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 http://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.