surf the web….
Peter
Same thing happened me – it just requires a simple usability fix. Called them to let them know.
Speeds on 3 mobile “broadband” absolutely appalling,
Email may or may not work,
Outlook and Thunderbird may or may not work,
loading pages may or may not work,
downloads may stop and cannot be resumed,
MSN Messenger may or may not work or “swallow” messages.
This is not broadband, this is fraudband, as someone called it.
My ultimatum for fixing service is running out in 3 days, then it’s money back or Small Claims Court.
I’m another trés dissatisfied customer of 3. I’ve complained to them almost 2 months ago and got a callback from a tech support person in India who couldn’t tell me when they’d be able to fix it. I’ve complained to Comreg (who basically washed their hands of the matter), the Advertising Standards people (acknowledgement letter) and the National Consumer Agency (rang me back wanting to know more).
I’ve reached the end of my tether now. It’s bad enough that I can’t rely on the connection to download and upload files files, shop online or do any “smooth surfing” but now I can’t even send any emails from Outlook. I’ve a gmail account and it doesn’t always even work from the webmail.
I am very seriously thinking of taking this shower of wasters to the Small Claims Court. It is a disgrace that they’re selling a product which is claiming to be an all-singing all-dancing broadband package when it is NOTHING of the sort.
got 3 modem on Monday must say service just outside Cork is very good and seems to be improving each day i.e. hotmail ok now, getting the promised 3.6Mps need to move rooms sometimes, youtube can be hit or miss, standard web browsing is fine. I will monitor very closely over the next few day’s 14 day return etc etc.
The Three Mobile Broadband service with Datacard or USB modem is a load of rubbish.. I tried running a speed test today the service is so bad that the speed test wouldnt even work…
This is supposed to be mobile broadband.. none of their promises have come through.. they are giving everyone with their mobile broadband 10 gig package.. a months refund of 19.99 for their troubles..
I called their Customer “help” desk today complaining about my speeds and this and that.. the guy says.. until it is working properly we will be giving out refunds every month… even though before he said that he said there was no problems… today…
So they are saying no no problems.. and then saying all the problems will be sorted soon and if not we get another refund..
Do 3 think the irish public are stupid.. They are relying on the old days when even if something was wrong we wouldn’t complain.. and the only thing we would complain is about the weather.. well no more..
Who is gonna be the first one to drive a Muck Spredder to the front door of 3’s head office in Dublin and give them some sh1t….
Was 1 day outside my 14 days trial, during which I logged 3 calls to the support in India (only one logged)….
speeds were max 600dlload, 30-50upload, connection very unstable and repeatily needs to be restarted — sometimes by unplugging the modem itself.
VPNs dont seem to work
Last straw was today, I got a new modem and sim card from 3 which connects to the vodafone network
Conclusive proof that Three don’t know what they are doing. I’m now on X-Series Gold – as I write, none of the services on it work. I got a promo SMS from them yesterday saying:
3 Update. Go to Planet 3. Choose Internet & Surf the Web on your mobile for just 49c per MB.
And the bit that really made me laugh:
To opt of of Internet access call 333.
They forgot to add ‘or buy a 3 USB modem or broadband access addon’
Have Three Wireless broadband for 5 days. Highest speed recorded was 802kbps but typically in the region of 80kbps to 200kbps, but went as low as about 10kbps on a few occasions
No email….. Indian support service told me that Outlook was not supported. When I asked if any other email client worked with the system, he said No…..must use webmail such as Yahoo or Hotmail.
On a few occasions, the computer hung on start-up very early in the cycle when the black and white text screen is displaying the IRQ’s for the hardware bit. Shutting down and restarting did not solve the problem. Disconnect the modem USB cable….no problems then.
Very frustrating to use for web-browsing yesterday, more troublefree today. Hope it continues to improve
3’s statement that ‘Outlook not supported’ is inaccurate. I think what they really mean is that SMTP is not supported. That is, you can’t send mail from offline mail clients such as Outlook.
I have been able to retrieve mails, using POP3 and ThunderBird.
To send, I’ve had to use a web-mail client and that can be quite slow.
I got 3 Broadband bacause like others there is not other low cost broadband available in my area. Just a few comments – Firstly I think it is a bit rich to complain so much about 3 when they are providing the best coverage of all the mobile operators. 3 should be congratulated for attempting to solve the lack of broadband coverage issue out and encouraged to improve on their current offering. I agree that the up to 3.6 mbps claim is stretching the imagination a bit – I am sure someone somewhere can get that speed if they live under the mast and nobody else is using the 3 network at the time. But I have Eircom fixed line broadband at work so I decided to compare the two at http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest. Surprisinly 3 gave 1.1m download compared to 1.0m at Eircom. Upload was 180k at Eircom and 60k at 3. This was at 5.30 pm. I know Eircom will do better at off-peak times.
I have had problems connecting to 3 – it seems to work best if I turn ur pc on, then connect the modem, leave it a few minute to recognise everything, and then connect. On downloading large file I found it breaks down with file of 5mb or bigger. However I got a shareware Internet Download Manager 5.11 (try for 30 days free, buy for $25) and this seems to solve the problem. This software re-connects to the server when your download stops and takes it up from where it stopped rather than starting again (all seemlessly). Torrents dont seem to work but I cant get them to work on Eircom either! The slow upload speed may may torrents unviable on 3 even if you can get them working.
That is my experience anyway. Overall, far from perfect, but a damn sight better than the 31k dial up that is my only alternative.
You know what i kinda agree, fair enough alot of people have probems with speeds and they should be refunded and all that, which they probably will, three have also given their customers 1 months free line rental which i think is very good, considering my speeds are pretty much fine.
I used to have dial up which you know is dial up, was paying about 30 euro a week for it cuz its done on time which is stupid, and line rental on top of that is about 25 euro. I got 3 broadaband got rid of the phone line and no i no longer need to pay line rental or anything, just 19.99 a month and off you go, speeds not always perfect but for that price id take dial up speeds honestly, i think alot of people have over rated their complaints, Half of them have no reason to complain just look at how much im saving.
I don’t have 3 as yet, but I do look around a lot at different forums. If you’re excited about your 3.6mb connection getting 1.1mb – there’s something wrong dude. The average I have heard of is a dwindling 500k to 10k, if you’re out of the city – and wireless reaches out of the city just fine.
I don’t know which Eircom package you’re comparing, but assuming it’s the 2mb standard package, it’s only running at 50% loss – your 3 package is running at around 66% loss. And no SMTP, which means no email client.
Yes, 3 is doing a grand old job; and yes they’re doing better than O2 at this point.. but, to advertise a service as 3.6mb which really, really only gets just over 1mb should be illegal.. imho.
Well my issues aren’t about speeds though I do think that if Three sell a service claiming 3.6 MB when the average speeds are substantially below that then they shouldn’t be surprised when the customers complain about them.
My issues are solely with the service since the so called ‘upgrade’ back on August 9th. Since then I have had patchy and unpredictable access to any internet service that does not use port 80 and no way of using Outlook that’s workable – a facility any other ISP offers as standard.
On top of that I have been repeatedly led round the houses by Three which I have documented in relation to the status of the service, the status of the upgrade and expected resolution dates for the issues I am experiencing. I have had my time wasted chasing down support people, been given solutions that could not possibly be helpful like sending me out a new SIM card when in actual fact the network was crippled.
I signed up to their phone addon package called ‘Unlimited Broadband’ on the understanding that there was a download and upload limit which I have no problem with though technically that does conflict with their description of ‘unlimited’. However, I find a broadband service unacceptably limited when it does not support any services not utilizing port 80 which is the situation at present.
If you are happy with a service where you don’t know from day to day what aspects of that service you will receive even though the charge remains the same then good for you but I do not think that’s a situation that consumers should have to put up with in this day and age.
As for the Three promise of free months to those who ask for it, firstly we shouldn’t have to ask – the days when they could claim that the problems were isolated customer issues (which they initially attempted to do in a ‘divide & conquer’ fashion are long gone. The free month should be offered in a blanket fashion this month and for each month until Three put technically competent people in place to sort this mess out. Already stories are appearing on the boards.ie thread about people who have been refused the free month or even are told that no such offer exists.
The funny thing about this is I would be happy to pay more for the service if Three would guarantee to address these issues meaningfully.
One thing I have noticed with 3 broadband. Your exact location within a building seems to matter a lot. In my living room with has a big patio door in the direction of the 3 mast I get much better speeds than in my kitchen where the signal has to travel through 3 concrete walls. Like I am getting 5 bars on the signal in the living room and 1 in the kitchen. I guess if we lived in glass houses we would be ok!
Returning to my point above, I agree 3 does not warn people of the variation is speed which they should – i.e. they should give the max speed and the average speed (ComReg should force all operators to do this). However, for people living outside the fixed line broadband area, which is a lot of people, it is a reasonable alternative.
No SMTP, no FTP, hit and miss when it comes to HTTP posts. Have our standards dropped so low here now that we think this constitutes a reasonable internet service, never mind a broadband service??? Sigh.
I am having a lot of trouble with 3 right now, I would recommend that anyone thinking of moving to 3 think again. They haven’t a clue what they are doing, there customer service is a call center in India and they are idiots. They are not helpful at all, they just want your money. They advertise UNLIMITED MOBILE BROADBAND, it isn’t unlimited it has a max of 2GB per month. As far as the broadband service, I wouldn’t even bother with them. They can’t return customer calls. They are a phone company who cant even get that right. I have just started a case against them with ComReg, for over charging and harassment.
My experience of 3Ireland has been pretty good compared to the truly awful Eircom and money-sucking BT Ireland. The latter cannot seem to turn off their direct debit system without several phone calls despite their having sent written confirmation of disconnection.
OK, so 3Ireland had some problems last month. I experienced these like everyone else. However, at the moment I get approx. 500kbps, sometimes 400-800kbps, maximum ever was 950kbps. I have a datacard version which can be connected to a wireless router (e.g. D-Link DIR-451) to give an excellent wireless node in your house. So, you put your router in the best signal area and lose any variation between rooms. Considering Eircom’s previous disgraceful lack of infrastructure, 3Ireland and others will improve their services to support much faster speeds. I have had great experience with their customer support. Truly excellent service, great delivery speed and pleasant staff (yes, in India!). My advice is, give them a chance. I, for one, am truly grateful for a service which costs EU19.99 per month in an area (Shannon Estuary) not previously served by any landline-based broadband solution. Thes speeds are very similar to those I obtain via Bewleys Hotels wireless broadband!!
Not bad, and will get lots better. Give them a chance guys.
Also, look at Onspeed to ramp up your online experience. I can get 4-5Mb experience using Firefox (slight deterioration in picture quality)which is pretty good. Lose the landline and EU46 per month charges for 3Mb offering which gives 1-1.5Mbps!!
So (& I complain a lot usually!) thanks 3Ireland. I look forward to changing my expensive Vodafone PayMonthly to 3Ireland.
Well custard, I’m happy you’re happy. However, I couldn’t let your points go without comment. If a company is permitted to treat it’s customers as Three have done in the past month I think we have reached a new low in Irish services.
On the cheap price of the service I say great but cheap does not neg legate Three’s responsibility to provide the service they advertise and by any reasonable standard they simply don’t at present. If they can’t supply the service for that price then up the price until they can – I would rather pay more for a dependable service any day with the basic facilities that any other ISP provides (yes, even Eircom) like an SMTP server to enable me to send mail, a clear and available usage policy, a transparent complaints procedure, an accurate usage metering system, etc.
As for the customer service, great that they have nice people in India to deal with issues – if they could actually deal with them, were kept up to speed on the status of technical problems, were trained enough to know that sometimes just reseating the SIM card isn’t the answer. I would also appreciate not being told ‘we have had nobody else contact us about this issue’ when plainly they have or ‘it will be fixed in 24 hours/1 week/the end of September’ without any basis for saying so. As an X-Series customer I would like to know why ports for third party applications have suddenly and without any notice been blocked on a seemingly arbitrary basis or indeed if that is going to be an ongoing state of affairs from now on which would basically be a serious change of terms of the contract I entered into but nobody I have spoken to in India seems privy to this information – even technical support so in essence I can’t tell what exactly I’m supposed to be paying for.
I was really excited to see Three come into the market here. The whole mobile data market in Ireland was nothing short of disgraceful and I really thought Three intended to grasp the huge opportunity ignored by the other telcos but in the last month I’ve gone from evangelism to scepticism and am rapidly heading for disillusionment.
Custard, have a read of this >> http://www.irishdeveloper.com/blog/telephony/3-times-the-rate-per-minute/
Bluefrog, I feel your pain! I’m going thought a lot of the same shit at the moment with them. Everything from changing pricing agreements with out notice to harassment for payment on a bill that isn’t even due for another 2 weeks. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told this week… “we will have someone call you back Mr. Rooney”. I’m hoping if I kick up enough they will let me out of my contract.
Will all of yous stop complaining 3 is the best network in Ireland there mobile broadband is the best it is the fastest speed and greatest download stop moaning one and all and enjoy the 3 experioence.
Terry, are you even with 3? Because if you where you would know they are the biggest shower of bastards ever to call them selfs a mobile provider. If they are so great why does everyone that has posted on here and all over the internet have horror stories about them, the service and the customer service department? Vodafone and O2 give out the same equipment for the broadband, how come no one is posting on here complaining about there service? Maybe its because there isn’t any problems with it. By any chance Terry do you work for 3???
Sorry, I know it’s bait but…..
3 Network:
– No SMTP.
– No sending of email via SMTP
– Very bursty download speeds (up and down 1 Mb to near 0 makes any download test meaningless)
– Variable FTP support
– Multiple reloads needed to view webpages
– Download limit INCLUDES browsing….not a real download limit
– No Technicicians in Technical Support
– Effectively a francise with just the commercial side in
Ireland….
Hmmm…..I guess that MUST qualify 3 as the best….????
I finally solved all my 3 broadband problems… by taking it back and getting a full refund.
An Open Letter to Robert Finnegan – Managing Director of Three
Hi,
I read with interest and not a little anger a piece on techcentral.ie about X-Series in Ireland at http://www.techcentral.ie/small_busi…e_mobiles/view.
As an X-Series Gold customer I can tell you that I and a number of other customers I have been corresponding with on boards.ie are extremely disappointed with the service.
Having attempted to deal with your customer services representatives in India for the past month without success I am now trying one last time to communicate with Three about these issues before I seek the intervention of third parties. Incidentally, the complaints form on your site gives the impression when submitted that something has gone wrong as one is presented with a ‘Page Not Found’ message after submission and this situation has persisted since early August despite I and others having brought it to the attention of Three Ireland on numerous occaissions.
In what sense can you make the claim that X-Series or indeed Three Ireland’s ‘Unlimited’ broadband addon provide unlimited access? As I intend to post this correspondence on boards.ie and also send a copy to COMREG I am sure there will be great interest in your response.
Why exactly have third party applications which don’t use port 80 been blocked recently and with no notice to existing customers. Is it a cynical move by Three to improve the experience for the very vocal USB modem customers by freeing up extra bandwidth at the expense of mobile broadband addon phone customers? This may be a harsh assessment but what else are customers supposed to think when Three are still actively advertising the USB broadband service on TV knowing that this service still faces huge issues in the area of SMTP, FTP, VPN etc.
The Irish X-Series Orb registration process requires a UK phone number and is therefore unusable by Irish customers as it stands. Even if I could actually register with Orb I would not be optimistic about my chances of being able to use it as every RTSP stream I have connected to seems to drop after a period of 2 to 3 minutes rendering it essentially unusable.
The Skype client which is in fact a rather crippled relation of it’s PC cousin doesn’t support text messaging and only seems to work in 3G areas. However, a third party application called Fring which integrates a Skype client supports text messaging and can work for voice even over GPRS. I have been in touch with Skype to express my disappointment with the quality of the service they are associating themselves with in their partnership with Three Ireland.
The MSN client also seems to be crippled in terms of the functionality if offers in comparison to the official Microsoft Symbian client with a very reduced feature set. It too only appears to work in 3G areas while once again, Fring would allow access even over GPRS. Since Three have recently blocked Fring that is obviously not an option.
What seems to have emerged from my own investigations is that those on higher data tariffs with Three Ireland have actually less access. How do you explain this?
Is it Three Ireland intention to cripple the services so much that they know customers could never even vaguely approach the limits set in your ‘fair usage’ policy – a policy I for one have never actually seen.
In addition your customer support staff in India seem ill equipped to provide any more than platitudes when called about service issues.
I would refer you to the following threads on boards.ie which I hope you will find an enlightening read.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt…p?t=2055147970
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt…p?t=2055142078
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt…p?t=2055148669
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showt…p?t=2055115306
By Three’s own definition of X-Series:
“what’s free to use on the internet should be free to use on mobile broadband (subject to fair usage and international roaming conditions, of course).”
Fring is free, the official MSN Symbian client is free, many other third party applications are free. Many RTSP streams are free.
I look forward to your response which I will expect in writing.
Kind regards,
I’m just back from the Tour of Britain cycle race where I needed mobile broadband to upload results every day from the finish line. I had my Irish ‘3’ Huwaii USB dongle as well as an identical ‘T-Mobile’ one supplied locally.
I was able to compare both side by side in various locations from London to Glasgow. Both picked up signals quite readily.
The ‘3’ exhibited the now-too-familiar ‘stop-start’ behaviour that we’ve come to expect from ‘3’. Additionally, it failed to perform the simplest, low-volume FTP, even in passive mode. Web-mail with one 300k attachment, took quite a while. Submissions to ‘boards.ie’ took minutes.
The ‘T-Mobile’ at the exact same location, was very quick and fault-free on FTP and nearly instantaneous on the webmail. Submissions to ‘boards.ie’ were rapid.
Surfing on the 3 was possible if you were prepared to wait minutes, from time to time, for the next page to appear.
The next test will be my bill, hopefuly, the ‘3 Like Home’ promise will be kept and I won’t be hit with exhorbitant roaming charges. For this at least the ‘3’ may redeem itself.
Some possibly not well known information, the infrastructure of 3 UK’s mobile ISP service is _completely_seperate_ from the 3 IE moble ISP infrastructure. So, tbh, a linking of the two is not exactly fair/correct (I don’t say both aren’t equally good/bad).
The roaming rates is a completely seperate package/area/product from the mobile ISP product.
So you can sleep soundly that you won’t be hit with high roaming rates (even the newly realigned European roaming rates).
With regards the comment on T-Mobile, well that’s just comparing Eircom with BT 🙂 Pity there aren’t more mobile operators in Ireland!
bernard
The 3 service in the UK is just as unreliable as here in Ireland.
It would be interesting to know if ‘3’ shares the same physical infrastructure as ‘T-Mobile’.
The question must be: ‘Why is it that T-Mobile can provide a reliable service and 3 can not?’
Of course they don’t. They are two seperate companies.
The answer would be: the same reason that ISP1 can provide a reliable service and ISP2 can not.
Lets not forget simple things here, different companies, services, ideas, plans, services, sales plans…etc
hi there,
I recently purchased a 3 modem.
For whatever reason I can’t use Thunderbird to download pop3 mails from mail2.eircom.net. It works perfectly on My net1 connection and Eircom connection. I also have e-mail addresses on vodafone and even my own server on http://www.forgegallery.ie, both of which work perfectly with 3. Thunderbird will connect with mail2.eircom.net but just ‘timeout’ after that. Any one any idea why this is?
Also can anyone answer this……I intend to bring my laptop to Spain next month. I understood when I bought the 3modem that roaming charges would apply which is fine…..Does anyone know how much it might cost?????? I rang 3 this morning to be told that 3 have a network in spain….which I doubt greatly. Anyone help on this???? Thanks, Robert
“Of course they don’t. They are two seperate companies.” Are you certain or guessing? I’ve heard of companies providing virtual networks using other people’s infrastructure. My point is to identify was may common features as possible to narrow down why the ‘3’ service is so unreliable.
POP3 works for me, subject to ‘3’s characteristic stop/start behaviour.
“Also can anyone answer this……I intend to bring my laptop to Spain next month. I understood when I bought the 3modem that roaming charges would apply which is fine…..Does anyone know how much it might cost??????”
I would not dare roam internationally on GPRS, the costs are terrifying. Expect to pay a couple of hundred euro for a single track MP3 download. You should be safe as long as you make sure to stay on the ‘3’ network, but it may only be at GPRS speed and it may be just as unreliable as I’ve found ‘3’ in the UK and Ireland.
I am certain.
Bluefrog: regarding your earlier posting link. Fair comment! I will hold off on phone account as you suggest. My email needs are all web-server based and I don’t require SMTP.
Sorry to hear of all these issues with 3. However, I can get 3 “3G” where I live but only “GPRS” from Vodafone. No doubt the locals think that all the cattle will be born with 2 heads if they allow a phone mast as per a Clare Champion article some time ago. (No-one looks at the huge Aluminium factory nearby!).
Cheers anyway!
‘3’ have issued a ‘howto’ for SMTP. There’s now a relay available at mailrelay.3ireland.ie. I have not tried it yet.
It’ll be interesting to know if it also works when roaming on partner ‘3’ networks.
They also claim to have fixed FTP, but my experience, last week, in the UK was that it was still not working.
Hi all,
I’ve been using my own secure SMTP since joining 3 in June.
Up till about 14th August is worked fine, since then it has not….
BUT…just tried the mail relay and it seems to work…fingers cross but breath not held….
A little happier,
Peter
Hi Everybody,
I thought I would offer a little advise for people trying to cope with 3’s less than perfect service.
1. 3’s transparent proxy is crap. I don’t know what it is but it isn’t Squid. To bypass it I have a IPV6 address with Sixxs. It is a free service so don’t worry you don’t have to pay! Apart from having to click the same link twice the odd time it works a lot better. http://www.sixxs.net
2. Don’t use 3’s DNS servers again they are crap. Set static DNS servers on the connection with say OpenDNS or even Eircom’s own and that helps improve things quite a lot also. http://www.opendns.com
3. Here comes the really Linux zealoty bit. I am shocked to find that the Windows driver for the 3 usb modem is crap (please tell me if that sounded too sarcastic). It’s funny how a free (as in beer and also as in transparency) driver will work better. You could always install a copy of Ubuntu or some other such distro and make sure you have a 2.6.21 kernel or newer. The option driver supports the 3 usb modem. Additionally using Linux’s dial-up software gives you much more flexibility over dead link detection and connection retry. If anyone wants help (and I do mean help, not doing it for you) with this give me a shout.
4. Do not under any circumstances ring 3 support, “support” in this as in many other companies is meant ironically. Actually all they will do is try to confuse you and make you think you are wrong. Support it ain’t.
The only thing I haven’t been able to get round is SMTP. I am using a secure connection to my mail hosters SMTP server but it times out on large emails. Having seen 3’s recent announcement (of course I did that through the IPV6 tunnel as you can’t get the website up on 3’s connection) about now supporting SMTP (or Outlook or whatever you want to call it) this is more than a little perplexing. Is mail-relay.3ireland.ie an SMTP server only Three’s internal DNS servers are aware of? Because I can’t get an IP address for it using an external DNS server!
If anyone has a suggestion for this one (I don’t really expect an answer but hey ho if you think you know what you are talking about then great) answers on a postcode.
The smug and superior Linux geek.
I’ve had some terrible downloads at off peak times, sometimes at 12 to 2 in the morning, pdf’s about 10MB’s in size can take anywhere between 5 and 20 minuets. It’s ridiculous!!!
yeah I agree with all of the above about patchy service, it wrecks my head I don’t have all day to sit at my pc waiting for it to send a web email (grr infuritating) or whatever.
Has anyone else noticed that it doesn’t access sites such as mediafire, or
rapidshare along with a spate of other sites.
wtf is it censored for?
and that the 3 site is down, alsowhy the hell don’t they have a forum on their site for users, along with a lot more that i wont get into without getting irritated.
Dear John (Lewis),
You seem to know a thing or two about how to “upgrade” the three mobile service.
However, that site you mention http://www.sixxs.net/ , is beyond me.
Nay chance of a n00b guide to get the most out of three? As you can see from the rants here and elsewhere, it would be most welcome and give some support staff at 3 some relief.
Just need torrent support, which means i need port forwarding or something;-) Can Three do this over the phone for their customers?
G
Dear Graham (Pope),
I will do up a Windows and Linux howto as soon as I get chance. As you can see from my own website I haven’t put anything on since July as I am a small bit busy, (toddler and 4 month old, sick partner, income tax due this month and all and sundry want their IT problems fixed now).
Unfortunately I only run my copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine so I am not sure of the feasibility of writing a how to for that, still I will give it a go.
I will post here again when I have it done.
Abientot,
John.
Hi all,
I came across this while doing some research about 3 services before I contacted Comreg and the consumer protection people. It seems lots of other people are experiencing the same kind of problems.
I do need to have mobile broadband for my work [i travel lots] so before i finally toss the 3 offering away and take proceedings against them for inaccurate and misleading advertising, can anyone explain how to change the DNS settings on the modem to static. I rang their technical support but after 30 minutes on hold i gave up….
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.
alan
Called three “support” last night, a fun way to waste about 20 minutes while very nice people put you on hold and then tell you that they simply don’t know, but will refer the question.
My particular grievance is that port forwarding is not supported, which I think is responsible for 1-2 kbps torrent speeds. Does 02 offer port forwarding? Anyone?
If I set up a static DNS will this help my torrents? #
Quote:
“3’s transparent proxy is crap. I don’t know what it is but it isn’t Squid. To bypass it I have a IPV6 address with Sixxs. It is a free service so don’t worry you don’t have to pay! Apart from having to click the same link twice the odd time it works a lot better. http://www.sixxs.net”
^^^^^Don’t know if this will help my torrent speeds^^^^^^^
I have uses the modem on both win xp and os-x, and living 2 miles from Dublin, the download speeds can just acceptable (~100kbps) to downright poor (~10kbps) depending on such factors as what time of day, place of laptop, weather conditions and what zodiac sign you are born under.
Not quite the 3.6Mbps advertised.
Is it possible to set up a LAN with my desktop as server? Maybe someone has a link that will enlighten me.
Three does not mention any of these limitations at point-of-sale, not even in the tiniest of tiny print, and I cannot see this information on their webite.
I guess that I will use it for the year, but based on initial impressions, it is unlikely I will ever deal with Three again. But maybe these are teething problems;-)
I am also a very irate Three customer. Speeds do not live up to what was promised and could in now way described as the ‘smooth surfing’ which the website guarantees. In fact I could not connect to the Internet for about twenty minutes tonight (between 23.30 and 23.50 – anyone else?)
Three don’t seem to give a damn about their customers. They just seem to pass the buck onto someone else – usually some poor F***** in their call centre. I am a first time Three customer and I will NEVER, EVER deal with them again once this contract is over.
Noone seems to be able to tell me when I will receive the service I was promised and paid for? That’s all I am asking. Why is this so hard? This service was launched seven months ago. Surely any teething problems should have been ironed out by now.
I really don’t know what to do anymore
Hello Everyone, especially his eminence John Lewis,
http://www.sixxs.net/main/
looks like this is the job for non port forwarding, crappy torrent speed 3’s broadband
but it ain’t user friendly to a noobie… can anyone (not looking at you John) help a desperate man in his hour of need?…. oh, the humanity… willing to give anything to help with my torrenting
G
am considering 3 mobile broadband…am in cork city and just want general access to internet..eg hotmail, general websites etc…anyone in cork city have any problems with their service??
I live about 3 miles west of Cork City. 3 Broadband is the only service available to me outside of a very slow dial-up service. While it is not as fast as the typical broadband through the telephone system, it is quite OK for general browsing. Typical incoming transfer date is in the region of 100kb/sec to 675kb/sec with a record high of 1.4Mb/sec on two occasions in 6 weeks. I have a 100Mb/sec broadband service at work. For normal browsing, I see little difference between the two, maybe an extra 3 to 4 seconds for a basic page. When downloading large files however, they do not compare Uploading data is another matter however. typical send rate is about 60kb/sec. If you send emails with large files attached, don’t expect a blistering pace.
I know that they quote 3.5Mb/sec. That however is a theoretical speed which is almost impossible to attain. All of the services quote maximum speeds which are seldom achieved. It is a little bit like quoting the maximum speed of a car. This may be achieved only when you are going down hill with a strong tail wind.
Very unhappy with the email service via Outlook or Outlook Express. I have two email addresses, one at Eircom and one at UTVinternet. While I can receive my emails from UTVinternet I cannot from Eircom. I cannot send to either one of them. Tried the fix on the 3 site but failed on that one also. Now have to use the Webmail service. If anyone can offer any advice on emails, I would appreciate it.
Overall, I would really miss it now if this service failed. It is about 8 to 10 times faster than my existing dial-up service and at €20 it meets my requirements.
One nice plus is that you can hook it into your laptop anywhere there is coverage, so browsing is no longer confined to your home/work
Bear in mind that if you try it, you will get a full refund if you return the modem within one month, so it is risk-free
Of for the love of all that is good and holy…I wish I had read all the mounting forums on disatisfied Three customers before I’d purchased my USB modem.
I have only had it for just over three weeks and was working absolutely fine up until a few days ago. I now have endless TCP errors and profile errors, it is painfully slow, I can’t access Yahoo mail or hotmail and the websites I need to access for my job won’t load now.
I work from home and at first this seemed like a perfect solution as we have no landline and I travel about a bit, coverage is supposed to be perfect where I live and at first all seemed great.
Called customer service to report these errors and spoke to a very nice girl who told me ‘a few’ of her callers have had this problem and that there was nothing that she or myself can do about it and it will be resolved soon. It’s still the same.
This is getting out of hand, there are far too many forums appearing now with this issue. I feel like banging my head off a wall.
There is no point in harping on about it being a fast/cheap service and expecting people to pay for it when in reality is a non existant service.
Not a happy bunny, incredibly frustrated, angry and feel totally let down by the customer support.
I’m completely at a loss for a resolution now. 🙁
Lynda, you can return it up to one month for a full refund
It’s always the same with new technology – I remember my Wireless at home when I first got it. Nothing but problems.
Anyway – my 3 modem is fine. I run XP, have a good few odd programs installed and can use it fine around Dublin.
The unfortunate situation is that the population outside of Dublin will always get a raw deal – it is expensive to put the infastructure in place and there is not always the catchment area for it to be economically viable for a company to do so.
Until there is fixed line service at 8mb we can never really be happy. We are using speeds that are slower than developing countries.
Living Dublin 4
After another discussion with a gentleman from India regarding download speeds, inability to connect and port forwarding.
The download speeds are meant to have increased since August, but I still find it very poor at both browsing (sometimes over a minute for a simple page) and downloading (max speeds on a VERY good day 100kbps). Not happy.
He was not ableto explain why I could not connect very easily (sometimes up to one hour) at certain peak times. Seriously, is this broadband, if you still need to dial up and lose connection?
Port forwarding is not allowed by Three and they have no intention of changing their position anytime. Not cool for torrents, etc.
I will try my best to show that it is Three who have broken contract, by providing such a poor service and go back to my dial-up if I have to.
I will post again with updates on how easy it is get them to refund after the 14 day period. (*also convinced that they reduce the speed to your modem after the 14 day period is up, anyone else think this?
Graham
Now thats a load of balony!
I can tell you they don’t. You have a certain maximum speed they can supply and the network tries to give you that.
They don’t throttle your speeds after the 14 day return period. That would be suicide!
Just to update on how i got on in Spain. As suspected the modem would’nt register. I went into settings and tried to ‘roam’ on to another network and it would’nt allow me to connect to any other network.
As regards Eircom email pop access …this is what I believe (but not 100% sure) is the problem. Eircom have become quite aggressive in stopping people using NON-Irish isp services on their network (ie: you can’t create an eircom.net e-mail account while logged on to a non-Irish ISP. I reckon that Eircom.net does not yet recognise Three’s Ip addresses an Irish Service Provider. I tried to contact Eircom support regarding this and simply ended politely saying “thanks very much” to the gentleman with the foreign accent who dealt with my call. LOL so….it’s not only Three’s support that is lacking. I vaguely remember being able to e-mail Eircom about this when I first started using Net1s wireless service which now can access eircom.net e-mail accounts using POP perfectly
hope this all makes sense.
Robert
3 Ireland have come under the cosh over at Boards.ie where the complaints thread has 108,000 Views already.
Thats bigger than the ENTIRE 3 customer base .
If you want a full REFUND including the modem and the months of rubbish so called service Three now have a freephone contact number instead of their 083 number .
USB Customer service – Freephone 1800 944034
If you mention that you are a BOARDS.IE user they will tell you what shop to go back to with the modem and you get your refund paid to you then. You must ring that number first and agree on a shop into which you will hand the modem . This is what they told me .
Once they have the modem they will cancel the direct debit and will issue a refund cheque. They are a bit hazy as to whether the shop will have the cheque waiting when you get there or whether they post it straight away .
You had better cancel the direct debit yourself, in case.
I have been assured that no debt collecting goons will be used at any stage .
(You may now ring that number for tech support from now on if thats any good to you )
Its a clean break arrangement . Money back . No compo for the grief however.
You people complain of slow three speeds, if i got even 1 mb i would be delighted, i have the 3 modem and im from rural donegal, the speed i get from it is slower than dial up, the ONLY alternative for broadband in this rejected forgotten about county is Satellite which is ridicuolusly expensive, and eircom are in no rush to get broadband in donegal or indeed any rural locations because they make MORE money on dial up users. crap coverage from three, no broadband from eircom. what is one to do…
Ah Peadar, I feel your pain. Though I myself an situated in the leafy suburbs of 3G land, as a web developer I have a client in Convoy (http:/www.greenpasturesdonegal.com) who was facing the exact same issue.
They endured sub-dialup speed satellite for over 2 years while they waited on an alternative. Now they have wireless broadband and it has revolutionised their internet usage. Private providers will not act on this without some government intervention.
3 mobile broadband is a joke which is not as funny as the provider might think. Speed – dial-up and less, not compatible with outlook express, good for surfing? – not in the least (unless you’re happy enough with reading headlines – thanx “three” I’d rather buy myself a newspaper for that). Liers, cheaters. TV ads – load of crap. Whoever is responsible for that should be jailed, period.
Well, I must still be very lucky consistently pulling 500-1,000kbps with 3Ireland here in the Shannon Estuary. Connected without problem in Northern Ireland. I’m still reasonably happy with 3. At the end of the day, I use Opera and Firefox and Netscape; never IE Explorer unless banking! I do hope everyone has a better experience with 3 in the future. It is a great pity 3 does not allow roaming in Germany, however!
Can anyone use successfully VOIP on three broadband? Is it all bad experiences?
Okay, I’ve been very critical of the service offer by 3 in the past (see recent comments)
However, over the past 7-10 days the speed seems to be increasing to an acceptable level (~200kbps download, capped ~57kbps upload) and there has been fewer incidents of the connection being lost or trying to establisg a connection.
Currently living and using this 3 service in Dublin 4, so it is near the city (~2 miles)
Soooo , despite earlier rants I will not claim my refund just yet, even if it is still slower than other fixed wire broadband isps.
RE: VOIP… no problems at all (*but then again, i have used dial up in the past for some VOIP). Ditch all landlines and lets all VOIP.
Basically, I think that 3 must have listened to the complaints and done something about it; at least for those of us near Dublin city. Lets hope that they improve the service further and include port forwarding soon.
If u get 3G thru Perlico, i take it it’s still gonna be as crap as normal. Anyone know if coverage in Kilkenny is any good? Or O2 coverage in Kilkenny?
Hi Custard, hope you can help me with this!
Firstly, will the D-LINK DIR-451 router allow me to port-forward using 3’s usb modem? (or 3’s service)
Also, as my signal is very poor using the huawei e220 modem (3’s modem), would I get a better signal if I swapped this for the datacard version? Can the datacard be used with an antenna? – if it can this would be fantastic, as I’d appreciate any way to improve my signal!
Just wondering also, if you know of any way how I could get a driver for an IPCOP machine ( which uses an linux OS ) as I’m presently using this at home on dialup on an old pentium 1 to update dyndns, and port-forward.
Maybe you could pass on to me as well please, if you have any problems with port-forwarding with the D-LINK DIR-451 router?
Really enjoyed reading the postings here, and on boards.ie, to know I wasn’t alone..
download speeds generally 70kb and lower. Customer service was supposed to call me back about this problem before trial period was up. Haven’t heard from them!
I have been complaining about the service to them since I got it,even threatened to stop the DD I was told I signed up for 12 months.How about 1.4 k/b per second, its pure shite and they are getting away with it
hi this is my first month i have had the three modem at first it was great letting me access the things i need and downloading at decent speeds but then it gradually started getting sh!t im lucky to even get 1 mbps never mind 3.6 and the speeds just drop to 0 all the time leaving me to wait for ages for a web page to open this network is not recommended and i have signed for a 24 month contract 🙁
I’m looking to get an internet connection with a short term contract (pref 6 month). Now I’m not so sure as they all seem to be bundled with 12 – 24 month contracts and slow dodgy connections that dont sweeten it any. Its the doldrums of internet caffs for now. Scurvy Knaves!
I signed up for the 3 HSDPA service in July.
After 3 months of waiting for them to sort out the Outlook e-mail mess (and weekly calls to tech support over the last 3 weeks) I informed “Monica” this morning that I would be canceling the direct debit.
After much argy-bargy and a discussion with her supervisor, Monica agreed to cancel the contract and waive the €154.99 contract termination fee. I won’t be getting a refund on the modem, however.
Now, I’ll sign-up with Vodafone or O2 in the knowledge that I’ll be able to send/receive e-mails from Outlook. Oh joy.
Do not order.
I returned my modem the same day it was delivered as the service was so poor and now I am finding it very awkward to get a refund. The modem was returned to 3 by registered post and delivery confirmed almost a month ago.
I will never order anything from 3 again.
I am having difficulty with my email. I followed the direction on the 3 website for Outlook Express. My outgoing mail now passes through the mail-relay.3ireland.ie server.
Following completion of the above, I checked for new mail and received it without difficulty. I then sent a number of email to friends and a few to my own email addresses. That was almost 2 weeks ago. Non were delivered. I did however receive a Failure Message for two of the emails I sent from myself to myself
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail-relay.3ireland.ie.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
:
Sorry, I wasn’t able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1)
I’m not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.
Has anyone else had similar difficulties? I would love to get this sorted out. I telephone 3 for help. He talked me through the settings to get mail-relay.3ireland.ie. It was already set up and he confirmed that it was correct. He then asked me to send an email and hung up on me. Of course it didn’t work as the settings were the same as before the phone call.
This is a disgrace. Shame on Three Ireland but even more shame on COMREG for allocating a 3G license to them.
This email fiasco started on August 9th when they transferred their network to an Irish ISP. Four months later they haven’t sorted this out. Really the technical competency of the companies awarded these licenses in future should be checked.
Three Ireland are a total joke now. The service is patchy and unreliable and customer service in India is practically unusable.
Meanwhile all the state agencies who should be defending Irish consumers in these matters such as COMREG and the ASA have basically washed their hands of this.
Agree completely with the points been made today. On 3, its practically impossible to send mail using outlook. Their customer support are shockingly bad. Their service continues to be painfully patchy at best and yet none of the state agencies appear willing or capable of doing anything. I’ve complained half a dozen times at this point and, as far as i am aware I’ve not received even acknowledgment from Comreg.
If someone was willing to organise a legal action against 3 would others be willing to sign up to it?
Not sure what luck you will have with legal action. Courts are always a roulette wheel. I think a sustained campaign of bad publicity for them would be a much more effective spur to get them to sort themselves out.
The internet is the perfect vehicle for this kind of thing. People who are interested in the kinds of services 3 provide are usually a little more tech-savvy and would be more likely to research on the Internet before committing to services. I’ve personally been doing what I can to improve the quality of service Three Ireland are offering with their data packages by putting pressure on their Internet marketing efforts. A Google search for “X-Series Ireland” now returns posts I’ve made above 3’s website bearing in mind that if it is true it is not libellous.
By posting here you have done potential customers a great service and applied a little more pressure on 3 in the process and given that it takes over four months to address a relatively straight-forward SMTP issue it seems they need all the pressure we can put on them.
While I’m on about this another thing that strikes me since I engaged with Three was COMREG’s assertion that broadband services aren’t regulated here.
In this day and age it seems incredible to me that this is so.
Also the ASA claimed it couldn’t take 3 Ireland to task on their advertising when the adverts appeared on 3’s own site! They only have powers to intervene if the adverts are hosted by third parties – why is this so?????
Had a 3 modem for two days now. Best speed yet has been 222kb/sec. Mail send/receive via OE seems fine, but the speed is really annoying. Haven’t had too many drop-offs. BTW does anybody know whether/how one can connect the modem up to a home network – it’d be nice to be able to access the www from any of the machines at home without having to move the modem around (assuming download speed is not severly affected)?
Has anyone sorted outlook on 3? If so can they please let me know SMTP. I’m not tech savvy, just trying to run a small business and need email, 3 technical support is a nightmare, please help…
Thanks
HI,
The outlook issue seems to be resolved now
It may be bad in ireland, But I am over in England, in a town you probably never heard of, and neither have most people. Hull! do a search for it Hull. You results will be awful. I got a 3 USB Modem – No choice, I can’t get a DSL line. Not working on Windows 2003, Hates the Apple, Used my mouses com port and all the rest – no mouse no printer or anything, just keyboard screen and modem coz it blocked all COM and LPT ports for itself. Mailed 3, No reply. Have multiple IP address and my friend can just remote desktop me as he pleases because they have no good server, and so i am the host, that’s illegal, all computers on 3 must be breaking a law because they aren’t registered domains or computers for the web, the service hides them 3G sucks!
hi everyone.
I’m posting on my iPod touch so my grammar might be poor.
I was wondering if its possible to set up a private network with the modem and a normal router.
I’m in boarding school (4th yr) and want to set up a wireless Internet connection between a couple friends.
Any help would be greatly apreaciated.
Regards, Dean.
3 Irelands mobile broadband is pure rubbish, i was with Irish Broadband there when i first moved down, which itself is bad, but with promises of up to 3.6 mbps and smoth surfing guaranteed i can verify that they are misleading people with that, i went with them cause they offered me the most ocst effective deal. was fine for the first week or so, but i did not like the fact that i had a UK IP address when i was in dublin, didnt bother me so much when i traveled to belfast, but anyways, it caused issues with me running test orders on my billing system as it was seeing my address as irish and my ip as uk, so obviously test orders were being logged as fraud. I since changed my computer to a ibook G4 which i got cheap, and being an apple fan i was loving the fact that on their site it states that there is support for OSX 10.4, just as well mine runs 10.4 i thought, untill i went through the documentation and it constantly told me that the APN setup failed. basicly the purpose of this rant is that 3 Irelands broadband service is terrible and im now just paying 20 a month until the end of the contract, decided to go for fixed line DSL, much more stable
can anyone tell me can i use 3 mobile broadband for the playstation 3 and how
i have 02 just outside femoy i grant i live high up but have no problem getting 3.5 most of the time i was amazed when i read this boards 02 is 30 a month with 10gb i will say though its only one room i can get 3.5 but compared to dial up excellent you can go to the shop get the modem if your not happy bring it back within 7 days and get your money back
it’s complicated to run a shared connection on the dongle i’ve seen many people ask, and I’m going into my local town in a couple of hours to pay termination fee for this 3 (It’s incompatible with Windows Server 2003) – if you want to use it for e.g. PS3, you’ll need a computer network and somehow get the PS3 to plug into/or wirelessly connect to the PC network, put the modem on a PC, connect and then disconnect, It varies what the PC is running, in windows press your windows key and R at the same time, in the box type “Netsetup” without quotes, set it up so “3 USB Modem” is the shared internet connection. If apple – I don’t know but there must be a way of sharing it.
Interestingly in the UK i am getting an Irish IP and PayPal don’t like it – do you think the sattelites are messed up?
i hav 2 say im well unimpressed, as alot of the comments above state, wit 3 mobile broadband. where i live in Donegal there is no fixed line broadband so this is d only alternative as dial ups wicked expensive if online for any length of time. u get great coverage wit ur 3 network mobile fone, d broadbands pathetic tho. the odd time(very rarely) u get between 200 and 400kps, a real treat. majority of the time tho its no quicker or worse than dial up….really really frustrating! however I was in dublin for a weekend break a while back and the quality was great, couldnt believe it was the same product, nothing lower than 1.5mb per sec. 3 needs to pull their finger out n give quality service to ALL their broadband customers!!!
Although not exactly related to 3 mobile broadband. I was in Kilkenny and all the Vodaphone shops have an ad in them for mobile broadband from Vodaphone. There is one little thing in tiny print that caught my eye:
They are selling “nearly new” 3G modems for EUR49
I imagine they had so many customers giving the modem back they are trying to offload them again!!!
Obviously Vodaphone has not learnt their lesson. You dont do that to clients! If it was up to me I would suspend the service, iron out the issues and remarket it again.
Leaving it as it is and adding more customers will just make the problem bigger.
I am a very dissatisfied 3 Ireland Broadband customer. So a few observations and addtions to the above.
The Irish Advertising Standards Authority have basically forbidden 3 to advertise the 3.6Mb speed due to the high volume of complaints. However, 3 lied to the ASA in their replies to them which can be upheld by many 3 customers.
At one stage, 3 tech support admitted that they had oversold the product and could not support it YET 3 continued to advertise and sell the product.
The Office of Consumer Affairs say they are “aware of and monitoring the situation with 3” whatever that means.
I have spent untold hours on the phone to 3. They are basically useless. Have, however, had the termination fee removed – now will continue (probably to Small Claims Court) to have cost of modem refunded.
Possible useful contacts:
Three Ireland Head Office, 6 – 10 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2. Telephone 01 – 5426300.
email: customer.relations@three.ie
Office of Consumer Affairs: Telephone: 1890 432 432.
Question to anyone who can answer – Did COMREG issue 3 Ireland with their license to operate the service. Did they then completely wash their hands of it? How can they justify that?
Avoid 3 Ireland UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.
The scandalous state of affairs here in Ireland at the moment is that broadband services are NOT regulated in any way, shape or form. This is COMREG’s reason for not taking any action in the case of Three.
It is impossible to say why bodies like the ASA and the Office of Consumer Affairs have not taken any definitive action on this issue. Irish broadband consumers have basically been abandoned by all the regulatory bodies in this area.
I would love to see people coming together to lobby the government on this issue.
Back in the summer Three Ireland soft-launched X-Series, basically an unlimited data package for certain phones. However, one of the main facilities promised by this service has not worked correctly here since day one – streaming third party streams such as BBC or RTE radio in Realplayer.
Back in September, I and several other customers brought this issue to the attention of Three but to date, no resolution or even meaningful response has been forthcoming.There
There have been some mumblings from 3 that this is a problem isolated to me but as you can see here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1 this is not the case.
If you or anyone you know has had similar issues then I would appreciate if you would make this known on the thread as it is my intention to direct Three to it in due course in one final attempt to get this sorted.
Ooops, the link above should have been
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055220359
I purchased a 3 modem in late August and experienced many problems with it. Biggest problem was connected with not being able to send and receive emails. Slowly 3 managed to overcome this probem by relaying the sending of emails through it own server mail-relay.3ireland.ie. Well over 90% of my emails that I send now arrive at their intended destination. I get the usual message connected with the failure to deliver a few days later. While it appears to be undependable, I sometimes wonder if their is a problem at the recipients side….that I am blaming 3 unfairly.
Last week however, I decided to contact Customer Service at 3 via email, in connection with a problem that I am experiencing. This arrived at my inbox this morning……………Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail-relay.3ireland.ie.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
:
Sorry, I wasn’t able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1)
I’m not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.
— Below this line is a copy of the message.
It seems that they cannot now find their own email address. Is this a new low for 3?????
Got 3 Mobile Broadband yesterday, what a Joke speeds of less then 56K up and a max of 1000K down, this was on the HSDPA network. Brought it back today and got my money back, suggest anybody reading this do the same!!
Have 3 Data Modem since early last year.
It frequently disconnects.
3kbps is a common speed; yes ‘3’ – the irony, with the odd spike to 300 – 700kbps.
Downloading a big file? might take a few min, might take a few hours… might never happen.
€19.99pm – Connection is rubbish in Ennis, Shannon, Youghal.
USB connection on Data Modem end is starting to fail; modem now can’t be touched once I have a connection.
Ireland’s internet access is an embarrassment – Looks like Paris is getting 100Mbp for less than €20 pm!!
So far in 2008 connection is worse than ever!!
from what I am told, this jumping from 300k to 700k is a common issue.
3 have an ongoing project to increase the backhaul connections (effectively the bandwidth from the radio mast to the Internet) to 155Mbps x 3, essentially 500Mbps, connecting all the sites, so you should get a more sustained connection soon.
Also, 7.2Mbps is in the pipelines.
Bernard,
What is the point of offering 7.2 Mbit connections when you cannot even reliably offer a 3 megabit connection?
3 should get their act together, this would not be tolerated in any other country. Also a 7.2 megabit connection is pointless, as most other countries can offer 10 or 20 megabit connections (france or norway for example) for less than half what 3 charges.
The Real streaming issue I reported first in Auguest, again in September and finally this February still persists – that’s 6 months 3 have had to address this issue but they haven’t. I can only assume they can not. COMREG might be wise to bear this in mind when assessing candidates for the national broadband scheme.
Good point Bluefrog !
Bernard for example I think works for 3 due to his tone and the way he talks abt 3.
In my view he is just playing damage control and mind games.
I don’t think anyone need worry about 3 being party to the national broadband scheme. I firmly believe that they will be gone from the Irish market within 18 months.
Anyone who subscribed to their abysmal service will not renew their contracts. A lot of people are hanging on to their subscriptions because of the punitive early termination fees but, once 12 months is up, that will be it.
3 have ceased advertising their product so one must assume that they are cutting their losses. In addition, no company would treat their clients like they do if they were in for the long haul. It’s a small country and word travels.
They are almost evangelical in their attempts to sign customers up to direct debit contracts and unbelieveably persistent in harrassing clients about overdue bills – money must be tight, methinks.
Economies of scale will dictate that 3’s tenure in Ireland will be short lived and they will ultimately go the way of Smart Telecom.
18 months. You read it here first…
I agree with that. If my company treated anyone like the way 3 have been treating “customers”, then I would be out of business in less than 3 months.
3 have forgotten business 101 which is : treat your customer well and make sure they are happy.
As I am sure you know, if you make 1 person a very happy client he or she will tell his ir her friends and the business ends up with more clients.
If a business pisses of 1 person, he or she will tell everyone in the pub , all their friends , all their family and , then the business in question will be then (1) lost at least two potential customers , (2) will have to spend money on damage control , (3) spend more money on marketing / advertising to get the same level of business that the probably would have got if they had kept the origional customer happy.
@paulwalsh: Nope you’re wrong. i work for nokia siemens networks. (i didn’t mention above, in other comments, who exactly i worked for but i made it clear i didn’t work for Three).
My comments are in no way supposed to be damage limiting.
In my work for nsn, i work on some projects (this main mobile isp project thankfully was not one nsn was awarded!) for three ireland (including other operators).
Three definately got it wrong when it came to this product, you won’t hear any other view from me on that! Everyone and there dog knows it.
This is the problem with 3G “broadband”, either its done right or its something people will beat you with.
And rightly so.
Bernard,
I apologise, in that case for saying you worked for three, when clearly that is not the case.
Yes. you are right, mobile broadband needs to be done properly or they neeed not bother, obviously 3 are bliend to this.
Sorry 🙂
I got 3 “Broadbad” (A term to be used very loosely) a few months ago and at first it was ok, well better than dial-up. Then it went downhill. Shortly after it was brought up on the Matt Cooper show on today FM and, like a miracle for a few weeks, it was excellent. I even posted in that boards.ie thread of how well i was getting along with it – and was accused of being a three spy but thats a diffent story.
All was great up to christmas, and it has gone down hill at such a rapid rate its not funny anymore (it too about 3 mins to load this page) Contacted helpline to be left on hold for ages and was told i’ll be contacted within 24 hours. Still waiting on a call!!
Just waiting to organise a disconnection now.
Anyone use digiweb or lastmile?
Charlie.
I have been working with three for the past 6-7 months in the technical department.
I really know how u guys feel about the broadband service.
According to what i know, three is planning to implement many sites across ireland so that customer can get a better coverage and speed.
Next time whenever any 1 calls the customer service make sure to check if any sites are being planned near ur place.
You can get the actual dates when it will be implemented.
I know whenever you call u get the same Jazz that it will be working soon.
“Our backend team is workin on it”
“we will investigate”
I hope with the implemetation of this sites the network would be a bit better.
If u have any issue with outlook,do let me know i will inform you how u can make the most when u call the helpline number.
analyzer :
If you have been working for the last 6 or 7 months in the broadband support section..how come 3 is actually paying attention, after at least 6 months of slow speeds, big ping latency, outlook problems etc
I will admit you did offer to help as much as you can but, thats no really helpful, as nobody knows your direct number and your name. Plus it is catch 22 because if every tom, dick and harry who has 3 *cough* slowband, oops I meant “broadband”, you would never get any work done. Also the fact that you are in support, is not very helpful, if you were in management, that would be more useful as you would have more “power” to push things through. (hint to 3 – Listen to your customers and act on their complaints or you will be out of business very soon, and good riddance to bad rubbish in that case).
I have to agree with Son of A Servant – I personally can’t wait for my 12 month contract to expire so I can get rid of the damn thing and I’d imagine there are a hell of a lot of 3 customers in the same frame of mind. Similarly, due to my rants over poor level of service and customer support I doubt very much whether anyone within a 2 mile radius of me will ever consider signing up. The problem isn’t with the support staff, who seem to be just as frustrated by the whole thing, it’s with the core management who seem to be padding along with there fingers in there ears and their heads in the sand humming “Momey Money Money” to themselves. I’ve got fed up moaning about it and will complain with me feet by walking away as soon as I can.
Im so glad im not the only one suffering from this apawling “broadband” service. It IS ‘SLOW AND UNSTABLE’, the thing is always breaking down, the support staff God help them are useless and never call you back when they say they are going to…i have 7 months left on my contract…POOR ME!!! AND POOR ALL OF YOU TOO!! as i said im glad im not the only one…Pity i didnt take on the advice that was posted here before i signed up for this trash…From what I read, the Irish service is a disgrace on the whole, but thats no excuse for a company like 3 to be cutting their losses and treating customers like crap
The latest rumour I hear is that, because of the truly horrendous problems they’ve had with their service, 3 have switched off their network for a month in order to ‘fix’ it. Has anyone else heard anything about this?
If they have switched off for ‘repairs’, what are the chances they’ll never actually switch it on again but, instead, ride quietly off into the sunset with our money?
Answers on a postcard…???!!!
The latest rumour I hear is that, because of the truly horrendous problems they’ve had with their service, 3 have switched off their network for a month in order to ‘fix’ it.
where have you heard such a ridiculous story?
Has anyone else heard anything about this?
no, I have not heard this. as of 3PM today when I last logged onto a number of the network devices, it was still running.
Where did you hear such a story?
If they have switched off for ‘repairs’, what are the chances they’ll never actually switch it on again but, instead, ride quietly off into the sunset with our money?
chances are slim and none.
NB: again, I don’t work for 3 Ireland.
No,
I have heard nothing about this all all. It owuld not make sense to do it like that.
If it was me, I would get a team of IT sengineers out to a site at a time (or several sites at a time) and work from there. But turn it off for a month…..why would they? Most of time when doing upgrades a reboot is needed, but turning it off is overkill.
where did ya heard that?
Hi Bernard and Paul,
The story came from a 3 agent but seemed unlikely so I thought I’d check. And there we are. Rumour and gossip, trouble and strife. Stranger things have happened though.
Mind you, if you were 3, how would you dig yourself out of the massive hole they have created? Their position looks increasingly irredeemable from where I’m sitting.
In any case, all signs point to their days in Ireland being numbered whatever they do now. The only possible way they could redeem themselves would be to give away free money. And even then, I wouldn’t deal with them again if they were the last broadband provider on the planet. And there’s hundreds like me.
Hi All,
If I was 3 how would I dig myself out of this hole?
Ohhh, thats a hard question and I am frankly surprised 3 havent asked themselves that. They are probably too busy counting the money (or should I say whats left of it as really when subscribers finish their 12 month term, very few if any will re-signup)
Anyway, how would I fix this problem:
(1) Find out how many wireless broadband customers they have first.
(2) Get a department setup to get a list of all customers who are experiencing problems.
(3) Email and or send a letter to each and every customer who are having consistant problems
(4) When theses letters and letters come in, sort them out by their type of problem and for what mobile broadband site.
(5) Once 3 know the sites that are giving clients probelms, then they should dispach teams that specialises in that ares (pop3, imap, network admin etc). For example say one site is giving pop and speed issues, they should dispach a team that can fix or upgrade or whatever to that site as well as a network engineer team.
(6) Repeat point (5) for each and every site.
That will admitably, cost quite a bit of money and time, and how long it will take depends on the infrastructure or topology of the network. But I for one am sure if 3 are going to moan that its too expensive, all they have to do is fire the IT team, a few management people and replace them with people who know how to do their job properly, cos clearly they havent a clue.
I for one believe in doing something, and doing it properly. You cannot take shortcuts in the backbone of a network that is or going to be used by a lot of people as it leads to problems that are being experienced like now.
I think 3 dug their own hole, because they did not invest enough into the backbine of the wireless network and they also over-subscribed people to some areas, compounding the problem.
3 are just like the ostrich with his head in the sand, hoping all this will just blow over. After several months its obvious they are in over their head and havent a clue what they are doing.
i agree with every bad comment made about the 3 modem and mainly the speeds or lack of it .to make things worse we all know why its not consistant and reliable ,its over subscribed!to make things worse for us on a contract 3 are now giving there modem out on a pay as you go service,so more people will be using it ,which means less speed for all
Agreed with ur Mr Paul Walsh
I am in no ways supporting three.
I am trying to help u people get better service.
U can ask me anything and u will get the plain truth.
Do you think it would be good if i gave my direct number or name?
Will it be possible for me to help all the customer at once?
I can help people out here in the forum.
Tell me what difference it would make if i was from the management.
There are many people who complain to comreg what difference did that make.
I know u r dissappointed with the service, who will not be?
I know if i was in ur position i would have done the same thing.
If u want to make changes its ur unity that will help make changes.
“www.boards.ie”
This particular forum really had some impact on three.
With the implementation of some sites, some of the customers are getting better services.
I will help u with te names of some of the best advisor who can help u to fix data modem issue but even they would not be able to help u with the network issues.
Mr. Rob
“the support staff God help them are useless ”
I do not agree with u on this.
Tell me what they can do if it is anetwork issue other than just escalating it.
Untill and unless they do not get a revert on it how will they call u back.
Have u ever appreciated a support staff by telling the manager that he was good if they have really helped u?
Did the data modem work fine within the 1st 14 when u were under the money back Gurantee?
The latest rumour I hear is that, because of the truly horrendous problems they’ve had with their service, 3 have switched off their network for a month in order to ‘fix’ it.
This is just a Rumour.
or should I say whats left of it as really when subscribers finish their 12 month term, very few if any will re-signup
Every day i take atleast 5 new installation calls,
2) Get a department setup to get a list of all customers who are experiencing problems.
We collect this data and then we do call up most of the customers.
3) Email and or send a letter to each and every customer who are having consistant problems
Agree with this.
These customer should be given special attention.
“one site is giving pop and speed issues”
Mr Paul can u let me know how POP settings are related to a particular area.
It can give speed issue but didnt under why will a site give POP problems.
Let me know what is ur incoming mail server.
I will try to help u out if u have any problems with it.
Mr Paul how can 3 stop over- subscribing customer in a particular location?
I think the only solution for this would be to implement more sites on that particular location if that is possible.
But this again would require lot of time and money.
Analyzer :
I understand that you are trying to help people and thats great. It is appreciated. The problem is that even if you gave out your telephone number and direct email, the fact is there is very little you can do unless you are able to fix the network issues themselves.
That is why I pointed out that it might have been better if you were in management as you would be in a position then to order the team(s) that fix and upkeep the network, and then iron out the problems.
A smart move by 3 would be to stop taking on customers and fix the problems, however because the money is rolling in for them they wont. If 3 stopped taking on customers the problems would be managenable, but since they keep taking on customers the problem is just going to get bigger and bigger.
ComReg in my opinion is just a small group of people trying to play politics, who cannot “walk it like they talk it”.
I have heard and used boards.ie
Thanks for the offer of the best person to help with the modem issues, but you said it yourself “even they cannot help with the network issues”, which is the core of the problem, and 3 are compounding the issue by subscribing even more people.
Fair comment Analyser – actually I think if people had been more organised on Boards there would have been action sooner from Three. I suspect that many of the issues are down to poor network coverage now but there are other issues that remain unresolved and there seems little chance of them being addressed.
I’m thinking particularly of the issue with their X-Series package where third party Real streams drop after 1 minute and 44 seconds – this also seems to be a problem in the UK. I’ve been trying since September to get some resolution on this with Three to no avail. Even trying to explain the problem to customer service is virtually impossible.
ive been told that the changes in download speed will be sorted by the 1st week of march as the masts are being upgraded to a 1 what ever that is ,this should give all a more constant service ,has any one else heard this ?
Agreed Mr Paul Walsh i wish the managenent was better.
They forgot the 3 basic things of management
1> Planning
2> Organising
AND
3> Controlling.
I think it a high time the top-level manager do something about it.
They are reponsible for taking major decisions for the organisation as a whole and are accountable for its impact on the society at large.
“If 3 stopped taking on customers the problems would be managenable”,
This cannot be possible right, three or any other network cannot stop a customer from joining.
“but since they keep taking on customers the problem is just going to get bigger and bigger.”
Agreed with this it will be a nightmare once 3 modem goes prepaid or pay as you go.
I am sure there will be many customer who will have other queries which we can try to resolve here.
E220 modem is soon going to be stopped.
Or shall say it has already been stopped.
They have come with ZTE modem(ZTE MF622).
Agreed with on that Bluefrog
If people would have put more pressure things would have been better.
Can u help with whivh 3rd party application who are talking about in particular?
I had a few question
1> Are this 3rd party application guranteed to work on other networks?
2> Is all port open for mobile on all the other networks?
I am amazed at the number of 3 apologists here. They have already been given the benefit of the doubt for long enough.
Many people held on to their modems after the 14 day trial period on promises of improved service. These promises are still the only thing that 3 seem able to deliver. And some people here still believe them???
Get real. They are never going to fix their system. From some of the post above we can deduce that they may change their system but the present one is, in my opinion, unfixable. At least by 3.
The fact that people are still signing up for this service is no recommendation. I mean, people still watch Big Brother, X Factor, Pop Idol and vote for dodgy politicians. It doesn’t mean they’re right.
Meanwhile 3 rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic failure of their broadband network. Swim people!
its 5 am ,i had to get up early to day so thought id see what speed was like whilst you were all in bed ,my highest was 700kbps and the service a bit more constant.it shows that the problem with speed is over use and over suscribed.my service has been getting worse and slower each month and ive had enough!the only way to sort a problem is by protesting in mass numbers only ten would 3 listen .the french have this attitude and they get things done,we sit back,complain but carry on paying and suffering.if we all stand together and act as one issues will get the attention they need,or we all take the modem back to a local store on the same day and demand a full refund,it will force 3 into action.if we do nothing then nothing will happen
MR.steve o
“if we all stand together and act as one issues will get the attention they need,or we all take the modem back to a local store on the same day and demand a full refund,it will force 3 into action.if we do nothing then nothing will happen”
Thats what i meant by saying that the forum boards.ie had some effect.
I want u people to take some action.
Thats the reason i hinted by mentioning about boards.ie
F**K it I’ve a better idea. Let’s all move to South F**king Korea!
I signed up with 3 last year for mobile broadband.I tested it for the trial period, which is part of the contract.I found that the speed was away too slow.My real trouble began when I decided to send the modem back within the time frame in the contract.I received letters from a money collecting agency in England threatening legal proceedings against me.These letters came to me even after I had contacted customer services at 3, and followed their instructions on what to do regards sending the modem back to them within the trial period.My advice to anyone is to stay away from 3.Gerry
I for one will be cancelling my contract with 3 when the 12 months is up in June. I can’t wait to make that phonecall telling them they’re not going to get any more of my hard earned cash. It still makes me angry to think about how they’ve gotten away with ripping off Irish consumers. After 9 months of being a 3 customer, I now know that they’re never going to fix the problems with their “broadband” and that all we’ll ever get are Indians trying to get us to reinstall software and unplug the modems.
Worse still, Comreg, the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland and the National Consumer Agency have proved to be about as useful as an underwater bicycle. They’ve given the likes of 3 carte blanche to rip off Irish consumers and by God, they’ve taken advantage of this.
Firetrap I know you are quite annoyed with the services three ireland provide and so am I.
“that all we’ll ever get are Indians trying to get us to reinstall software and unplug the modems.”
This is only if You get an error message as data modem Invalid.
After all when you call a customer service and if you are getting an error message as 619 then can do nothing because its a network issue.
But sometimes just by checking the APN or trying a manual network selection resolves the issue.
These INDIANS are there to help u.
And that too if it is not a network fault.
does 3’s modem E220 only support an uplink speed of 384Kb/s ?
how come I get 15Kb/s which is about 1/20 of rated upload speed ?
what do you get for upload speed ?
I am in Co. Clare area, never went above 16Kb/s.
Too slow. I want to cancel the contract. They say no, you must ….
I think it is shit!
Just found this thread, and I thought I was the only one with problems with the O2 3G ‘broadband’. This is my second wireless ISP installation, the second being worse than the first. Stay away from these wireless broadband fiascoes, its all bells and whistles the first couple of days then it goes south quickly. An IR link at 9600 with my nokia handset is faster, this is poor service and is criminal that they take money from our pockets for this poor service, well I tell yea I’m going to cancel this trash as soon as I can and maybe more expensive to go with a wired Internet solution but it will not be killing an Internet experience, we a bigger fools for falling for their sales blurb, lets just cancel all the wireless connections we have, fight the machine!
And another thing, after reading through some of the replies, I find it astounding that POP3/IMAP/SMTP is timing out, in less developed countries I’ve had these services working over poor connections with network latency, over CODAN Radio/VPN however it never timed out, 21st Century Ireland appear to be going backwards.
As the Irish poet in me *cough* ‘Broadband me arse!’ O2kbps They should advertise more accurately ‘Why bother with smooth internet experience, when you could go 3G? We have DNS issues up the ying yang, latency like you never seen it before’.
Free Advice to these Networks: STOP ROBBING OUR HARD EARNED CASH! SORT YOURSELVES OUT, you see the deal is we pay for a service that is broadband, so in essence we are paying for nothing. Forget COMREG their hand are tied, this country really needs to setup a proper body to monitor and distribute these services reliably.
Press F5 to refresh Page:
Your Connection has Timed Out . . . .
wonderful please sit there for another while, while something does something else, and watch the hourglass rotate to keep you mesmerized while you wait some more for the next time out message.
sod this I’m quiting what a waste of time this connection is.
HHmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm maybe the financial regulator might be the door to knock on . . . . .
Well, 10 months down the line from when I signed up for the 3 Broadband, it’s still a p!ss poor product. Speeds are reasonably OK during the daytime when most people aren’t actually using the network. In the evening, things grind to a halt. I had to resort to dial-up one evening recently and it seemed fast in comparison to my so-called Broadband connection.
What annoys me is that the government includes mobile broadband in their broadband stats. I’ve seen O2 and Vodafone broadband in operation – while they’re better than 3, none of them are really broadband. It’s a cop-out to think that mobile broadband is a viable alternative to DSL etc.
Just in case anyone reading this is considering buying the 3 mobile broadband, the advice is don’t. The people on this site are not a bunch of crack pots in the minority. I don’t know how many times I have advised friends and family not to go near 3 mobile only to be ignored and then having them realise what a pup they have bought afterwards. Just don’t do it!
The service has been appalling since Xmas. I dunno which is gonna go first, my 3 broadband modem out the window or me with a stress induced heart attack.
Anyway, question. I should be near the end of my contract but moved house a while back and the invoices are in a box somewhere. Is there a handy way to find out when the contract time is up?
Also, any recommendations as to what service to move to? I work around the country (mainly east coast and large urban centres west coast) from a laptop so have a real need for mobile broadband.
Thanks to everyone on this site by the way, at least it’s made me feel I’m not on my own…
hi im very new to all this but i live in the uk and i bought a zte mf622 pay as u go modem and then found out that three blocked the ports so personly i think its a rip of and i have reported them to trading standards because they dont advertise that they block the ports so be aware people if your going to buy one of these be aware that they do block ports and is impossible to forward the ports on pay as u go modems i think your far better off going on contract i even rang three broadband adverisers and they didnt have a clue about ports i no nothing bout computers but even i know what ports are
Hi all,
Obviously 3 broadband is not worth it. I would be very interested in hearing is any of you have experienced broadband with Vodaphone or O2.
Only think i dont like is the miniscule monthly download limit from both. Vodaphone limit is 5gb and O2 limit is 10gb
Please post you experience on these is you can.
I really need mobile broadband with my laptop as I travel quite a lot around Ireland.
Thanks
Just purchased the 3g Broadband and can’t say I’m pleased. Had Rip Wave previously which was possibly faster! 3G is compact and wireless but slow! Does anyone have a better alternative to portable broadband? I would be more than happy to send the 3g unit back although I am not aware of a better wireless alternative for around €20/mth.
Hi philip andrew,
just want to let you know, it is the same if you are under a contract in Ireland. Here too we can’t forward ports, so you’re missing nothing.
Another annoying thing about 3 as well is, subscribers are hidden behind a NAT (firewall) everyone sharing a single public IP address… 3 say this is to protect subscribers from malicious programs/software – I reckon it’s just to save money, as IP addresses are expensive. And one thing I have come to understand about 3, they are a cheap ass-ways crappy service. They don’t even qualify to be addressed as “broadband”
Maybe if you hear about a mobile ISP allowing port-forwarding, offering a public IP address (in Ireland) you might pm me, or even drop word here.. as I’m looking for such a provider to go to, once my term of contract ends with 3. Or maybe anyone out there might let me know?
Take Care 🙂
Hi philip andrew
Just want to let you know, port-forwarding also isn’t allowed under contract with 3 So you’re missing nothing.. I’ve had this service now for several months, and have gone hoarse getting onto 3 about this.. I’ve decided now just to wait out my time and once it’s up, (that is once my term of contract has ended) change providers.. Does anyone know if o2 or Vodafone allow port-forwarding, offer subscribers there own public IP address? Since 3 obviously don’t.
I joined 3 (Ireland) knowing knowing about NAT, now I wish I had researched things better.. As since then I really feel I’m imprisoned, (being denied of all my rights), unable to do little more than view the NET.. Even downloading files is touch and go, as you find a lot you can’t with services like “rapidshare” – since you get the message you have exceeded your download limit – since everyone on this ISP is sharing the same IP address..
This really is a crappy ass-ways service.. Wouldn’t wish anyone the hell of having to put up with it.. I’m just waiting my time to leave.
Be warned. Keep away!!!
Hi all,
So far three is not that bad. I bought the modem 2 month ago.
I just bought a Dlink 451, I am trying to configure it but it’s not that easy.
The routeur doesn’t seem to recognize the USB modem.
If someone has an idea please let me know
Thanks in advance
Fred
To let you guys know, it is official that 3 is offering (cough) “mobile broadband” , as a Pay As You Go option now.
Pick up one of the free books from CarPhone Warehouse and the details are in this booklet.
Havent heard anything from 3 about this, perhaps they are trying to keep it low key, to make more revenue from an already piss poor service.
3 reminds me of the ostrich with its head in the sand, hoping the problem will go away. Offering 3 as a PAYG sevice will make the speeds and general useage of the (cough) “service even worse than it is. 3 forget that the mobile broadband service is a peer to peer service, which in effect means that the more people using it, the worse it gets.
Fred if u really think that 3’s service is not all that bad you obviously havent read a lot of comments above, or else you work for 3.
I bet if you count the comments that 95% or more will be telling you their problems. The other 5% are from people like you who try to “rationalize” the very poor service.
Paul, I don’t think Three are putting their heads in the sand. They’ve gotten away with providing an appalling service for the past year and it appears that nobody can do anything about it. And so, they can continue to rip us off.
If only I had read these comments before purchasing the rather expensive modem!
The connection and customer “service” that I have endured since January is nothing short of apalling.
I was lucky enough to get away without having to sign any 12 month contract, though the “highly competant” staff in Three do not understand what “closing my account” means!
Greetings from a frustrated O2 user. I think 3 are using the same Huawei E220 so you might find this helpful. From Oct 2007 to the New Year O2 was excellent, since then the service deteriorated to nearly unusable at busy times and awful at other times.
After waiting three weeks for tech support I tried a bit of fiddling that has worked for me.
Try setting the connection type to 3G only and band selection to GSM900/1800/WCDMA2100. Worth checking that the network connection in windows is set to maximum.
The upload speed drops but the download speed is about 4x faster. Good luck
But is this service good just for using Skype?
The problem with my 3 connection is that i play a lot of online poker… the connection cuts out constantly…..every 4 minuts to be exact..?????.. its driving me insane…i have lost a fortune too i might add…… it happens nearly all the time apart from some particular tables i play on…. is there a problem with this type of streaming content and the 3 connection….? . have tried everything but nobody in 3 seems to be able to help…..would it have something to do with the anti virus../ alyhough i think i did dis conect that too at one stage and it still happened….. anyone any ideas..? Many thanks
My son also plays poker on a laptop. It does not have an anti-virus program installed. He too finds it impossible to play poker on it. I have more or less given up on 3 at this stage. Up till Christmas 2007, I could get download speeds of 100kbps to about 150kbps. Typical speeds at present, (day or night) is usually about 0.6 kbps to about 2kbps. ABSOLUTE DISASTER. Took over 30 minutes to place one bid in Ebay
Regarding 3 and people staying with them due to punitive termination fees on their contracts and refusal by 3 to refund the price of the modem.
I have successfully terminated my a/c with them without paying a termination fee and have received a refund on the price of my modem.
The first was due to the fact that the contract was first broken by 3 as they failed to provide the service advertised. Therefore by terminating the contract, I was not breaking it and not liable for a termination fee.
The second was because I took a claim against 3 in the Small Claims Court for the price of the modem as it was not fit for purpose.
All the above is possible, people, so don’t sit there fuming. Do something! Face the fact that, if you are getting lousy service, it’s unlikely to improve. In addition, by staying with 3 you are condoning a company whose treatment of their customers constantly teeters on the brink of illegal.
Get real, people and use your rights as consumers otherwise the sort of business practices followed by 3 will become the norm. Do you want that?
Very good points you make Son of A servant. What kind of cost is involved in taking them to the small claims court? As I purchased my modem from Carphone Warehouse, is it them that I should be taking a claim against? I’ve managed to close my account without any penalty though the obnoxious arseholes in Three tried everything before dramatically turning around and closing the account and and waiving any early termination fees that they were looking for. They even passed on my details to a third party of debt collectors who attempted to charge me for their services too! Comreg were not much help but did “open the lines of communication” between myself and the “service” provider.
Hi dc. It costs only €9.00 to make a claim in the Small Claims Court. In most areas, this can be done online. I don’t believe you should claim against Carphone Warehouse. You should claim against ‘Hutchison 3G Ireland Ltd’, the 3 company here, and make the claim throught the Dublin area of the Small Claims Court.
All info on how to proceed here:
http://www.courts.ie/courts.ie/Library3.nsf/PageCurrentWebLookUpTopNav/Small%20Claims%20Procedure
Note that you can only claim for the price of the modem. All the hassle, inconvenience, grey hairs and frustration you suffered will have to be taken out on a voodoo doll or the neighbour’s dog.
But make the claim. It’s painless.
Having just purchased 3 mobile broadband just two days ago at first i thought it was a lot faster than dial up but now i am not so sure!!! I live in an area where the coverage is not that great – had to even move my pc around the house in order to get the blue light flashing and eventually found a spot in the attic. But now after a couple of days using it it seems to be quick sometimes and then so slow at other times. I’m glad i stumbled on this page and cant believe the feedback of complaints that a lot of people are experiencing. I hear them talking about what speed they are getting Where do you check that???
Also I think i should return it to the shop quickly to get my money back….What do you think!
Hi Maureen
I’d advise you to get that modem back to the shop as soon as you can. I’m a soon to be ex-3 customer and I can assure you that you’re not going to get the product that they’re promising you on those posters. I’ve been with them 11 months so I should know! Like you said, sometimes it is reasonably fast but most of time you’re going to get those crawlingly slow speeds. The only good thing about your experience is that you’re seeing these speeds now and not before your 14 day trial is up.
There’s a very long thread on Boards.ie that’s dedicated to 3’s Mobile Broadband. At the time of writing this, it was at 296 pages. Seeing as people post to it every day, I’m sure it’ll go over 300 pages soon.
Hi all. Just purchased a 3 phone and modem I find them both great. Done a bit of research and found that they use Vodafones masts and Vodafone use theirs giving 99.7% coverage on phones and 87% coverage on broadband. The problem with the slow speeds is contention, because of the growing amount of customers 3 have the system is having to work overtime. I spoke with 3 and they have started to put up new masts and also have mobile masts on the road. I hope this helps guys. PS ive used vodafone and O2 and I believe 3 is the best of the bunch.
Mark M
Dear Mark M,
I hate to burst your bubble but 3 have been promising upgrades and ‘explaining’ their service for a VERY long time now. It’s a well known dictum in business that if someone keeps having to make excuses, they are best avoided. 3 have been claiming that they are victims of their own success for far too long, yet continue to sell a product that never consistently works as they claim.
They were forbidden by the Irish Advertising Standards Authority from putting any broadband speed in their advertising because no one ever achieved that speed. And so it goes on. Believe what you like but what you have bought is not broadband.
3 will continue to be poster boys for the true definition of technology: Technology (n) ‘Stuff that doesn’t work yet’
Caveat emptor Mark M.
Well Mark M. I hope that in a month, two months time you’ll still be singing the praises of Three. I am a happy ex-Three customer who had to suffer 12 long months of their consistently dreadful service. A year should be more than enough time for any company to sort out their problems. Oh well, it’s not my problem now. Bye bye crawling speeds, email problems and “upgrades”
OMG
I wish I found this site before I signed up to these crooks. They are still rining me about a €7 Administration Charge to cancel the direct debit I signed when I got this ” fraudband ” of theirs .
They must have had 10 different Indians on over the same €7 . Each Time I tell them it was cancelled within 14 days as per their terms and that they will get nothing .
What a shower of crooks.
Sorry to hear about your troubles Tommy Caz. As far as I know, as with everything else, 3 have farmed out their debt collection to some dodgy English company. I too was getting daily phone calls over a cancelled bill (even on a saturday) until I phoned 3s head office in Dublin and told them that I would report their company secretary to the Gardai for harrasment if the call didn’t stop immediately. Oddly enough they did, and I never heard from them again.
If you don’t owe them money, and you have repeatedly told them so, then the calls definitely constitute harassment. Your contract is/was with Hutchison 3G Ireland, therefore the responsibilty lies with them.
Again for convenience, possible useful contacts:
Three Ireland Head Office:
Hutchison 3G Ireland, 6 – 10 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2.
Telephone 01 – 5426300.
email: customer.relations@three.ie (Although they never reply)
Office of Consumer Affairs: Telephone: 1890 432 432.
3…
£ is posiblibly the worst service I have ever encountered, I signed up on the promise ofgood speed, I barely get more than Dial Up levels, I also have apparently reached my download limit in 2 weeks of 5GB!! Which is impossible since I closey monitor my useage, to which I pick up Email on the go, which i as far as the useage goes.
Called 3 to be told they could not help until my billing cycle in 3 weeks was reached and till then my service was terminated.
Furious as any peron would be told them to cancel the contract and I would take my business elsewhere, I am still awaiting a response.
Be Warned 3 are the biggest joke on the market, terrible customer service, poor speeds, incorrect data recording and appaling support.
STAY AWAY!
Thanks for reading my post.
Dr Simpson
Ive had 3 broadband for the last year and a half ! The highest download speed I have ever got was 100Kbps! That speed was achieved at four o clock in the morning!! Its a bit of an inconvenience to be having to stay up till four just to use the internet! All i keep hearing is the HSDPA network are updating ! I’ve had it for a year and no improvement! I usually get page load error ! once i tryed to load the same page 57 times before i gave up just to see how bad ,slow and dissatisfing this broadband really is !! can anyone please find a way to improve it or help me in any way
Everyone, there is something wrong with my 3 this morning……just checked it with speedtest.net and my download speed is 1304kb/s!!!
Live in the midlands! Maybe its the time of day and no traffic on it.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/313914680.png
Hi Mike,
There are things you can do to improve the siuation.
1. Get a better HSDPA modem.
2. Get a decent gain antenna.
3. Perhaps use a better operating system.
For instance I have a Novatel Wireless Merlin X950D express card and a 9dbi directional desktop antenna, all on Linux and I don’t experience any outages, though I have to go to a particular part of the house to get best connection. Most of the time I get 512Kbps to 1Mbps. I’m not sure how well the same setup would work with XP or Vista but you could try it before you go to the bother of installing another OS.
Hope this helps, let me know if you want more info.
John.
For those with O2 3G, their DNS servers have a very poor response time for internet lookups, suggest changing the DNS server IPs in the connection profile, worked for me got close to 2.9gbs and rarely falls below 1gb.
Hi,
3 promise speeds up to 3.6mbps but how do i find out what speed my own modem is working at?
well, well. thanks everyone. was researching which mobile provider to sign up with, and it wont be 3!
Hello
I use 3 hsdpa modem 10 months now. I can say that my land line broadband in Poland 128kb/s is faster than this 3G broadband. Today I try to play my browser game and it is a nightmare. My ping on http://www.google.ie loses 11% of data packets. WWW works 30 seconds and stops working fore 1 minute. I thing Ill just buy a land line connection and quit this G3 when my 12 month are over. 🙁
@Mac nie wiem co sie dzieje ale ja mam kurwa tak samo ;/ i juz mnie huj strzela ;/
I have been using the ZTE modem on 3 pre pay for nearly a year & far from getting better, the service gets worse. Can we not organise an online petition to Comreg ? . My current download speed is 23.8kbps & that is with a 5 bar HSDPA signal !
Not sure of the value of an online petition directed at COMREG Peter as they have consistently told me that they have no mandate for intervention in the provision of broadband.
Perhaps directing the petition at the relevant government minister might be more fruitful.
You would also need to be clear on what you are petitioning for. As a start I would suggest that some mechanism is put in place to prevent companies over-subscribing their services but setting these limits would not be a simple process.
In any case, anyone can easily set up a petition on ipetitions.com.
Back to the poker question, poker used to work fine with three before it only in the last month haveI been loosing connection while playing. I there a way around this or any suggestions.
Paddy,
I had the same problem with regards to playing online poker. I played on 2 sites and from about 1-2 months ago i couldn’t get a decent connection on POKERROOM but POKERSTARS wasn’t affected. You should try playing on pokerstars cos the only connection problems i had on that site was when i tried to play too many tables(5 or more)at the same time. Hope this helps as i know how frustrating connection problems can be.
Hi I’m in the UK and I have had nothing but problems with 3 mobile broadband. The hardware is able to achieve 2.8mbps. Though 3’s infrastructure isn’t capable of going that fast. I have been told that by December 2008 they will update the service so that us consumers can get 2.8mbps downloads.
I don’t trust a word of it though. On a good day I might get 700kbps allowing me to watch youtube or play poker. On a bad day I’m running at dial up speeds and it takes a good minute or so to open up facebook.
Anyway I know I’m not in Ireland but I don’t want to pass up an oppurtunity to register my disgust at 3. Its better than sitting here flailing my arms around in a murderous rage.
Well now I had a 3 modem and had to give it back. Changed to Vodafone which was adequate(Never Brilliant, about 700k)for a few months. Now It is worse than useless. Sometimes i can get 2m for short periods bur more often its in 4-9 kb. Absolutely useless and this is with full signal strength.
well this is how I protest against this company
Hi everybody.
I just want to share my terrible experience with O2 broadband.As U can notice (mistakes in my English) I am not Irish,but live here for 3 years already.I do not want to offend anybody, but I haven’t seen worse customer service in my life than in Ireland.So many lies, unkept promises, undelivered services, one-off sales…I have never heard and seen before.I got my 02 broadband in April.During 1 month period it worked well, but after that it is simply unbelievable.This internet connection has nothing in common with broadband.It is f…slow and very unstable.It makes me sick be to read all the time: Device has been disconnected..or something like that, so U have to unplug USB, plug it again, writte the PIN again and wait in hope,that connection will work.From time to time U get a message..’Redial…etc’.People what is wrong with this broadband? In Tools-Option-Network I cannot change anything (not possible) and I haven’t got a clue,how to change something properly in profile management.The shop (3×3 sq.met.)in Ballina,where I bought it from older man is like bad dream as well. Apart of selling products,they will not do anything for you-not to mention if they see that they are dealing with non-Irish person.I am looking forward to next April, finally to get rid off this f…crap called: ‘O2 broadband’.But because I need mobile broadband, I’d like to ask people what kind of experience they have with Vodafone mobile broadband.Thax in advance for answers.After all this comments I have read for sure I will not go for 3.Thanx.
hello,just have vodafones new mobile broadband,,i am happy to say im now getting an average of 3.0mb,and when downloading i often hit the 3.6, every time i use it.before i had 02 broadband and it really let me down.most of the time i was not even getting half mb.i heard that a lot of new masts have been put up in the last year,which i can say i trust there telling the truth,anyone who got the new k3520 modem please reply and tell me how they find it,the only thing i dont like is 5gb download limit!!!.
Im stuck in a contract with 3 for another 6 months yet, it really is absolutely pathetic how slow this thing is. Just looking at it now, ive been online for 1 hour 50 mins and the very highest speed ive got is 90kbps which in real terms translates as little more than 10kbps.
How the f can it actually be allowed? I honestly dont think ive ever once got above 150kbps and every time I use the thing im nearly ready to explode with frustration, several times ive snapped, pulled the thing out and f’d it against the wall.
Ive complained to both 3 and comreg & got nothing more than the usual crap. Cant wait until my contract is up..
Hi….I also have 3 mobile broadband and have been having trouble with it for months now. It keeps disconnecting on me all the time, the speeds are going up and down and sometimes I need to restart the conputer before the modem is even recognised. Each time I call 3 I am simply told in a very unfriendly manner to clean my cache and run disc clean up and to try again. I am sick and tired of this and will be going to Vodafone as soon as possible.
I just came across this page after i got a 3 Data Modem recently. So far it has peaked at 554k. I have tried Vodafone and the max was close to 2mb. From what i hear o2 is crap so i wont even bother trying them.
Luckily there is a 14 day return policy with 3 and you can be sure i wil use it, being stuck in an 18 month contract with 3 would be a nightmare.
Vodafone simply has the fastest speeds and i will order the stick modem again next week. It is €10 more expensive than 3 but i suppose you get what you pay for, or do you?
So from my experience of Vodafone:
-Fast delivery (next day or else 2 days)
-Fastest mobile broadband around
-decent customer service
-12 month contract
-€30 a month
3 Broadband:
-Extremely slow (at least in Limerick)
-18 month contract
-Brutal delivery time (8 day delivery)
-Customer service rep rings you as soon as you order the Datamodem offering you a F*****g Skype phone you dont want.
-€20 a month
One thing i noticed with the coverage checker on the 3 website is that it shows good coverage in my area when in fact its rubbish.
With vodafone its the opposite, when i chekced it before buying it showed no coverage in my area and yet i was able to get 2mb. Weird or what.
I have Vodafone 3g modem and it works very well, it comes in at 7.2 and i have no issues or problems, but my mate has 3, it’s awful it’s no better than dial up, that’s when it works. I’m getting him to change soon, when we’re chating on MSN i lose him every 15 minutes and he has to reboot.
Hi All
Maybe this Thread is long gone but I am amazed at the speeds quoted by some, I get excited over good conection if its over 100kps and thats like fo two seconds, normally 25 kps down to 10 kps.
Have been with 3 for seven months and have had nothing but hassle and now they have been awarded the contract to rool out broad band nationwide !!! frightening stuff
Yea Peter.
If some of those remote areas thought they were disadvantaged before, just wait ’til they get 3 broadband!
I can’t believe they got the contract either. I should have submitted a tender for 2 tin cans and a piece of wet string. I would probably have done very well.
yeah have problems at using the data modem at peak times (00-100kb). I’m near the boarder of n.Ireland and it’s roaming uk I Can only really use at decent speeds 200-350kb. The upgrades to 7.2mb is in place already in the mainland uk and is coming near the area am getting their roaming connection. I checked the three UK website it’s coming to N.Ireland in the summer 09.
At last I may expect to get a constant 1mb per second once up and going at least.
As I don’t download all that much but I play a on-line games and poker
Like an old comment from here from someone else, pokerstars is the only site for poker, because it’s connection kind and not like partypoker etc. who have a huge interface (with two application running at once) not just for poker. But I do play there still at off peak time to avoid lagging on a winning hand… lol
3 Wishes…..
Using 3 mobile ‘Broadband’ with 10GB download limit for several months.
I started a 6GB torrent file download though cancelled it due to slow download speed after only several megabytes. The full 6GB was however deducted from the 10GB monthly allowance. \
Following an e-mail complaint, I received a follow-up call from a 3 call center. I am informed it is 3 policy wherever a download is ‘started’, the size will be deducted regardless if the download isd completed.
Is this normal?
Hopefully Santa will become aware of this….
I’ve had 3 mobile broadband for the last four or five months.
It’s atrocious.
I’m finally moving to 02 – the black, EUR79 dongle which is meant to be the best around.
There’s a 7 day refund if it’s no better than 3… but all my friends say it’s world’s apart.
To hell with 3.
Hi all again,
Just back on-line after a three week breakdown!
Got credit of 4euro after first complaining ,then as the down time grew longer, I rang customer services who reimbursed me 20euro for the month.
While they are pleasant to deal with ,I still would have loved the internet over christmas/newyear,.
Never though i’d say it but im glad to hav back my 23kps download rate.
I got 3 and was pretty happy until I moved location. The speed that I was getting in my kitchen was good as that on my office pc. However, when I moved my PC into my study at the front of the house it is very slow.
I had 3 mobile broadband service. I abandoned 3 mobile broadband in June 2008. I cannot believe that the government gave them the contract for rural areas. I live within ten miles of Cork city but the 3 service was worse than dial up. Sometimes it worked ; more often it didnt . It will set back broadband service by at least 5 years in rural Ireland . ( because of the recession and having to replace the poorly functioning 3 service )
Guys you woulntd belive this, but i was using 3 on my laptop out in the country and its was working in around 50 to 130 kbs, which allowed some surfing, but at christmas I tried it on my dads computer and its a rocket…..I’m thinking there is compatibility problems with setups on different pc’s/laptops etc….anyone aware of how changes to settings might give a better service. I want rocket speeds on my laptop too.
My last post was – 7/9/2008 at 8:43 pm
Aster my 1 year with 3 ended I called to cancel my contract. A person in customer service instead putting the cancelation to the system he wrote I agreed to extend my contract. And now I get more bills from 3. I stopped useing that modem 2 months ago. DO NOT BUY 3 G MOBILE !!!
btw people in customer service speak english with hard indian/pakistan accent – I couldnt understand them.
I have just gotten 3 Mobile “High Speed”. All I’ll say is it’s a good thing they have a 14 day return poicy, as I’ll be sending this modem back!!! Very poor service. Trying to watch anything on YouTube is a nightmare, and I’m having troble sending pictures and videos to mates on Yahoo IM.
I reluctantly signed up to 3pay yesterday, being that there is no fixed line access where I am and all the other options required contracts.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised so far – though have noted all the complaints saying it gets worse after a few weeks of use.
One problem I am having though – 3 seem to cache some CSS files within their system. I’m a web developer, and just can’t ‘see’ a new copy of a CSS file which I just changed. If I go through a proxy instead of direct, it appears fine, so 3 must be caching somewhere along the way.
I’m reluctant to call 3 about this, as I’m expecting they have no idea what proxies or caches are. Anyone know a solution to this?
Well Harvey, I’m a freelance web developer myself and can tell you that it wouldn’t be that unusual for a proxy serving a private network to cache content which as I understand it is essentially the topography of the 3 Ireland data network but I hadn’t heard of this issue before regarding them. I presume you have tried hard refreshes in your browser (Ctrl + F5) to ensure the caching isn’t local to your own machine?
Why they chose this particular network topography is beyond me but I can understand why 3 would configure the proxy this way to cut down on traffic and if they are indeed doing it, I doubt if they’ll change their ways to facilitate web designers/developers but anything is worth a shot when you have no other options.
Thanks Joe. Yes I had tried CTRL-F5, plus viewing the page with browsers that have never been to that site before.
I managed to fix the ‘issue’ by using the OpenDNS servers mentioned above in this thread, rather than the 3 auto-assign servers. Seems to have solved the problem, so I’m operational again.
I am having bad experiences with 3 also. For instance tonight all I was getting was 76 kbps download and 54 kbps upload and a ping of 213. I have signed up for Net1 and I just going to be prepared to lose out on the €40 for 2 mths left of the 3 contract.
If you go on bebo and play cards you are in the middle of a game and it cuts out. Forget you tube or downloading. It took me an hour to download one song.
I have 3 mobile broadband and I live in the countryside. I have too say their service is good far better that o2 and vodafone. Great value for money. Good Customer care.
I have BIG problems with 3 is well. I cant watch any movies … any videos and I cane download anything… it is very small and every month i am paying more than 100 euro extra if i download something … they always stop my interent so i call them to fucking india and they always said to me that i have to pay more money … but .. i have only few months left of this 1 year contracts …
3 BROADBAND IS IRISH SHIT SAME LIKE O2 AND METEOR !!!!
Just had a long debate with 3 this evening. Following promises and promises that my coverage problems would be addressed and these not being done I returned my modems. I was told that I had renewed my contract when I got a new modem even though this did not work properly. I must now pay 209.09 Eealy Termination Fee. They eventually said that secondary technical would carry out a check and refunbd me if problems found. Before that they were threatening me with Credit Companies if I did not pay. I have now switched to Eircom for reliability.
Sorry to hear about your problems with Three Risteard. Don’t bother debating with them, it’ll only stress you out. Write a registered letter to them detailing your experiences and make it very plain that you wish to be released from your contract. Tell them that, if they fail to do so and levy a termination fee, you will take a case against them in the Small Claims Court.
Beware of their credit company. It’s an agency with a very bad reputation for phoning people multiple times a day, even Sundays. They are scum of the highest order.