It turns out that Eircom have completed installing their new NGB (Next Generation Broadband) service here in Dundalk, and I hand even realised it
I rang up Eircom support earlier this week to tell them that when I finally got switched over to their new service that I wanted to be put on the higher “Unlimited” ( in reality it is a 250gb limit, fair usage, which is still great) package, they then informed me that it was already available and I had indeed already been switched over to the NGB.
Luckily I rang up to get my package switched then, otherwise I would of been paying through the nose for my broadband! After I got off the phone I went online to see when exactly the Dundalk exchange had been switched over and it was upgraded on September 30th and October 1st.
I actually do remember the internet disconnecting at midnight on September 30th because that was the day I was launching the eclips hair salon website and of all times for the site to go down it was when I was putting a site up online!
The Eircom site states that there would of been a disruption for about and an hour so it is my fault for not realizing that!
Eircom have a list of set dates when they are upgrading their exchange points on their website so you can check it there, if you were wondering!
I was also told that since my line cannot support more than 3mb of speed that I will not be able to take full advantage of NGB, however what I do benefit from is the consistency of my broadband speed now. Even though I only have 3mb, it would be very rare I would see anything over 2mb, usually I would get 1.5 on average, sometime worse, the best speed was always in the early hours of the morning.
Now however with NGB the contention ratio is gone so no more line sharing apparently, I have noticed the difference, I now get a solid 2.75mb at all times including peak times such as 1pm to 2pm and 6pm to 7pm! It’s great, I only wish I could get the full 8mb, maybe Eircom will pull the finger out and sort that one out!
When I was on the Eircom site checking out the exchange upgrade dates I noticed there is a download usage meter that you can get for your computer which show how much traffic you have used for the month, extremely handy if you are on one of the lower NGB packages, but for me on the unlimited bundle, it is just a novelty and some extra statistics for me!