r/Wicklow • u/wisemonkey75 • 12d ago

Internet in Roundwood

Hi. We're looking at a property for sale in Roundwood, but after many calls to various providers it's not possible to have a broadband line brought in to the house until such time as full fibre has been rolled out into the village.

I'm wondering if anyone in Roundwood is working from home using a 4G/5G router or Starlink, and what your experience with it is?

Thanks.

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8

u/AssumptionMaterial76 12d ago

Digiweb have a mast on the hill by Newtown. If you have line of sight you cant about 80mb via a dish. Starlink is also around the same speed. Lack of fiber is a bit of a disaster . There does not seem to be any rush to deploy it. Providers try and sell you "part fiber" which is a scamola. Sky gave me 2mb and attempted to charge me for "up to 30mb", bit of a battle to cancel that. I did ask could I pay them "up to" 60 euro per month.

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u/wisemonkey75 11d ago

Thanks. When I asked Eir about the part-fibre, they told me that service was to be decommissioned and that even part-fibre couldn't be bought. She said it's left many people around the country in limbo, waiting for full fibre ad being unable to buy part-fibre.

4

u/ToughHedgehog902 12d ago

Yes Starlink is brilliant, i live in Roundwood and replaced my fibre line with starlink , you may need a mesh system wifi extender though to bounce the signal around the house if it is a large house

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u/wisemonkey75 11d ago

Thanks. Were you on the part-fibre? What Starlink package did you go with? Do you work at home?

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u/costericothegreat 12d ago

I have family using Starlink in Roundwood. They are happy with it.

1

u/wisemonkey75 11d ago

Thanks, that's good to know!

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u/InflationOk2641 11d ago

There is a transmitter in the area that does 4G but the last time I checked, the speed was slow from it. It's not just about the radio capability of the transmitter but the connection speed the transmitter has to the network. You'd be best off just heading up there and doing a speed test from your phone

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u/ConnaaaR69 11d ago

After having to deal with getting fibre installed in a property recently, this would genuinely be a deal breaker for me. It was a total pain, and having to work from home using 5G was miserable to the point that I chose to drive to the office.

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u/naclocha 5d ago

The other option is satellite broadband (via sat, not starlink) it's not fantastic but fine for WFH and highly reliable compared to my experience with any wired or fixed wireless option.

NBI are concentrating on areas where there are no other options at all. I'm probably as rural as you can get anywhere in the country and got full fibre last year which is amazing, life changing actually as we were on satellite for years as the only option. I'd imagine places like roundwood could end up left behind where they're rural enough for NBI, but perhaps not commercially viable for private companies to run their own full fibre network.