Broadband woes continue

I'm mad as hell over my access to broadband services. I have been with BT - RUBBISH. I have been with Clearwire - RUBBISH. I am currently with eircom - RUBBISH. I tried to change to Imagine - RUBBISH. Despite writing previously that I was Leaving eircom for good, I am still stuck with them. I suppose the thing that makes me the most mad is the fact that I am paying for an 8MB connection, but am getting only around 20% of that. A speed test this morning (using www.speedtest.net) shows a 1.52MB download speed. According to Speedtest.net this is less than half the average for eircom as the graphic below shows. Clearly eircom can provide a good service, but not to my house.

Speedtest.net results for
eircom server in Dublin.

Last Wednesday two Imagine engineers (the excellent Sam and Tomas) came to my house to install a booster on the outside wall. Imagine had informed me that I could avail of a 7MB WiMAX connection to the local hub in Deansgrange (1.3KM away). Previous efforts with an indoor-only reciver could not pick up a signal strong enough for 7MB - hence the booster solution. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the Imagine engineers could not get a strong enough signal. I declined their offer to take a lower 3MB package.

So - it was back to eircom to try to find out why their service was so shite. eircom provide a Twitter support service (@eircomconnect) and the excellent Tony spotted my earlier post and had offered to help. Eventually, after much checking on his part, he discovered that the eircom line to my house could only support a 2MB connection, and that there was nothing more that he could do to help. Until recently I have been paying for "up to 3MB" with eircom (which is now supposed to be 8MB NGB) - I am close to making a formal complaint to eircom (I'll need to do this if I want to also complain to ComReg). 

How do companies like eircom get away with this persistent and blatant misleading nonsense? Imagine if Ryanair only flew you half way to your destination and forced you to get off! Imagine if a book you bought ended in the middle, or a movie closed down after half an hour! What if a restaurant told you to leave after you had your starters but had paid for a full meal? Supposing you paid for 50 litres of petrol, but only got 10! Finally, what if you paid for a dozen eggs but you only got 3 eggs! There would be míle murder - and rightly so. Yet we put up with it from the likes of eircom because we let them do it.