Well, for years now I have used the O2 broadband service and I must say they have been a life-saver when it came to providing some bandwidth at a time when there was no other broadband service where I live.

However, a new crowd has opened up servicing Beaufort, Kilcumin and Headford. They go under the not so catchy company name of VoIP and Internet Services Ltd., which indicates they may have spent more money on the engineering than the marketing but as a techie who cares! They can be reached on (021) 4877341. I am using their 2mbps up and down package and it does what it says on the tin. The headline bandwidth figures may seem a bit low if you compare 2mbp/s with the average DSL service of 7.6Mbp/s but this service is not contended and in testing I do get 2mbp/s up and down stream which is often not the case when attached via DSL.

This is because with DSL you can be sharing the bandwidth with between 12 and 48 other subscribers depending on the service you have bought into. The download speeds can vary tremendously and can often go below 1mbp/s during peak hours in busy exchanges.  The upload speeds on ADSL are always less than 1mbp/s anyway as ADSL is asymmetric (that is what the A stands for) but again they can be catastrophically bad during peak hours.

The latency is quite low at between 26 and 32ms with little in the way of packet loss or jitter so if you like combating barbaric hordes of virtual warriors online or simply want to ring Aunt Mabel in Aussie using Skype then this service will cope.

Connections can be allocated a static IP address which is so important for businesses and there is no monthly cap though I guess there is a fair-usage policy somewhere.

This is a wireless service and installation was done in a matter of a few hours. So far I haven’t had a problem and would recommend the service to anyone who requires broadband in the areas mentioned above but have no wired options available.

My O2 connection is not gone however; it now gets carted about in my tool bag for when I am out on site and will act as a backup link should it be necessary.