Demon3 what are you shiting about these broadband are getting paid for what they provide,it’s not as if we
are getting it for free that would be a different story, Digi-web smart don’t give a shit about anybody except taking in as much money as they can and screwing anybody who is in there way. O I wounder who Demon3 works for??????

What none of you realise is that Smart where making no money out of you, it was costing them to have file sharers on their network chewing up terabytes of data traffic. Of course Digiweb is going to try to get rid of you to improve their margins. Do you realise that the downloads and uploads you do have to be paid for at the wholesale level and the margins on this are cut to the bone due to the competition in the global market, Network providers buys this in blocks. While I totally agree that marketing unlimited when there are caps and changing peoples contracts without agreement is playing hardball and very questionable practise, you have to realise that in this day and age nothing is free and no network is going to want heavy users that provide no profit to to the bottom line. Not to mention the fact that alot of heavy users are up to illegal activities shareing hacked/stolen software, movies and music which at somepoint will come back on ISPs. Best of luck with the future providers, but you will eventually realise you will only ever get what you pay for, and all these comapnies are there to make a profit for their shareholders. BTW, before anyone says it, I do not work for or with any Irish company, I work with international wholesale trunks. I have been a Digiweb Metro customer for two years and moved to Smart DSL to up my speeds(Digiweb have fiber to my local exchange).

I’m using smart telecom in Cork City and they’re marginally better than BT was but they’re nothing amazing anymore.

The comments about more ISP choices in Dublin than Cork further up this thread doesn’t really make sense. It entirely depends on what’s in your local exchange in both cities. Some areas of both cities can get magnet or smart, in others you are stuck with eircom or bitstream resellers.

UPC cable / fibrepower is widely available across both cities

I don’t really see what the difference in ISP choice or which faster services the poster was on about in Dublin?!

I never had a big problems with Smart telecom till they dropped that 170GB limit on to its customers without telling anybody. And they do have a lot of there staff on these sites pretending they are customers, telling people that they have a great service. They will not say nothing about limits unless you push them and I have e-mailed concerning the issue of them sending me bills when I am supposed to be disconnected since before christmas and am not paying there rip off charges to ring them. And yes i do like upc because some of the problems have been sorted and am happy. If you like Smart Telecom then you stay with them but when them letters start arriving , you were told and it will happen .

Your very paranoid still insisting I am working for SMART, Well here is the proof I don’t: http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/jeroen-stofberg/8/180/739, so do you believe me now.

Why if contention ratio is a load of bull, I always seem to be getting 5Mb even in peak times? When other company’s with contention ratios of 1:48 everyone comes home around 5 or 6 in the evening and goes online causing it to crawl? Due to bandwidth being used up by all the users? I do plenty of downloading not just browsing and its fine at this entry level, I unfortunately can’t afford to go to UPC 15Mb at the moment, due to a single income in the house. I agree with you that they should specify the download limit before signing up, it is false advertising. But you still have not given me an alternative here in cork that is better with the same bandwidth and download/upload speed, not all the population in Ireland lives in Dublin. The line rental is given CLEARLY just use the line checker and it is there, so I don’t know where you are getting this from, that they did not tell you? I knew about it when signing up. “And they throttle your connection without any warning then want to charge you to reconnect you” what are you on about here, did they slow it down, or disconnect it? Which is it? I have never had to contact customer service in the year I have been with them so that is not a bad thing so I can’t comment on this. So I wouldn’t call it “getting screwed by smart” and by the way UPC don’t have a great reputation either, maybe you are working for them?

P.S. work away and put up as many review as you can and confuse everyone outside of Dublin on which broadband to get, I really dont care.

UPC- 5Mb €22+€7.75(if no tv) =€29.75 40Gig download limit,
contention ratio? God knows.

Vs. Smarts Home Value 5Mb at €16.50 + line rental
going to the biggest wasters of them all not smart. Contention 1:1

contention 1:1 is the biggest load of crap . if it one person one line why are they making such a big deal about people downloading to much if its only you on that line. it has to be the largest pile of shit going. Smart 16.50 + 25.00 line rental charge yes you didn’t put how much the line rental is . Yes but with upc its come through the tv so no line rental and customer service is free to ring. for an extra 10 euros you can go up 15megs if you use more then the 40gb limit . With 5meg all your going to be doing is browsing . Until you try another isp please dont be saying how great smart are because it will blow up in you face. And how do we not know you don’t work for smart telecom go by your word sorry have see many smart telecom staff saying they a somebody different when writing how great smart telecom are.

If your happy getting screwed by smart then thats your decision.
I have been with smart and yes they were a good broadband company till they started having dealings with digi-web. A lot of people up in Dublin have realized that they are getting screwed and they were willing to let this slip until they dropped the 170GB fair usage policy on them. they tell all there new customers that they are unlimited when they know its misleading. See you have no choice you have nobody else but up here in Dublin we have other broadband companies providing a better and cheaper and until they go down to cork you will not know how bad smart are. They over charge when trying to get customer service ,there not dependable when it come to having somebody out to sort a problem. when you sign up you think its cheap until they hit you with the line rental charge which they do not tell you about. And they throttle your connection without any warning then want to charge you to reconnect you. There customer service leave you hanging on while your paying then hang the call up so you have to ring back while you paying out your nose for it. I have seen the bad side of smart telecom and you think it bad now it has just started it was digi-web who had the fair usage policy and then what else just wait and see. Give it a couple of month then it will be you on here complaining and I told you so.

UPC- 5Mb €22+€7.75(if no tv) =€29.75 40Gig download limit,
contention ratio? God knows.

Vs. Smarts Home Value 5Mb at €16.50 + line rental
going to the biggest wasters of them all not smart. Contention 1:1

Thomas Connor if you can find a better deal in Cork city for me let
me know, and by the way I don’t work for smart and am in no way associated
with them, I work with mainframe computers. In the year I have been with them its never been down, only a few
resets a few times. I still think they are the best around, but be under no illusion Ireland has a long way to
go to catch with most of the rest of Europe as far as broadband goes.

O here we go smart telecom staff trying to bullshit us same as what they do on the isp speedtest site.
you wouldn’t be chipzilla from isp speedtest?????

Very happy with smart, i have been on the 5Mb package for about a year now, and it always measures 5M any time of the day, I have been lucky enough and have not needed to contact customer service yet! A lot of the problems relating to speeds are usually related to infected and poorly maintained PC’s. Use a good firewall (outpost) and antivirus (nod32 or kaspersky) and uniblue registery cleaner speedupmy pc and you will never have a problem with them, well in the city centre anyway the closer to the exchange the better. Who else offers contention of 1:1 ? and the download limit people are conplaining about,,,,yes it does sound like false advertising, if it realy is caped at 170gig a month, but are all these downloads legal? in the first place.

Sorry to say that have not been to happy with Smart Telecom have been with them for many years .
I got trottled without warning it took lots of money in phone charges to get it put back on
I am with them over a year so as soon as I find another isp then I will be gone and not really happy with there customer service have sent them e-mails looking for information and not once have they got back to me. Looking on the upc site and there price is a lot cheaper so maybe I might give them a try.

http://www.irishisptest.com/forum/smart-telecom/

If you want to see more comments about smart telecom have a look above.

THERE IS NO BROADBAND PROVIDERS IN IRELAND GIVING UNLIMITED USAGE AND IF THEY SAY THEY ARE THEY ARE MISLEADING YOU GIVE THEM A CALL AND BET THEY WILL NOT MENTION THERE FAIR USAGE POLICY. I recently had my smart broadband turned off well thats whats I thought they keep sending me bills and I have e-mailed them concerning this problem and no answer back and I refuse to ring them and paid the rip off phone charges just to have them hang up so you have to ring them back.

As most of all customers, i was also throttled without notice.
After one day, and because was not normal, i went to smart forum, and i realized that everyone had been throttled without a notice.
Enforcing a 170Gb cap, where we should have unlimited downloads, honestly…

Another customer that is going to change provider…

Having been a loyal customer and promotor of smart since 2006 I am totally dissatisfied with the lack of notice that there were to change there usage cap. 170GB per month is not enough. My broadband also feels slow since digiweb took over. Moving to UPC in March if Digiweb don’t realise what they have done to a very loyal smart sustomer base, and fix things.

I started a 7Mb package in December and haven’t clocked over 600Kb using multiple ISP sites since. Very poor customer service, although I’ll give them a 2 for this as they did call me back but it took the threat of making a formal complaint to the communications regulator for this to happen. Steer well clear if you are in Cobh as contention renders the broadband speeds genuinely disgusting.

170GB limit? shared by 4 pc, 1,3GB per pc per day. can’t be worst

I ve been with Smart almost 2 years. Impeccable service till this week. Out of the blue yesterday my connection was throttled down to unusable levels (max traffic ) they said they will reset it for me overnight. Meaning another day without internet. This reset is a freebee but any further reset will bare a charge of 8,50 euro which is not that bad to be honest BUT they should have informed us ahead and SHOULD have respected our contracts ( as in enforce it to new customers and or give current customers atleast double that). Unfortunately as many have mention the building blocks in Parkwest have a Smart-only option.

Now the flaming part. I have absolutely no idea who this digi-web company is but for people to call them eircom resellers and for them to use such dodgy and shady practices all i can really say to them is fuck off and get a life you bloodsucking leeches.

Peace on Earth and Piss on digi-web

Cant get through to customer service, throttling unlimited packages ? ftw …

Used smart for 3 years. However sadly as multiple people live in the house and we share the connection the cap has bent us all over.

With their 170gb limit don’t use them.

Their new systems appear to be causeing several issues with their hubs causeing more issues with stability. Apart from the occasianly disconnect they used to be excellent.

Avoid.

Sadly while Smart do provide a relatively reliable broadband package with decent speeds in relation to it’s advertised 3mb speeds, the customer service is utterly appalling and they are unable to provide broadband speeds higher than 3mb which is hardly pushing the envelope in comparison to other providers.
I am also saddled with what can only be described as their inherently broken TV service. As they have a monopoly in the apartment block they have shown no willingness to try to resolve the systemic deficiencies in their service.
The customer service is only open during working hours and not at weekends, when you do eventually get through complaints are generally ignored and promised callbacks are not honoured. Frankly due to the prohibitive cost in comparison to other broadband + digital TV providers I would love to drop Smart as soon as another operator becomes available in my apartment block. I would never recommend them to anyone.

reliability and performance remain good, but the introduction of the ridiculous 170GB cap is ruining the score.

Its 170 GB not GiB which should be made clear to everyone.
They do not answer emails sent to the customer service centre in reply to an email they sent me.

There is no justification as to how a service that cost over EUR 100 a month will have the same cap as any of the cheaper lower speed ones.

It looks like they want customers to leave as their terms and conditions grows worse by the day…

Caps indroduced without informing Customers, speed is good only during night time and early morning. any other time instead 7MBit I am getting 1.5 tops. Thank god I am moving house soon, going to rent somwhere where magnet provides fiber connection.

Wow I was on this site just 3 or 4 days ago and my contract about to end with BT I was all ready to switch to Smart. I phoned them last week and they told me I could have unlimited broadband 5mb/1mb and fixed IP and no contention for a reasonable price.

Now I come back to this site just double check that UPC aren’t a better deal and read all about the Smart cap. Well thank you all for informing me of this silly situation. I will now give my business to someone else. I not sure who though

I can’t get magnet where I am and I don’t really want another eircom reseller…

Maybe I will look at UPC..but my friend has them and they seem to have a bad support and speed slows down because of contention.

Ireland has really bad broadband compared to other country in eastern europe. I had 30mb/2mb for less than 24mb/1mb here. I hope that Ireland gets better network soon…

They lie to new users, You can’t cancell servise before 12 months contract / with cancelletion fee /, cap 170 GB – If You use 100 GB their system shows 110-115 GB

they throttle you to 15 KB/s with no warning if You new user, they lie on webpage about unlimited downloads…

All because digiweb take controll

Smart used to be great, until digiweb took over and changed the terms and conditions of the original contract. Capping downloads per month, and throttling internet connections to unusable levels. They are basically draining all the original bandwidth from old Smart, sending warnings to people etc. I signed up for no contention ratio (ie. it doesn’t matter how much you use your own line) and no limits. Now they have changed these terms completely. Sorry, but any company that treats their customers like this doesn’t deserve my hard earned cash. Leaving next week after being a customer for over 2 years.

Try magnet, imagine or even UPC.

Now throttling connections. No longer a decent ISP since Digiweb took over.
Tiny cap, poor phone service.

I would have given a better rating had i not experienced what i had last week.

I signed up for “an unlimited service” no download limits at all.

now its 170gb a month, and i get no notification of this!

well, sorry smart, but i will be cancelling very soon.

Smart don’t deserve their current rating on here any longer. I was a Smart customer for 5 years but decided to leave because of the HUGE drop in service. Woe betide you if you need to contact them, you will find yourself in a queue system on the phone for far longer than is acceptable. If you are unlucky enough to have to call them from a mobile it will cost you 30c per minute to call their advertised customer service number.

The implementation of restrictive bandwidth methods were introduced with no warning and compared to the contract I had are penal and broke the terms and conditions which I had signed up to.
Even the cap is expressed in figures which are misleading and contrary to the system used by Smart to measure usage up to now. You are not getting 170GB but closer to 160GB.

This combined with a rolling 30 day cap makes Smart uncompetitive and a bad choice if you have other options.

I’m new user / from december / they did notFrank tell me about limit when I sign uo contract.

Now I’m stuck with them suckers for 12 months.

They have small limits like on 21 cent

They’ll throttle you without warning after you sign up for UNLIMITED broadband, stay well away if you’ve got options and may need to use more than 170gb per month, or well, that figure might change as well as it’s not like they honor contracts or agreements.

Advertised an Unlimited produce and the introduced a limit without telling there customers

Slowed there customers down without telling them why, and forcing them to contact them

Claimed to have sent warnings but no one has ever gotten on in advance ???

Signed up for unlimited broadband, but got throttled to 128kbps after using more than 170gb during a rolling 31 day window. They hide behind a fair use clause, and still mislead customers online. They were pretty good (but never great by european standards), but there’s no way I’d recommend them now.

They’re a bunch of liars and frauds who don’t honour contracts and renege on agreements. Even Eircom aren’t this bad.

Put those UNLIMITED 170GBs in arse

After i realized that they put some limits on their “unlimited” broadband they just suck…

They throttle my line wit out warning,

they have limits on unlimited contract / 170 Gb /
don’t have unlimited plans

customer care don’t answer my emails.

I agree with Si from Lucan. I t WAS the best provider in Ireland ever.
Unfortunately, those times are behind now.
After a few years with Smart will move to NTL, thought, Smart tech support through the forum is really helpful.

I am with Smart for the last few years and I had nothing but good things to say about them. I would have given 5 stars for all areas, that is until this week. Digiweb have taken over and already broken the Unlimited download agreement I signed up for. The shut off everyones broadband because of high usage and have now upset all their customers. They now have a cap of 170GB a month which is not value compared to someone like UPC 270GB a month and for less money and faster speeds.

Well I will be canceling my service as soon as UPC install my new broadband and I know of loads of people doing the same. Its a shame since they were the best broadband in Ireland and their customers knew and raved about them so much. As for digiweb, pfff, I wouldn’t touch them if they offered free broadband. Eircom resellers tend to be totally crap and they are the worst of a bad bunch.

The best ISP in Ireland here is my average speed test result for my 5 MB package and this speed is through a wi-fi. I have the modem downstairs and the PC upstairs on the other side of the house and it works perfectly I also use it to play and download games online on my PS3 the speed is very impressive.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/637094605.png

just terrible…. slow as a snail…unforntunatly i live in area where this is the only provider

After signing up to Eircom for broadband and phone and having to cancel because of speeds which were not even dial up I went to smart. The setup process was smooth, service was slow in the start (workable speeds compared to eircom) but they got the speed sorted very quickly for me unlike eircom who gave me the usual “your line is not suitable”. Now that I’m with Smart it seems my line is suitable. I’m now getting 5mb and haven’t had any downtime at all so far in the 6-8 months that I’ve been with them.

Their Customer Service has gone to the dogs in the last 12 months. I have been with Smart for 5 years (in 2 different houses), so I applied for the new house. I was told it would take 2 weeks to get connected, so I rang after 2 weeks and was told it would take another 2 weeks! The guy spouted the lamest excuse i have ever heard about the delay (because it took 2 phonecalls to verify my sign-up when I initially ordered) and became a total dick with a real like it or lump it attitude.
Two friends had similar problems with them recently.

been wiuth them on and off since 2006, love everything about it. Karel.

Have been having an issue for over a month at the moment with what I can only describe as “Contention”. Everything is fine up until 730pm each evening and then my broadband become unusable. Their speed test shows my connection at less than 100k instead of 5mb. Tech support do not have a clue
Waiting to move to Eircom…..
Byebye smart

I’m with this crowd over 2 month’s now and still waiting for a wireless modem (which i was told i would have a month ago). Useless.

I have to say excelent all round , It took about two weeks to get connected which was fast and was also exactly how long they said it would take .
I have 6m and on speed test I get just a little over that which is excelent . I did have to contact tech. support but the issue was with my p.c. The guy was really helpfull and kept the call to my technical ability which was good and saved time “I`m no techey but I know a thing or two” .

I do rate Smart very highly and do recommend them when ever asked , you cant beat them for service reliability and customer service .

If you can get them in your area I would . The best isp I have had and I have had eircom/ntl/Irish Broadband/Perlico and BT all of which I would not rate above two stars and that would be clubbing all ther good points together .

Need I say more

God i miss them, moved to an apartment where i can only get eircom and did not truly appreciate smart until i got stuck with eircom’s version of broadband. highly recommend smart to anyone who can get it.

I have been with smart for 3 years (Aug 06-May 09) and all i can say is they are very good. There will always be problems but they do their best to sort it out and i get Triple play (TV, phone and 6MB broadband) all for 86euro/month. It normally should be around 80euro but we tend to use the phone a lot but it is never over 86euro/month. I left a comment on http://www.eire.com about how satisfied i am with smart. I live in Dublin so i get very good service as sometimes my speed is about 6.4 or even 7MB on a 6MB line and no contention ratio. So i am a very satisfied customer

It takes a while to get signed up (that’s not Smart’s fault, just crap old Eircom dragging their heels to make it more inconvenient to punters to switch) and a bit of pestering customer service to get your bill right.

HOWEVER… once it’s set up it’s rock solid reliable, fast and reasonable. I get 10Mb for €60 a month, which I know is more expensive than UPC but I can’t get UPC. And that 10Mb is my own, with UPC their cable is more like a 300Mb or so ring for a whole estate – if there are lots of others downloading then your speed suffers, such is cable.

All in all I’ll miss Smart when I move out, also they have an online forum where you can ask their REAL technicians about your connection – they do it in their spare few minutes as are busy with other stuff, but if you ask nicely you get the attention of someone who REALLY knows what they’re talking about and has access to all the advanced configuration options on your line.

Smart’s backhaul is good too, at least in the Ship Street exchange where I am. Never had a problem maxing out the line to any server I want, any time of day.

Top marks.

We’re very far from the exchange and Smart did well to give us a consistent 2.7Meg – took a while to get the settings correct but through the forum we were always able to engage support quickly.

Took ages to get connected too but the llu processin this country is a mess, or was two years ago at least. The GF got smart in recently and line order to eircom and then smart only took about two weeks which was much quicker.

Well recommended as an ISP

Very good in cork, getting 3.8Mb on an 4Mb line, (allowing for loss due to distance from exchange) contention ratio of 1:1 not shareing the bandwidth unlike eircom users, or not to mention 3G mobile broadband which I had previously…dont go near this.

Thanks SMART, great customer support, you get to talk to a human after about 2 rings, unlike getting through to eircom, or to India with 3G, where my 2 year old would know more.
sorry forgot the stars in previous entry

I use Smart at home, playing World of Warcraft mainly, as well as the usual stuff like emaiol, photos etc. Never had any real problem – once I got a tech support guy who was a total dick but I just rang back and got a new person who was much more helpful.

I have been with Smart for over 2 years now and I have had good D/L speeds for the entire period.
There have been two problems –
1. I have to keep re-setting the modem (my fault, should get the firmware upgraded)
2. My line was disconnected at the exchange because of a breakdown in communication between SMART and EIRCOM. It tookover a month to get the line re-conencted. Each side blamed the other, I was stuck in the middle. To be fair, SMART compensated me for the lost connection.

In short, I am a happy customer with good transfer rates, no contention and NO CAP!!

Regards,

Dermott

I had a bad experience with them where the fault was with the line supplied by Eircom but Eircom wouldn’t fix it. The only option available to me to was terminate by contract with Smart Telecom or ask Eircom to install a new line.

Got a 6Mb line from these guys, done a speed test and i’m actually getting 6.15Mb – 6.3Mb.
Its actually faster than the advertised speed. Well Done.