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Status Yellow High Temperature warning issued for Leinster and Munster

The warning is to stay in place until Sunday morning.

MET ÉIREANN HAS this afternoon issued a Status Yellow high temperature warning for the entire of Leinster and Munster. 

The warning will be valid from midday on Thursday and will run until Sunday at 6am. 

Forecasters have warned of a hot spell set to send temperatures soaring up to 29 degrees to develop tomorrow and last through the rest of the week.

Warm and sunny weather is expected today with highs of 26 degrees in certain parts of the country.

The national forecaster is predicting that the mercury will remain at the mid to high twenties across the country in the coming days, with temperatures to stay “uncomfortably warm” overnight too.

Should temperatures exceed 25 degrees for five consecutive days, the incident will be classified as a heatwave under Irish metrics.

Met Éireann have cautioned that the warm weather poses the risk of heat stress, especially for the vulnerable, a high Solar UV index and an increased likelihood of water-related incidents.

The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has also warned drivers to take care in the heat and be cautious of “sun glare”.

Sun glare can result in drivers being temporarily dazzled or blinded by the intensity and brightness of the sun.

Drivers should wear sunglasses and watch out for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders and motorcyclists, particularly at junctions and crossing points.

The RSA has also advised drivers to have adequate drinking water supplies in the car, and take extra care of children and pets in hot vehicles.

The resurgence in high temperatures has raised alarm bells for the welfare of the homeless community once more, with Dublin City Council coordinating with service providers to ensure that shelter will be available in the event of extreme weather. 

In a statement today, the council said that street outreach teams will be providing water and shelter to rough sleepers, as well as promoting the use of social media among the public to report people sleeping rough throughout the hot spell.

Temperatures are also set to rise across the UK, with a heat health alert coming into place following a series of hosepipe bans and fire warnings.

Alone, the national organisation which supports older people to live at home, has advised older people to keep cool and hydrated in the coming week, and to take regular breaks from the sun.

They are urging older people who are concerned about their own wellbeing during the heatwave to call for assistance if needed.

“While it’s great to be able to get out and enjoy the good weather, we are reminding older people to take care and exercise caution in the heat, as this is a group which are at risk in extreme weather conditions,” Seán Moynihan, CEO of Alone, said.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke can be very harmful to over 65’s, particularly those who live alone or have existing health conditions. It is important to stay cool, drink plenty of water and to wear sunscreen and a hat when spending extended periods of time outdoors.

We are used to extreme weather in winter but extreme summer weather can cause serious problems also.

The charity has also urged members of the public to check in on older neighbours, friends and relatives during the hot weather to ensure that they have everything they need and that they are keeping safe and cool.

“If there is anything you think you can help with, no matter how small, even dropping in cold bottled water. It could make a world of difference to an older person during these challenging times,” Moynihan added.

The UK Health Security Agency’s amber alert covers southern and central England from midday on Tuesday until 6pm on Saturday, with experts advising people to look out for those who are older or with existing health conditions, as well as young children.

The amber heat alert “requires social and healthcare services to target specific actions at high-risk groups”, but is one stage lower than the most serious level four red warning issued in last month’s heatwave.

The Met Office said temperatures over coming days will not be as extreme as the record-breaking heat in July when the thermometer climbed above 40 degrees, however it is still likely to rise into the low to mid-30s in central and southern parts of the UK.

Heatwave thresholds – which are met at different temperatures in different parts of the country – are likely to be hit in much of the UK.

Outside the hottest areas, much of England and Wales and south-east Scotland could see temperatures widely in the high 20s, with a chance of a few spots seeing temperatures into the low 30s, the Met Office said.

Scotland and Northern Ireland will also see temperatures in the high 20s and could reach official heat wave criteria by Friday, the forecasters said.

The warning comes after the imposition of hosepipe bans following the driest eight months from November to June since 1976 as well as the driest July on record for parts of southern and eastern England.

Months of low rain have left the countryside and urban parks and gardens tinder-dry, with households in some areas being urged not to light fires or have barbecues.

The Met Office’s fire severity index, an assessment of how severe a fire could become if one were to start, is very high for most of England and Wales, and will reach “exceptional” for a swathe of England by the weekend.

Scientists warn that the likelihood of droughts occurring is becoming higher due to climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

Climate change is also making heat waves more intense, frequent and likely – with last month’s record temperatures made at least 10 times more likely because of global warming, and “virtually impossible” without it, research shows.

With reporting from PA, Garreth MacNamee and Jane Moore

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    Mute John Killeen
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    Jan 18th 2016, 1:57 PM

    Have a problem where my “240mb” connection keeps dropping but VIRGIN keep saying it’s perfect and not their fault.Terrible service

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    Mute Gareth Miller
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    Jan 18th 2016, 1:59 PM

    I have exactly the same issue. They say everything is fine and no one else near me is making the same complaints so the issue doesn’t exist apparently….

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    Mute Seán O'Connor
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:18 PM

    VM suggested I use a wired connection. It’s 2016. Wireless has been a reality for the best part of a decade now.

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    Mute Greg O'Riordan
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:21 PM

    Do you have a router separate to your horizon box or is the router built into the box ?

    37
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    Mute R39CRW8f
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:29 PM

    Google how to change the wireless channel Sean.

    I didnt have a problem in my last house, but the signal is a nightmare in this one. Fine wired but wireless keeps slowing and dropping around 4-5pm everyday.

    I change the channel every day when it happens. Something in the house/neighbours must be kicking in to cause it to drop.

    Changing channel always works.

    If it does help then the issue is localised in your home or area. Not something your provider will be able to solve obviously.

    If it’s a case of “but it never happened before”…Well that can be down to a neighbour getting a new device, a device going faulty giving off interference, or some other interference in your area.

    23
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    Mute Gareth Miller
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:35 PM

    It’s not just happening on WiFi. I have a raspberry pi hooked up via ethernet and the connection drops out on it at the same time as other wireless devices. All connectivity drops for a minute and then comes back up again fine. Changing the wireless channel doesn’t resolve this at all.

    24
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    Mute R39CRW8f
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:54 PM

    Was responding to Seans solution of having to go wired.

    If the issue persists wired also Gareth, I’d absolutely get Virgin on to the case.

    In the router page you can check the uptime. My System Uptime is: 6 days 20h:35m:17s This is the amount of time that the router has had a signal (sync) AND has been logged in to Virgins system.

    In my browser I go to 192.168.0.1 Username: admin Password: usually left blank – or the word – password OR an actually password that you set.

    I powered off about a week ago to reboot due to the Netflix issue.

    If you check your uptime regularly and find that its only registering mins or hours each time your check, its definitely being logged out.

    There could be a fault causing enough interference to end your “session” but not enough to destabilitise the signal completely. Staff really arent great at telling the difference.

    My advice is, if it’s still dropping wired, push for an engineer. He’ll plug in his device from your house and will accurately test noise levels from your end. Most likely he’ll find a fault at the nearby junction/node, or terminal at your house.

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    Mute Gareth Miller
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    Jan 18th 2016, 3:05 PM

    Thanks James. I had 2 engineers out 2 weeks ago. They both agreed they saw a fluctuating signal that is affecting us. However they had to escalate it to another guy in virgin who maintains external infrastructure as they saw the issue affecting everyone in the area. The guy they escalated to rang me and said there was no problem and it’s likely caused by us downloading too much, or only using WiFi, or any other excuse he could come up with. He agreed to monitor our connection for a week and I’m still waiting for him to call me back with his findings.

    19
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    Mute Kieran Lynch
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    Jan 18th 2016, 3:37 PM

    Has started happening to my apartment in D7 in last few weeks. Dropping signals, box re-setting itself and password on devices.

    Called them up, said it might be the wires-wasn’t. And of course a technician can only come between hours of 9 and 5pm when everyone is at fking work.

    Cheers V.M.

    23
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    Mute Eugene Walsh
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:27 PM

    Only mailed eircom yesterday about my broadband speed and they came back to me saying they can’t guarantee broadband speeds. What a cod.

    16
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    Mute SCO Electrical
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    Jan 18th 2016, 6:12 PM

    Ah go wired all the way. Never trust something you can’t see!!

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    Mute Allan Farrell
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    Jan 18th 2016, 6:57 PM

    @sean if you want a good stable connection a wired connection beats wireless hands down. You should always get your max speed via wired.wireless at best will only give you about 75% of your actual broadband speed limit.

    8
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    Mute gregory
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    Jan 18th 2016, 8:23 PM

    Bring back rent-a-video extra-vision. Dont need broadband costs either. How many movies can/should a man be watching anyway?

    9
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    Mute SandyfordAl
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    Jan 19th 2016, 1:00 AM

    I can’t see air

    2
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    Mute SandyfordAl
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    Jan 19th 2016, 9:17 AM

    You can’t see electricity either

    1
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    Mute Cosmo Kramer
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    Jan 18th 2016, 1:43 PM

    My horizon box is a pile of crap. It’s constantly shutting down and there’s an awful lag with the remote.

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    Mute Joe Keogh
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    Jan 18th 2016, 1:57 PM

    Just imagine an elderly person using the remote control.

    83
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    Mute Daffy the Bear
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    Jan 18th 2016, 7:50 PM

    They’re absolutely fukkin dreadful. Hard to believe something manufactured by Samsung, with software as simple as TV user interface can be so brutal in this day and age. It had to go..

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    Mute Mark Mansfield
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    Jan 19th 2016, 10:50 AM

    The hard drive needs to be at least double the capacity. The TV players are just awful to use, constantly freezing and you cant FF the HD programmes. I have found putting the box in ECO mode in standby has greatly reduced the amount of times the box freezes. Adds a little extra time to starting up, but you get used to it, and it doesn’t go straight into a deep sleep if you occidentally switch the box off.

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    Mute Séa Graham
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    Jan 18th 2016, 1:59 PM

    Recently moved from Dublin to wicklow and had to change to sky, no virgin broadband where I live. 6 months now with no issues. Will never go back to upc/virgin. Crap services and equally Crappie customer support

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    Mute Sean Murnin
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:18 PM

    Agreed. Had one problem with Sky and they couldn’t have been more helpful. Highly recommend them.

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    Mute Gavin O'Donoghue
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    Jan 18th 2016, 9:36 PM

    I made the move to sky away from UPC/Virgin also. Customer service is night and day. I wouldn’t take a present of a UPC/Virgin connection.

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    Mute Alien8
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:00 PM

    I thought all they were going to do was rebrand UPC, but they have seemed to put in a load of additional filters and throttles which you can see by looking at packet traces (lot’s of TCP failures and retransmissions). I notice they have also put in new content blockers for proxy search sites, so you have to use either a VPN (or Opera Turbo mode, which does the same thing).

    38
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    Mute Barry Burke
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:09 PM

    Can you give more details on the sites which are throttled. Would like to check it out myself

    Also, netflixs would use Udp not tcp, if your referring to Netflix .

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    Mute Alien8
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:18 PM

    For throttling it is manifest on various streams on Kodi – phoenix, woody etc… They drop a significant number of packets and kick in different recoveries like increased buffering to reduced quality. As soon as VPN is turned on, then the quality is perfect; only rationale is if the content-type or end sites must be inspected. Netflix doesn’t normally have that problem, but almost all start/stops result in a quaity dropdown (blurry picture on HD).

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    Mute scoop delivery
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:19 PM

    Not to mention mashing up Firmware configs on their routers to entirely ban bridging them, even the old avenues to bridge them are shut off.

    11
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    Mute Angelic Lestat
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:43 PM

    Since Virgin took over from UPC I have had nothing but trouble. I used to get fantastic speeds with UPC.

    36
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    Mute Keith D'Arcy
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:22 PM

    Virgin didn’t take over UPC. Liberty global the parent which owns both UPC and Virgin Media chose to rebrand UPC.

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    Mute Seán O'Connor
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:07 PM

    I’ve been having the same problems with Netflix/Youtube since October. Both the broadband service and the overall customer service has deteriorated badly in the past few months. It’s not like I can take my business elsewhere; all of the main players use similar systems and have similar pricing so it’s a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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    Mute Barry Burke
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:13 PM

    What YouTube do us they only allow you to buffer 30 or so seconds in advance as to save them bandwidth . I would presume Netflix are doing the same .
    It’s a killer really but if you lose connection on wifi for a few seconds. It’s a fecks your streaming

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    Mute Scorpionvenomm
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:55 PM

    If you have an Cisco EPC 3925 router buy a 802.11ac router bridge the connection and just use the cisco as a modem. The new android and iPhones have the latest chip that support 802.11ac wireless which is very fast the you dont need a wired connection and the new chrome cast supports 802.11ac

    6
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    Mute Neil Corcoran
    Favourite Neil Corcoran
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:13 PM

    Broadband has gone to shit since Virgin took over. Just a FYI for anybody thinking of upgrading to 360mb broadband with Virgin Media Ireland. First off they’re full of shit if they think they can provide that and should be be brought up in front of ‘Trading Standards’. The speed drops off a cliff between 5pm-11pm due to contention ratio. Had a technician out a month ago to tell me “err there’s no contention ratio out here”.(Bollox) Also most wifi cards in your standard laptop can’t cope with more than 72mb, 100mb for ethernet cards. So they could be offering 3,600mb and it still wouldn’t make a difference. Looking forward to when my contract ends. I’ll be going with Vodafone fiber then. Customer service with Virgin is atrocious too.

    21
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    Mute Barry Burke
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:06 PM

    People use wifi and wonder why they have problems.

    On wifi, firstly , if you are right beside your box , your speed will only reach 56mbs .(presuming n series devices)

    Also everybody who is using it are on a timeshare basis. This means that if 5 people are using it. You only get 20% time on wifi. All wifi devices are considered 1 connection to the router.

    The closer you are the more time you get. So devices that are far away may only get 1 second of buffering for every 10 seconds that pass.

    The other problem you have with wifi is where your data is loss because of the distance you have to travel (in the air) . Going through walls are a killer .

    People run to upgrade their broadband speed when they only use wifi. Your wasting your time.

    Another problem is the horizon boxes are useless.

    However when you wire into your modem. Fûck me upc is great.
    I have gotten actually download speeds 230 Mbs off steam (a site for downloading games)

    18
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    Mute Alien8
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:33 PM

    Wifi shouldn’t be a problem with Netflix – they are only looking to stream 3 to 10 Mbps (or slightly more with 4K), so unless there is someone else utilising all the bandwidth on a router without QoS, then it shouldn’t bottleneck. Also, wifi n/ac all use frequency multiplexing, not time, so you will be able to get 100% of the bandwidth if it is not required elsewhere (5 people sharing a connection does not give you 20%, but 100% whenever you need it, otherwise it splits it via OFDM on demand). But you are right, that the wifi is the normal limitation, mainly due to walls, interference from other stuff like phones, fridges and lights. 802.11ac gives higher speeds (up to 1.3Gbps with a number of antenna) but is more susceptible to physical interference.

    but none of this stops the problem of UPC throttling netflix streams (which are TCP, btw).

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    Mute Kenny Cremin
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:36 PM

    I’m getting 240 Mbs with UPC over wifi.

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    Mute Peter Brophy
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:59 PM

    Sorry Barry, a lot of that is nonsense.

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    Mute Neil Corcoran
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:09 PM

    You are in your hole Kenny! most wifi cards in a standard laptop can only manage 72mbps.

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    Mute Scorpionvenomm
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:57 PM

    802.11ac will answer your wifi problems

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    Mute Type17
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    Jan 19th 2016, 9:09 AM

    Wi-Fi need not be a bottleneck – I’ve a bridged Cisco modem from VM, connected to an 802.11ac router on 5GHz, and can connect my computer at 1300Mbps when it’s close, and when I’m across the room around the corner (L-shaped room), I still get 860-930Mbps constantly. Even my phone connects at these speeds. Incidentally, my Netflix was solid until recently, but when I was sick over Christmas, I found that the connection (all services, not just Netflix) drops for a few seconds a few times a day, and not only in the evening – infrastructure starting to overload?

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    Mute Trevor Devlin
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    Jan 18th 2016, 3:05 PM

    If you kick up a huge fuss with virgin they will send you out a separate modem and wireless router which works great. I threatened to leave them before they all of a sudden can up with this solution.

    17
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    Mute Augustus hoop
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:55 PM

    Just got an email saying they are upping the price by a fiver as well. UPC upped it circa every 6 months for last 3 years too.
    It’s ok though each time they give me lots more broadband speed I don’t use, channels I don’t watch and other services I don’t care about.
    Hoped it’d all get better with virgin, but reckon it’s time to call sky.

    17
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    Mute neuromancer
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    Jan 18th 2016, 2:17 PM

    Don’t know what people are complaining about. I’m running Eircom 6mb, with Netflix running full HD, and never get any lag.

    15
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    Mute Paulpablo Boland
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:43 PM

    Since Virgin took over upc…the WiFi and general signal and service is utter shite in a bucket.

    15
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    Mute Peter Cavey
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    Jan 18th 2016, 5:44 PM

    Virgin are throttling our broadband. It’s the only explanation.

    13
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    Mute Andrew Flynn
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    Jan 18th 2016, 10:04 PM

    Virgin are the worst company I’ve ever dealt with.. Broadband is a joke, getting 20Mb download on a 120Mb connection in Stillorgan area! Tried everything even an engineer called out and scratched his balls/head and went off with no answer! Every time I have to call their customer support I need a pint..!! Moving to Sky shortly.

    12
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    Mute Paul Kane
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    Feb 1st 2016, 11:21 AM

    Still lots of VM customers having this problem. Is TheJournal going to do a followup? http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057547730/23

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    Mute Danny Nash
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    Jan 18th 2016, 4:09 PM

    My broadband only package now includes two phone services attached to it, an additional 24 euro. I was told its part of the package and can’t be removed…

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    Mute Peter
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    Jan 19th 2016, 2:14 AM

    Their prices are set to increase now, too. I’ll be seriously considering SkyQ wheh it comes out soon.

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    Mute SCO Electrical
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    Jan 18th 2016, 6:14 PM

    In fairness to Wicklow Broadband, I have 7mb broadband (now I do pay dearly for the privilege) and it streams 4K no problem.

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    Mute Frank Bradley
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    Jan 19th 2016, 7:25 AM

    For the last week or so ever time I try to play Netflix between 5pm and midnight (either using Wifi or Ethernet) the content takes ages to load and when it does play the picture is blurry and unwatchable. If I try to watch before 5pm, there are no issues.

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    Mute Annette Kelly
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    Jan 18th 2016, 9:03 PM

    Slow? What about the Netflix/Samsung ‘Smart’ tv no-longer-compatible debacle?!

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    Mute Fr Linux
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    Jan 27th 2016, 2:51 PM

    What has UPC/Virgin got to do with that!?

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