Cyprus Broadband

reviewer: English Squaddie

november 18 2009 07:01pm

I am so glad I have found this forum, somewhere to vent my anger at the pathetic excuse for a telecomms provider such as i-choice.

This is a lengthy post - summed up NEVER USE THESE MORONIC, GREEDY COWBOYS!!!! THEY ARE USELESS!!!!!

I will begin this post as I begin every complaint phone-call I make to this infernal waste of space of a DSL provider.

I am, as my title says, an English squaddie (soldier) I work in the field of Telecommunications and specifically Information technology. I mention this every time I complain in an attempt to notify the i-choice 'technician' on the end of the help line that I do not require to follow the rudimentary checks printed on the laminated idiot sheet that these, so called, experts are using in order to locate and diagnose my fault.

I have been stuck with this piece of **** provider since arriving on the island 18 months ago and to start with the 1 Meg service was impeccable, never a dropped packet and never a problem with congestion or Tx/Rx problems....

However....last year the service began to falter, speeds dropping at peak times and lasting for up to one to two hours. This would not be a problem for the average internet surfer as the normal web appeared to be flowing along nicely. For a techno-geek like myself it was a major drama; as a father of 3 young children I use the internet to stream  cartoons from various sites worldwide and of course the lack of internet bandwidth produced many problems. This lasted for 30 days, during which time I phoned daily and emailed over 15 times to i-choice and Cyta's netrunner contacts to complain about the fault. Eventually they appeared to fix the fault.

I was never provided with any form of compensation for the loss of services during these times...even though I requested it.

Spin forward to September 3rd 2009 and voila the fault comes back with a vengence. for the last 3 months from 2pm to 11pm every weekday and 10am to 11pm on weekends I (and the entire Episkopi Community) receive download speeds less than 56kbps. That's worse than dial up FFS!!! So I start my complain campaign again, emails and phone-calls and for the continuing 70+ days we have still not seen any repair or compensation. The greedy *******s continue to take my €50 a month to provide me with broadband when I am not in the house but at work.

The morons on the helpdesk actually proved they have a tier level system of stupidity passing me from pillar to post while having to bear 20 minutes of the same god forsaken piece of **** cypriot song. I could sing the ******* thing I've listened to it that much. Only to then laugh and cut me off or give me the same old "we know about de fault and we send technicians in 2 weeks" routine...

3 months and still no fix.....

So why don't I cancel them? Because i-choice is the only option being out in the sticks.

Over subscription.....
Bandwidth throttling.....
Archaic infrastructure.....
Incompetent technicians......

Plain and simple

Cyta/i-choice are COWBOYS!!!!

reviewer: falconcy

february 15 2010 06:01pm

I really don't get it, I'm surprised at the level of vitriol that is heaped on Cyta.

I'm running a 2 meg home package and manage to do a substantial amount of torrent downloading as well as getting BBC/ITV iPlayer running fine through it. I play DDO with no real issues as well as the usual browsing etc.

Download speeds are usually up to 230k/sec which is OK for this package.

The odd disconnects are most likely down to having the upload set too high whilst seeding - my fault, not Cyta's.

Support is certainly no worse than anything you'd get in the UK, at least it's local and certainly not some call centre in India. Explaining the problem effectively can also help you get to the right person and solve the issue.

I support 2-way VSAT connections for a living. Lots of times we get people complaining of slow connections. In 90% of cases it's down to P2P, Viruses, bad configuration or simply too many users connected to an unsuitable package.

It's so easy to point the finger at the provider. A friend was complaining of a slow connection and had put it down to Cyta. When I checked it out, their daughter was running Bitorrent and was seeding everything she'd ever downloaded in over a year. Funny how things speeded up the second I killed Bitorrent.

In any connection, if you're hammering the upload, it will slow things down to a crawl. This is especially the case with multi-threaded processes like all the flavors of P2P.

reviewer: cypriot

february 23 2010 06:59pm

1. AN I SINDESI ITAN PIO ARGI ITAN NA PIENNE PISINI!
2. AN GIA KATHE DIAKOPI TIS SINDESIS EDIOUSAN MAS PISW 1 EURO EN THA EPREPE NA TOUS PLIRONOUME.

reviewer: cypriot

february 23 2010 07:05pm

reviewer: loiziasl

may 05 2010 04:38am

why everybody blame cyta? do you know why we dont have faster internet? because of primetel and cablenet, shakolas and mr foulis cyta when they brought dsl to cyprus they brought servers of milions of pounds to provide up to 20mb to the price of 16euros but then primetel and cablenet cry to eu and they put in charge a persons to control the competition and because cyta is a goverment company whatever the person who cheque the competinio say they do it. because if cyta was aloud to upgrade there systems mr shakolas and foulis was going to loose there money so now we stuck in this situation cyta has servers in there storage for 4 years now and they are not aloud to use them because primetel and cablenet mustprovide first the 20mb lines so cyta can provide 19mb lines so mr shakolas can have the first hand on competition. SO STOP BLAMING CYTA and blame some fools that they take money on white envelops. cyta try to avoid the person who control the competition by applying to eu court but this cases take long periods even 10 years they won the first court case last year and it was about the hsda on mobile phones thats why now we have high speed internet. thats the true so get used to it to have 4mb internet and when primetel and cable net will be able to provide 20mb internet then cyta will be able to provide 19mb

reviewer: Gambit

may 10 2010 03:18pm

Δεν γνωρίζω αν όντως η ΑΤΗΚ έχει πραγματοποιήσει η όχι τόσο μεγάλη επένδυση ή κατά πόσον έχει την δυνατότητα να παρέχει τις υπηρεσίες που αναφέρει ο loiziasl  αλλά αυτό που αναφέρει όσων αφορά τον ανταγωνισμό είναι κοινή πρακτική σε όλες τις χώρες του κόσμου.
Η ΑΤΗΚ όπως κάθε κρατική εταιρία έχει ένα υπάρχων δίκτυο σε αρκετά καλή κατάσταση και πολύ ανεπτυγμένο. Αυτό όμως δεν το έκανε με ιδία κεφάλαια αλλά με λεφτά των φορολογουμένων το να περιμένεις από μία ιδιωτική εταιρία να έρθει και να ανταγωνιστή στα ίσια απευθείας την κρατική πού παρεμπιπτόντως ξεκινά με συνδρομητική βάση 100% καθότι μονοπόλιο, είναι αστείο.
Σε όλες τις χώρες δημιουργείτε μία επιτροπή ανταγωνισμού για τις συγκεκριμένες υπηρεσίες όπου απαγορεύει στον κρατικό φορέα να παρέχει υπηρεσίες μεγαλύτερες από τον ανταγωνισμό (υπολόγισε ότι στο αρχικό στάδιο το μόνο δίκτυο είναι αυτό του κρατικού φορέα οπότε και οι ιδιωτική πάροχοι αναγκαστικά περνάνε πάνω από αυτό, φαντάσου να έδινε η ΑΤΗΚ στον καταναλωτή ταχύτητα 20mbit και να άφηνε τον ιδιώτη να περάσει μόνο 10 πάνω από το δίκτυο της) επίσης απαγορεύεται να πουλά στον τελικό χρήστη φτηνότερα από ότι στον ανταγωνισμό (όσο και αν σου φαίνεται αστείο τέτοια φαινόμενα είναι πολύ συνηθισμένα) .
Αυτό να ξέρεις όμως ότι πάυει να ισχύει μετά από μία περίοδο και υπάρχει ελευθεροποίηση του ανταγωνισμού.
Βραχυπρόθεσμα αυτό στον τελικό καταναλωτή, εμάς δηλαδή, φαίνεται πολύ άσχημο αλλά μακροπρόθεσμα μόνο κερδισμένοι μπορούμε να βγούμε. Το κακό είναι ότι ακόμα δεν υπάρχει ανταγωνισμός στην αγορά. Η ύπαρξη μόνο του κρατικού φορέα και ενός ιδιωτικού απλά συνεχίζει την πολιτική του μονοπωλίου.
Τώρα για το κατά πόσον υπάρχουν λόγοι για να κατηγορηθεί η ΑΤΗΚ για τις πολιτικές τις. Είμαι σίγουρος ότι υπάρχουν αρκετοί λόγοι.