The process is fairly straightforward:

1. Download the Orb software to your Windows PC,
2. Follow on the on-screen instructions and install the Orb program,
3. Set up a login account,
4. Start the Internet Channel on your Wii and go to mycast.orb.com,
5. Login to your Orb account,
6. Browse for the audio, video or photos that you want to play.

In order to get the best from Orb, you do need a broadband connection, and your Wii needs to be connected to the Internet. Although it does work, I found that watching videos through the Orb interface is patchy, but that is more than likely down to the fact that my upload connection is terrible. Another thing – at the moment the Orb software is Windows only, but apparently they will be releasing beta versions of the platform for Mac OS and Linux next year.

The latest agreement will finally allow the customer to purchase broadband services from any company without having to rely solely on Eircom to provide the phone line. Once wholesalers have full access to Eircom’s exchanges, it can only a wider choice for the consumer. The downside is that it will be at least September 2007, before LLU will be fully implemented.

At €15 per connection, Eircom is raking in the profits while the end user suffers with high contention ratios, and higher charges. The EU report lays the blame squarely at the door of our government for the lack of regulation of the telecoms sector and the complete lack of teeth goven to COMREG.

If yu want to get some idea of how bad Internet access is in this country, have a look at the forums at Irish ISP Test or Ireland Offline.

The computer owner had been on to his providers technical support, and they had sent him a new modem, but he still couldn’t get it to work. I called out to have a look last week. After putting in the username, password and connection settings, the modem still wouldn’t connect to the Internet. I disconnected all the phones in the house, and it worked. By plugging in the phones one by one, I was able to narrow it down to one particular phone. Turned out the problem was with the micro-filter attached to the phone. A quick swap sorted out the problem.

IPTV allows you to watch television over your broadband connection, and in Babelgums case will require the installation of their software to view programming. Programming will be supported by advertising, but they do not give any details of how this will be implemented. At the moment Babelgum are looking for beta testers (Windows XP users only though), but given the woeful state of broadband in this country, are they sure they can make this work?

Hopefully my provider will resolve the problems with my upload speed. In the meantime, I need some sort of working internet connection, so I’ll live with it.

In 2005, I had broadband installed in the house I rent and share with a couple of friends. Because we couldn’t install a phone line, we went with a wireless provider. For €36 a month they provided a 1Mbps connection with a static IP address. The connection is synchronous – i.e. the download and upload speeds are the same. There was no download cap, so you could transfer as much data as you liked without fear of being penalised.

For over a year, my connection was rock solid, and I had no problems at all. Then in November 2006 my provider went through a network upgrade. All their 1Mbps customers were automatically upgraded to a 2Mbps connection. Great I thought, but that’s when my problems started. Although I was getting a consistent 2Mbps download speed, I was having problems connecting to websites. After some basic troubleshooting, I found that the problem was with my upload connection. The speed would fluctuate wildly, and at one stage was working at less than dial-up modem speeds.

After a few calls to technical support, one of their engineers came out and confirmed that there was a problem. The solution apparently was to re-orientate the aerial on the roof and connect to a different high site. The only problem being that because of a storm that week, it was too dangerous for anyone to go up on the roof to do the work. Eventually after waiting another two weeks, the engineer was sent out again to resolve the problem. Or so I thought. Even after changing me over, I was still having the same problems, and apparently I wasn’t the only one.

After talking to his head office, I was put on to someone in “premium support” who told me that they could no longer guarantee my connection and to find a new provider. So I did. That very day.

A week later, I got a call from my soon-to-be-new provider to arrange the installation of my new aerial. I took the morning off work, and waited for their engineer to show up. He was supposed to call me when he was on his way, but didn’t actually call until he was half way up the ladder onto my roof.

That’s when I got the bad news. There is no line of sight from my rook to their high site because of a tree. My neighbours chimney, (which is about 15 feet away), does have a line of sight. No problem I thought, just put the aerial up there. No way I’m told. They want written permission from the owner of the house before they’ll do it. This is despite the fact that when I got my original connection put in I got permission from the management company that looks after our little estate, and there is already an aerial up there.

To top it all off, I got a call last week from my original provider to arrange for their equipment to be removed from the roof. Because their engineers are only in my area two days a week, they weren’t able to do it last week. So last Friday, I had to call them and ask them to cancel the removal, and reinstate the direct debit on my account so that I can keep my connection.

All that’s left to do is call my soon-never-to-be provider and cancel the installation with them. I’m really looking forward to finding out what hoops I’ll have to jump through with them.

If I want broadband, I need to get written permission from the owner of the house to put an aerial on their chimney. As the house is rented out to students, and they’re on holidays for another two weeks, I’m not going to be able to get it.

My current provider is due to cut my connection any day now. Access wise, I’m living on borrowed time.

As it stands, I have the following options:

• Try to get permission from my neighbours to put an aerial on their roof, or
• I can go get a phone line put in and go with some variant of DSL, or
• I can cancel the whole lot and do without internet access.

I don’t particularly want to get a phone line put in because I have no use for a phone, and I’m not going to pay for something that I won’t be using. I really can’t do without internet access, so that brings me back to the first point, which is out of my control.

Looks like I’m screwed.