Georgie Casey

Finally got some degree of broadband net access to our house here a few miles outside Ennis, County Clare. ADSL never worked according to the eircom website and cable was obviously a non runner when you’re out in the middle of nowhere. Then last week I heard that three were offering broadband of up to 3.6megabits/second using the 3g phone network.

I ordered the PC card for my laptop but my laptop only has an express card slot like most new models. Don’t know why three offer obsolete equipment. But I rang asking to swop for the USB modem and they had it out in one working day.

Set it up grand but I’m only getting download speeds of about 30kilobytes/second storage owing to the bad network coverage. The software that comes with it shows how many ‘bars’ you have and I only ever have one or zero sometimes which cuts out the connection. I tried it at my sisters place which is closer to town and got over 100kilobytes/second. Still, 30kb/second is 10 times quicker than crappy dialup. Definitely a good option for people with few broadband options.

Someone made this site taking the piss of our minister for broadband suppression. I’m still on dialup at home in county clare, broadband of any kind apart from satellite isn’t available. We’re only 3 miles from Ennis as well, the Information Age Town. Not much good resulted from that little project.

How did this country fuck up roll-out of broadband so bad? You’d think stuff like this would sort itself out with market forces in a developed and relatively rich economy. Obviously not. The general election’s coming up soon, I’m a 21 year old male, I don’t care for many issues but this. Someone sort it out and they’ll get my vote!