There is a lot of talk about the Ireland as a Celtic Tiger in the Europen economy. In the picture of growing Irish economy the very important place take IT companies and computer manufacturers as Google, Apple, Dell, Intel, Microsoft etc. Together with strong development it seems that Ireland is European most advanced superpower ?Äï a center of the new technologies. There is no bigger mistake than such assumption.
As far as new technologies like Internet and computers are concerned Ireland is a technological backwater. For instance ?Äï Internet. There is no good Internet infrastructure and there is not so many ISP’ with a well quality service. All ISP’ have not sufficient offers, and most of them have limited coverage. Common problem is a time gap between the order and the visit of the technician at the place. Many of my friends were deceived by the help desks ?Äï couple of them in Ballina/Killaloe had to wait 3 weeks for the technician, who at last stated that there is no coverage of his ISP. On the Internet people are complaining on almost every Irish ISP. There are of course some exception but mostly in the big cities.
Apart of low quality connections, jammed lines, disconnections etc. many of the ISP provide data caps. It seems they haven’t realized that we are living in the era of VOIP, Skype talks, Internet television or radios.
Maybe it is an exaggeration, but quality of the Internet services in Ireland reminds me Poland 8 years ago.
Because I had a lot of problems in getting a broadband in Ballina, then in Nenagh, I have chosen 3G unlimited Internet access provided by Vodafone. We have some similar services in Poland provided by a local mobile networks, but the the quality gap between them and Irish Vodafone is incomparable.
First of all ?Äï the Vodafone staff is completely uninformed and not prepared for that kind of job. Almost in every single Vodafone store you can get completely different information ?Äï for example, I asked about data limits for my connection and in 4 of them I got answer that there is a transfer cap, but in the other 5 the staff told me that there is no cap for service I got. Where does the truth lay? Fortunately some of my friends has this service and they usually have monthly transfers 3 times bigger than a 5 GB. Many people still don’t know is there a data limit in Vodafone or not. Some of my friends bought HSPD for 39 Eu per month with data limit, and the staff in the Vodafone shop didn’t tell them that there is an option of unlimited data for 49 Eu. Data limit in Voda is just like a rumor, not a official information from Vodafone.
I can sleep well then, and I don’t need to be afraid about the data limit, not only because of my friends but also due to the terrible quality of service provided by that biggest Irish mobile network. Connection is jammed all the time, and it needs to be restarted couple of dozens times a day. Usually the transfer is low, or there is no transfer at all, and 3G speed is available only at night and during the weekends. There is no problems with GPRS connection, but for God’s sake, I don’t want to pay 50 Eu a month for GPRS service. Working on sites and uploading many files to the servers is a torture in that conditions. I wasted a lot of time uploading the same folders again and again.
Uploading this post took about 20 minutes… using a marvelous 3G technology.
Another example: some of my friends tried to buy a Voda HSPD in Nenagh, but the girl at the shop told them that that service is not available yet. All of them went to Limerick, where it is available. Some of them had some problems, to buy it in one Voda shop, due to having Polish ID cards instead of passports. They tried again in the shopping center ?Äï there was no problem at all to buy it.
Woda (pronunciation: Voda) in Polish means Water… Vodafone ?Äï a backwater in the Irish IT?
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