We have been with UTV for a couple of years now, and they are reasonably fast, reasonably reliable and reaonsably priced. However, our experienced has soured in 2012 due to the parlous state of their technical support. As of 1st of January our email addresses which we use a smtp accounts to for sending mail from business have been disabled. I reported this issue on 2nd Jan 2012 via their website, after 7 days and two follow up inquiries they reponded to say they had fixed the issue. We contacted them again to say the issue wasn’t resolved and after another lengthy delay they said the issue was fixed, it wasn’t. We contacted them again and still haven’t had a reply. We have been 18 days without access to our email accounts and everytime we attempt to call their support line, it either tells us that the line is unable to answer or we are in a queue for so long we give up.

I’ve been with UTV on their ‘Clicksilver Unlimited’ package for a number of years. Things were good initially (hence my staying with them for so long), Connection speed was nice and fast with little noticeable latency even during peak hours. BUT, this only seems to be the case if you subscribe to their ‘Unlimited’ option AND are a fairly light user (<20GB per month).. So paying a lot for little use.

However, after becoming a much heavier user (Averaging around 300GB per month) I've noticed a serious decline in the level of service I receive from them. To be fair, yes 300GB is a LOT of bandwidth, but my usage is carefully managed so as not to fall foul of the dreaded 'Fair Usage Police'. My uploads/downloads from my server are scheduled to run from midnight to midday, and I have capped the speed at 500KB/s, so this should be well within acceptable levels.

My typical Download speed gone from a sustained 5MB/s before, to 0.5MB/s on a good day. Only for a few hours each night does it open up fully to 5MB/s again. Also, my upload speed has remained at around 300KB/s throughout, which in my opinion hints towards UTV throttling my downstream connection. I'm fairly savvy with computer networking, so their suggestion that the problem lies on my side is insulting and absurd. I can throw large files around my 1GB LAN as fast as they can be written to disk. Support will generally try to pass the buck wherever they can, so expect either BT, your home network or both to be the focus of their 'troubleshooting' spiel.

More on Customer Service: I agree with others here who have stated you can wait 20 minutes to speak to somebody, which is why I generally email them instead. When a phone call is unavoidable, your experience will vary depending on who picks up the phone. It's a VERY refreshing change to get speaking to a local person, to understand and be understood without the language barrier getting in the way. Not meaning to appear racist or 'un-pc', but there is nothing more irritating after having spent 20 minutes on hold than having to deal with someone who's first language isn't English, or indeed even a local dialect. More so if you were already angry to begin with haha.

i amm in contract with utv 12 months. i am very not happy. when i want cancel broadband and lkine they send me a link and there was information bout charges even i am over 12 months??anyway i can say that i am on contract but i never get any contract. i know i have tp pay charge for early disconnect before 12 months. is there anyone who know what rights i have? my email is agatka2343@yahoo.co.uk
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I can’t give them any stars, utv internet have yet to connect me after over a month of subscription, believe it or not. After my brother got internet in (he lives next door) I decided to apply for broadband, which was previously unavailable in our area. I initially subscribed online, but it was only after a number of calls that I was told I was officially connected to the broadband line on thursday. Strangely, I only got a confirmation email of this dated 9:20 am on the following monday, however, when I eventually got my router, but still no broadband. They sent out a BT engineer…. who did nothing, and said he couldn’t do anything for me. Utv tech staff, especially one young lady had the presence of mind to check the type of broadband my brother had, It turned out he was on the “fibre” network, and an engineer would have to come out once again to my home. I received a date and time of 23 september between 1pm and 6 pm. As I was working, I made arrangements for my brother to stay at home so he could provide access to my home. I provided Utv internet this information, as well as my brother’s number. Later, I got a prompt voicemail message from utv internet confirming this arrangement, my brother received a similar message. While at work, at 1pm I checked with utv internet, and the appointment with the engineer still stood for that day… No engineer came, no messages were left, on my phone or my brother’s. I got home after 6 and rang the tech support, it took 35 minutes, yes, 35 minutes, to get an answer, the person informed me the appointment had been changed to the 29th with no cause given.
I’M NOT HAPPY, AND ON MONDAY MORNING THE ADMIN/ COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT OF UTV INTERNET WILL HEAR MY WRATH, i WANT ANSWERS, AND I WANT THEM NOW

My contract is up on October 10th and I cant wait . Dreadful Dreadful Dreadful is all I can say . Rubbish connection if any , forever waiting for customer service on the phone . Beware ! I am going back to Eircom

Buyer Beware! I was with UTV Internet for the past number of years – right back to the pre-broadband days – and always found them to provide a very good and price-competitive service. However when it came to closing my account earlier this year (due to my moving to a new house with no phone line), they were very unhelpful and ripped me off. Thus in a couple of weeks they managed to ruin a good customer relationship that had existed for well over a decade – and I had regularly recommended them to my friends and colleagues. Consequently I would never go back to them.

With UTV my max upload speed was 38kbps so for work I needed to upgrade urgently. I called and was promised an upgrade €54.99 monthly for a 12 Mb upload 1024kb download and that it could be installed the following day. There were cheaper options but I needed it urgently so I went with UTV. The following day I called to confirm it would be up and running that day and was told that it would be the following month before it was in place. Obviously I cancelled the contract as I needed it urgently so was told that it could be fastracked and would be up in 2 days, no more than 5. Ten days have now passed, my upload speed is 29kbps and I am jeopardising my relationship with my employers. I have called UTV yet again today and have been hung up on. The internet sevice has never been fast and at time excruciatingly slow. When their prices dropped their customers are not informed. Overall I have found the experience to be awful and would warn anybody against signing up with them

rubbish no talk no action modem too close to phone to close to the handset eircom to blame agreed to 45 euro per month the bill was never less than 60 euro try to get through on the phone takes about 20 mins to talk to someone well up on excuses or some sort of bull#### anyone bar them

We have been with UTV broadband for 5 months and can honestly say I have nothing good to say about them. I have been with Eircom and Perlico and have never had the same problems with either of these companies. Broadband speed has halved since signing up with them (that is if it’s even working at all) and when trying to contact customer support it takes about anything up to half an hour to speak to someone. Phoned today looking to cancel and was informed of the 30 day notice I need to give (no other company had this policy) and of the one-year line rental still owed to them. Did anyone else manage to get out of this? Why am I paying them line rental when they depend on Eircom for it? After reading other comments about the 30 day notice I wasn’t informed it had to be in writing so must get on to that straight away! Pity I never thought of reading up about them first, never would have signed up in the first place.

very poor service all round. customer care is almost non exist

I’ve been with UTV for several years, first on 3Mb then 7.6Mb.

I consistantly connected at 7616kbps with an upstream speed of 658kbps. I recently asked to be put on their NGB (next generation broadband) service of “up to 8Mb” however, although they claim to have switched my line, my speed is now 5120kbps and cannot be increased according to them. They don’t even offer a 5Mb option but that’s all I have now and the line cannot be switched back as once NGB is enabled, the line is stuck in that mode forever.

My upstream speed is now a max of 384kbps which I find totally unacceptable. UTV now claim that my line was never capable of more than 5Mb and that’s all I’ve ever achieved AND Eircom have provided them with proof of this!!!

I have log files from my router proving I used to be connected at 7.6Mb but they refuse to accept them.

They’ve basically called me a liar…

I’m disgusted with them right now.

I switched over to UTV 7mb service with phone last month. Phone is ok but the broadband is terrible. Everytime I call utv they give me another reason why its rubbish all of which do not include them. The service keeps dropping and connection to pages is intermittent. They have refused to let me out of the contract but will let me out of broadband service for €60. No appoligies no help no hair or finger nails left!

Utv internet really really bad. Awful customer service, they don’t try and help when you have a problem, I have been trying to disconnect with them for a while now and they keep telling me different things. Now I am being told about a 30 day cancellation period as well as a £60.00 cancellation fee. I would strongly not recommend UTV internet.

>:( >:) >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( HIGH PING! >:( >:) >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

I am surprised at so many negative comments – maybe UTV is worse in the North. Here in Dublin I have been very happy and been with UTV for a number of years. It still compares well with the rest pricewise and ok, they dont automatically reduce your monthly fee if new customer prices drop but they aren’t alone there.

I just want to add that yes, you can notify them that they have lowered their prices and you, long time loyal customer are paying more. They will lower them then for you too, but you are then put on a new contract each time, with a new contract period all over again.

We were with UTV for several years too. Found out that their prices had gone down for new customers while their long time customers, like us, were paying more. Not the way to keep your customers loyal. AND BEWARE they also charge you a fee to cancel your service
AND had their telephone service for 4-5 years and just switched that too.
BEWARE they require cancellation 30 days IN WRITING.
Make sure you send it Reg Post too or they will claim they did not get it! Doesn’t matter if you switch to another provider who notifies them… they claim that doesn’t count as they didn’t get anything in writing from you. I am off to make my complaint to Com Reg.

I didn’t want to give UTV any stars, but when you leave the stars unmarked this site state that it was “Not Rated”.

I originally said
“I have to agree with
TM, January 12, 2009,
A Thabeth, June 24, 2009,
sydney, July 28, 2009
and Gary Shanks, August 20, 2009 .

UTV are so bad that it is beyond a joke. I varies between really bad and PISS-POOR. Spending more of its time at the PISS-POOR end of the scale.
I like A Thabeth comment a but two cans and wet string.”

Like someone said before, High Ping! couldn’t stand it so i switched to BE and no trouble since

Horribly service for a number of reasons like High ping, slow speed, no internet for days at a time, terrible cusomer service by saying that it was my fault i was getting high ping and there was nothing they could do. Guess what when i moved to sky i get a ping of around 20ms but with utv it would’nt be uncommon to get a ping of around 200-300ms to my local exchange

It’s decent usually, overall giving them a 3, as they have no out of hours support. If you lose your connection on Saturday evening, tough luck. You have no support till Monday Morning. In todays day and age this is ridiculous.

When you do get support it’s usually good, but again, as it’s only available Monday to Saturday, and no overnight cover.. well, their competitors beat them hands down on that.

I have the 3mb connection, Fixed IP and unlimited bandwidth, only paying €55 ish a month, so while not what you’d call cheap, it’s pretty comparable. I am considering moving to BT as they offer 7.6mb for a similar price, does have a cap, but I’d never reach the 30gb they’ve set as a home user.

Have been using UTV Broadband’s ClickSilver package for the last 5 years and have to say that it has been an excellent and reliable service until recent months when it has deteriorated slightly.

The deterioration are in the area of connection speed, and some nights it is impossible to connect to from 11pm till 6am. This is throughly disappointing and no explanation is forthcoming as to why this occurs.

COST SAVING TIP: Keep your eye on price drops on your package, as UTV do not automatically apply these. I was paying 30 Euro per month when the actual package was for sale at 16 Euro a month. When I called their Customer Service they were great, and the guy put me onto the next 16 Euro per month rate. Just keep aware of the rates.

UTV are truely rubbish.

I have better connections with two cans and a wet piece of string.

The UTV Broadband connection also varies with the weather. When it rains the connection becomes slower and slower. Yes it nearly always rains in Northern Ireland.

The UTV connection I use is a work.
My home ISP is BeThere.
BeThere provide four times the speed downstream and over twice the speed upstream.

My work and home are about the same distance from the exchange.

Had UTV call package for over 12 months.
Fantastic Service. My phone calls are no more than 40 euro per month and thats including line rental!

Broadband was just switched on im my local area, west of Ireland and I contacted UTV to sign me up.
Went on the 7mps package.

I was signed up within 3 days, and I am now online!!!!!

Speeds averaging at 3.6mps.

Delighted with them and their service.

No issues, except once they never billed me for 3 months! But then sent in a letter and took all the charges on the 4th month.

If you make a lot of telephone calls to the UK and Ireland, UTV ar ethe only choice for you.

Fast, Reliable, good customer support. Good prices aswell, would recommend

I was on their 2Mbps package from 2005 to early 2008 and, bar a few sporadic outages, things were fine. In early 2008 eircom did their line upgrades so 2Mbps became 3Mbps. Around that time things started going downhill. Regular sporadic DSL disconnects/reconnects and effective outages. Tried several different modem/routers and checked all internal wiring and filters but it was obviously a like problem. UTV could not pinpoint the problem. eircom said the line was OK. In late 2008 UTV told me that I could get 4Mbps on their “up to 7.6Mbps” package so I thought – “why not” since it was only marginally more expensive and I thought that it might improve reliability. UTV charged me from November for this but never actually enabled it! They eventually did switch me to 4Mbps in mid December but that was even worse. My like stats were c. 50dB attenuation, as low as 6dB SNR margin and the line length is c. 5kM. Based on these stats it seems to me that I should never have been sold 3Mbps never mind “up to 7.6Mbps” in the first place. UTV keep blaming eircom but my contract is with UTV so it’s THEIR problem and responsibility to sort out. They are still messing around with it but still no joy. They just switched me down to 2Mbps and low interleaving to see if that helped but all it meant was that I had NO broadband service for the whole weekend. If I had any realistic option I would switch but cable is not available and I can’t install a roof antenna where I live. I am really cheesed off with UTV at this stage.

I was a customer for three years with UTV. I found the service pretty good but wished to upgrade to a faster line. I was using their premium clicksilver plus service for which I was paying €39.99 a month for a 3meg line.
When I went to cancel the service I was told that I would have to return the modem and pay a cancellation fee of €23.99. I was told that I would also have to pay for an additional 30 days notice regardless of how long it took to do the switch.
This despite the fact that when I signed up, I paid for the modem, there was no cancellation fee after 12 months and the switch took about 5 days.

I then found out that the price of clicksilver plus had come down to €23.99 ten months previous but I was still paying €39.99! The new rate is apparently only available to new customers.

I contacted their complaints department and have heard nothing back so I would just say, let the buyer beware!