Any way to check when fibre will be available in my area?
- Thread starter ClubMan
- Start date
Why not the truth ? It's not a competitive enough price for me or because you won't give me the same deal as new customers.
Because I've told them that for years and it made no difference. They never give existing users the same deal as"new" customers. And if you tell them that you're not happy with the price and/or are moving to another provider then they give you a sales pitch, bad mouth other providers' services, and keep calling back even if you tell them not to. I didn't want this time wasting (my time as well as theirs) and hassle.
Last edited:
So, got Sky fibre 500Mbps @ €30 p.m. for 12 months installed yesterday. The installer (Circet on behalf of OpenEir on behalf of Sky... 
) missed the scheduled morning slot and rocked up at 3pm after I had made my first complaint to OpenEir who passed me on to Sky. They opened a ticket for my complaint but I have no idea what happened with that.
The first time installation of fibre is a bit of a pain with them having to drill through the wall, bring the cable in, and install the fibre terminator box and the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box inside the house.
According to the installer guy, other fibre providers can reuse this setup if I ever switch to them but Virgin will install their own stuff (hopefully just the ONT and not another cable?) if I ever go back to them for fibre broadband.
Anyway, the new Sky service was working yesterday and earlier today but this evening I noticed the LOS (Loss Of Signal) light flashing red even after a power cycle and a service check on the Sky app says that there's a fault external to the house which needs an engineer to visit. I've made a second complaint online to Sky about this and definitely won't be paying them for the time without any service.
Good job that the VM cable broadband is still working for another two weeks but will finish on the 22nd. I'm half thinking of cancelling Sky within the 14 day cooling off period and signing back up to VM as a new customer after the 22nd - not sure if that would be as a cable or a fibre customer though.
) missed the scheduled morning slot and rocked up at 3pm after I had made my first complaint to OpenEir who passed me on to Sky. They opened a ticket for my complaint but I have no idea what happened with that.The first time installation of fibre is a bit of a pain with them having to drill through the wall, bring the cable in, and install the fibre terminator box and the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box inside the house.
According to the installer guy, other fibre providers can reuse this setup if I ever switch to them but Virgin will install their own stuff (hopefully just the ONT and not another cable?) if I ever go back to them for fibre broadband.
Anyway, the new Sky service was working yesterday and earlier today but this evening I noticed the LOS (Loss Of Signal) light flashing red even after a power cycle and a service check on the Sky app says that there's a fault external to the house which needs an engineer to visit.
I've made a second complaint online to Sky about this and definitely won't be paying them for the time without any service.Good job that the VM cable broadband is still working for another two weeks but will finish on the 22nd. I'm half thinking of cancelling Sky within the 14 day cooling off period and signing back up to VM as a new customer after the 22nd - not sure if that would be as a cable or a fibre customer though.
Last edited:
So, Sky still not working today and the attempts to get support over the past few days were so frustrating that I've cancelled it within the 14 day cooling off period. Back to VM after my current contract/service ends I guess.
When on the call the Sky rep was explaining how I can't have two broadband services on the go at the same time even though my cable VM is working fine and the Sky fibre was simultaneously working briefly on Friday.
When on the call the Sky rep was explaining how I can't have two broadband services on the go at the same time even though my cable VM is working fine and the Sky fibre was simultaneously working briefly on Friday.
Last edited:
That's a pity that Sky couldn't get the service working for you
But I would think the rep is wrong here, I think he might be correct if you were on one of the other providers like Eir or Vodafone
Virgin media run an independent system for their TV and BB to everybody else so its possible to have the two running at the same time
It's the same as saying once you've Sky TV you can't have Virgin TV running at the same time,
They were. I suspect that they were thinking that having two WiFi routers would be a problem but even that isn't a showstopper - they will be competing for the same 5GHz/2.4GHz bandwidth but automatic channel selection should mitigate any issues. (And, in any case, most of my use inside the house is wired via powerline ethernet and WiFi usage is marginal). Otherwise there is absolutely no issue with having VM cable broadband running in parallel with fibre broadband from another provider.
They were also insinuating that my Sky service had failed because I also had VM running even though their own service checker said that the fault lay outside the premises and there is simply no inherent conflict between cable and fibre.
If their support was even marginally better I might have persisted and given them time to fix it but they were so frustrating and annoying to deal with that I just bit the bullet and cancelled.
Couldn't recommend them based on this experience to be honest.
So, second time lucky. This time with Eir. Yeah, I'm fully aware of their reputation but I've had some dealings with them in recent months on behalf of someone else and with some pre-sales queries and I found them fine. I've seen anecdotal comments about them having improved their technical/customer support in recent times but I guess we'll see...
Anyway, 500Mbps fibre for €35 p.m. until next April when that increases to €39 p.m. and €100 credit after a month or so with them. So that's c. €330 for the year.
One odd thing is that the Eir guy replaced the original OpenEir ONT with a new one and said that each provider does that. I assumed that the different providers (other than VM) would just reuse the OpenEir ONT. Just for the craic I tried the original one with the Sir router but it didn't work.
I asked the installer what I should do with the original one and he didn't know. I don't think that Sky want it back since it's not theirs. I don't want to chuck it in the WEEE recycling if I can avoid it. I'll contact Eir/OpenEir to see if they can advise. But if anybody else has come across this before I'm interested to know what you did.
Yeah, I'm fully aware of their reputation but I've had some dealings with them in recent months on behalf of someone else and with some pre-sales queries and I found them fine. I've seen anecdotal comments about them having improved their technical/customer support in recent times but I guess we'll see...Anyway, 500Mbps fibre for €35 p.m. until next April when that increases to €39 p.m. and €100 credit after a month or so with them. So that's c. €330 for the year.
One odd thing is that the Eir guy replaced the original OpenEir ONT with a new one and said that each provider does that. I assumed that the different providers (other than VM) would just reuse the OpenEir ONT. Just for the craic I tried the original one with the Sir router but it didn't work.
I asked the installer what I should do with the original one and he didn't know. I don't think that Sky want it back since it's not theirs. I don't want to chuck it in the WEEE recycling if I can avoid it. I'll contact Eir/OpenEir to see if they can advise. But if anybody else has come across this before I'm interested to know what you did.
Blackrock1
Registered User
- Messages
- 1,802
not sure what the difference is here but i have gone from eir to digiweb to sky and back and never had an ONT changed (500mb to 1GB fibre )
I've been an eir customer for many years at this stage and find them faultless. Any issue I had (very, very rare) was dealt with promptly and efficiently. I recently changed to 500mb and the guy came when he said he would and was in and out in around 30 minutes for which my broadband was down for around five minutes.So, second time lucky. This time with Eir.
I ring every year and negotiate a price and it works well for us (although now won't have to bother for two years with their current deal). Including mobile phones in the bill is also a big saving: €12 a month for unlimited everything. Useful with teenagers and their avaricious use of data when out and about.
Thanks. Yeah, it seems odd to me. The guy said that the ONT is basically how the service provider identifies and bills the customer but that doesn't sound right to me and your experience is what I would have expected - i.e. when you switch between providers (other than VM) they reuse the same ONT but just give you a different modem/router. I'll try the original one again later but if it doesn't work then it suggests that something is somehow keyed to the new one. As I say, I'll contact Eir/OpenEir to see if I can return the spare one to them so that it doesn't go to waste.
I presume you don't mean €12 p.m. for broadband and a few mobiles?
Is that the first box inside the house at the end of the fibre cable? Optical Line Terminator I presume? I thought that was a passive device and simply provided a female connector for the fibre cable that then connects to the ONT that has the actual smarts to convert the fibre signal to ethernet?
Edit: ok, according to this I have an ONT and an NTU (Network Termination Unit?) so I presume that the OLT that you refer to is somewhere else - e.g. street cabinet or OpenEir premises?
Last edited: