ADSL NETWORK / ADSL PLATFORM / INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER
PrimeTel ADSL
PRIMETEL
PrimeTel is a relatively new player in the telecommunications sector of Cyprus. It is currently the main competitor of the semi-state owned CYTA.
PrimeTel platform coverage
Primetel has partnered with Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) to create a fiber optic network that is currently utilized by their ADSL2+ platform. At the moment the PrimeTel platform coverage is limited to the urban centers and a few suburban areas. To find out whether your establishment is covered by PrimeTel you can enter your telephone number in a form at the PtimeTel website or you can call PrimeTel at the phone number 133.
PrimeTel "triple play" services and ISPs
Unlike the DSL Access (i-choice) platform where the user subscribes to the platform, to the ISP, to Digital TV and for a phone line separately, in the case of the PrimeTel platform all of the above services are bought and paid to the ISP with a single monthly bill. PrimeTel has its own ISP but other independent ISPs utilize the Primetel platform as well.
PrimeTel ISP
The table below lists the ADSL packages offered by PrimeTel. The costs indicated below are all inclusive and include the rental of the phone line(s), the fee for the PrimeTel platform as well as the fee for the ISP.
PrimeTel packages overview
| Package Name |
Max Speed Down/Up |
Prime TV |
Deposit |
Monthly Fee |
| PrimeHome 2 |
2Mbps / 512Kbps |
yes |
€42,71 |
€49 |
| PrimeHome 4 |
4Mbps / 512Kbps |
yes |
€42,71 |
€55 |
| PrimeHome 6 |
6Mbps / 768Kbps |
yes |
€42,71 |
€60 |
| PrimeHome 8 |
8Mbps / 768Kbps |
yes |
€42,71 |
€69 |
| PrimeHome 24 |
24Mbps / 768Kbps |
yes |
€42,71 |
€84 |
| PrimeNet 4 |
4Mbps / 512Kbps |
no |
€42,71 |
€39 |
| PrimeNet 6 |
6Mbps / 768Kbps |
no |
€42,71 |
€49 |
| PrimeNet 8 |
8Mbps / 768Kbps |
no |
€42,71 |
€59 |
| PrimeNet 24 |
24Mbps / 768Kbps |
no |
€42,71 |
€74 |
The PrimeHome and PrimeNet packages come with free WiFi.
Static IP option - €1.97 Οne off payment - €5.75 / Month
Telephone line - €100.21 Οne off payment (only if you do not already have a phone line)
PrimeTV (Digital TV)
A Digital TV option which includes most local and several international channels as well as a games is available on the PrimeTel platform. Video on Demand and Premium Channels are also available at extra cost.
Pros and Cons of the PrimeTel platform
Pros:
- Only one bill to pay
- High Speeds
Cons:
- A yearly contract with PrimeTel is required
- Not very wide coverage
- If you already have a CYTA phone line you will need to switch to PrimeTel which can take a couple of weeks
PRIMETEL NET USER REVIEWS
If you have tried the broadband services of PrimeTel please write a review about your positive and/or negative experiences. If your review is based on past experiences please include the time period you have been using PrimeTel. Please post reviews about PrimeTel only, and not about any other ISP or service. However feel free to compare PrimeTel with other companies offering similar products. Don't forget to cast your vote with your rating for PrimeTel.
write a review
User Rating: 2.68 out of 5 after 28 votes
review page: [1] 2 3 ... 7
reviewer: inuser
may 14 2007 05:07am
I have been connected to Primetel for a couple of months now and the service looks fine. I have to restart the modem every now and then but other than that all is fine. The internet speed is great, the channels are ok, I am not using the phone so much. for 25 pounds a month I think its a bargain.
I paid 50 cyp for installation myself but chose the 12 monthly payments of 4.16 cyp per month.
I had mivision in the past and all the wiring had been in place (I had to pay my electrician back then). I guess not including the wiring of your house is a common practice among all broadband providers. I wished they would wire all my house , I have 2 floors and 4 rooms with computers but i guess thats not possible.
1
reviewer: airy
october 03 2007 04:21am
I have been using Primetel services for some months. At the begining I was using Primetel as ISP but had lot of Interruptions in service and freezes on TV. I was desperate with poor phone support and I have to visit their office in Nicosia to get their attention to the problem. Unfortunately they couldnt find where is the problem.
After that I moved to SpiderNet and I can say SpiderNet/Primetel combination is great. Combine the great services of telephone network/tv from primetel with the proffesional internet support from spidernet.
2
reviewer: untelepathic
january 20 2008 09:16am
We installed PrimeTel/Netway at work about six months ago.
Pros:
In contrast to i-choice, the decisions of PrimeTel's network technicians seem to make sense. The modem they installed is made by Allied Telesis, a company known as a manufacturer of enterprise grade products. You connect to the network by establishing a PPPoE tunnel between your router and the modem, using a supplied username and password. That's all you need to do to get online - the whole process is simple and hassle free.
Service is also pretty good. We have had a couple of outages that lasted between 15 and 30 minutes, but I guess this is to be expected from a relatively "young" company trying to expand its network.
Speed is OK, though sometimes delivery of a packet might be delayed for some reason. This can make a web page appear "stuck" for several seconds from time to time. However, this seems to be a problem with Netway, not PrimeTel, since I'm having the same issue with i-choice at home.
Cons:
It took almost three weeks for them to come and install the modem. When asked about the delay, they blamed Cyta taking too much time transferring control of the phone line to them. Of course I can't say whether this is true or not.
My biggest "complain" to PrimeTel has to do with their prices. I understand that they have no competition over 2 Mbps but, still, 273.21 euro per month is way too much for an Internet connection, even if it is 8 Mbps.
The Bottom Line:
Though the network of PrimeTel is still not as stable as that of i-choice, it's stable enough. Equipment is much better, as is their network's speed and quality of service. Recommended.
Links:
Their modem (I think): http://www.alliedtelesis.com/products/detail.aspx?pid=256&lid=4
3
reviewer: constantinosavgoustides
march 12 2008 11:33am
Guys I have to admit I am very happy to find a means to express my frustration with Primetel. I was a their customer for 14 months approximately.
During these 14 months they had to come to my house 3 times to tweak my modem to finally get it to download Primetv as it should. Before they fixed it, the image used to get stuck all the time, and I had to be changing channels to get it to work.
That my friends, was not the problem itself. The problem with primetel was their support. I was calling them for 2 months on that last time to get them to come and fix the tv signal. Finally when I met with one of their representatives at the state fair, I threatened to sue, and they came and fixed it the next day.
So anyway I became a Primetel customer as soon as they started offering their services around May 2006 so some trouble at the begining was expected.
What I didn't expect was 1 year later, when i was going to move apartment the fiasco that they put me through.
I had asked them to move the service to the new apartment. They said it would take two weeks. After THREE weeks they came over finally to install it at the new apartment. Then for the next FOUR weeks they were trying to get it to actually work, telling me every 3 days that in 3 days, it will work, in 3 days it will work , in 3 days it will work. Every time it DIDN'T work, they blaimed it on Cyta. After THREE weeks of waiting for them to move the service, and FOUR weeks after that to actually get it to work, I had to terminate the contract. (7 weeks for a phone line was unacceptable) I actually lost hundreds of pounds in the process.
My work involves supporting customers from my home over the internet in the form of email support and supporting my company's forums. You see my company sells a specialized software and I had to be doing support almost every night for our customers at the time. Every night I spent without internet, I lost money from overtime. In that 1 month of waiting for them to fix the problem, I lost around 500 Cyprus pounds worth of overtime.
When Primetel called me to try and convince me to stay with them, they said : "how about you dont' pay for that 1 month ?" . Now to me that was stupid because to me it was implied that I wouldn't have to pay for one one month since it their service that wasn't working for that 1 month and not my fault. They was their great proposal to keep me to stay with them. I suggested to them that if they want to keep me as a customer that they would have to do better than that. They didn't, so I terminated my contract with them.
Please have in mind that I called them 23 times within the period of 1 month enquiring about my issue. (I have names too if anyone wants to hear them) In the 23 times I called, they would always say something like " we are looking into it right now sir, I will call you back within a few minutes with an answer" . They called me back exactly ZERO times. The only time they called me was to stop me from terminating the contract with that ridiculous offer of 1 month (which their service wasn't working during the month anyway!)
After I went to their offices to paid off my balance, I asked for my deposit back, they wouldn't give it to me. So I had to pay them less than what I owed them because they wouldn't give me back the deposit. I paid them exactly 25 pounds less (although to be precise I should have I should have paid them 28.75 less because they made me pay vat for the deposit if I remember correctly!)
The "deposit/guarantee" fee at the begining of a primetel contract is supposed to be incase you terminate your contract before the end of 1 year. I terminated it after 14 months. For the next 5 months they were calling me every 3-4 weeks, asking for that 25 pounds deposit. They were claiming that I still owe them that money.
Bottom line is that I am still expecting them to sue me for those 25 pounds (thats how CHEAP they are), so I can sue them for all that money I lost during their ridiculous customer support period.
Now about their packages. At the moment they have a very very tempting package. It is the cheapest on the market and if I wasn't so bitter with their unacceptable customer support, I would consider it. Too bad that their support is so bad because their internet service (if you don't have the tv) was excellent. The speed was great and I never even had to restart the modem. So bottom line is if you think you are lucky enough to never have a problem and need their customer support department, AND you only need internet from them not TV, then go ahead and put Primetel. Good luck with that but don't say I didn't warn you...
C
4
reviewer: georget
march 15 2008 12:44pm
Is it true that there is a download limit in Primetel service?
5
reviewer: andreas
march 27 2008 05:14pm
from what i see yes. I 'm trying to find the passwords for AT-iMG634 in order to forward the ports but i can't find anything. Can anyone help;
6
reviewer: briancy
april 15 2008 04:04am
I WAS TILL YESTERDAY SUBSRIBER OF PRIMETEL.THE MAIN RESON I STOP IS BECAUSE THEY DONT THINK THEIR SUBSCRIBERS THEY THINK ONLY HOW TO GET NEW CLIENTS FOR THEM.THEY DONT SEE WHAT ME LIKE A CLIENT WANT AND NEED. I WAS FACING SOMEPROBLEMS WITH THEIR PHONE AND TV BUT ONE OTHER REASON I STOP IT IS BECAUSE ONE OTHER PROVIDER COVER ME NOW CABLENET WICH THEY OFFER AMAZING INTERNET SPEEDS WHICH U CANT COMPARE IT.ALSO PRIMETEL WORKS WITH CYTA SO IS ONE WHOLE IN THE WATER AS WE SAID IN CYPRUS.
7
reviewer: jagman
july 17 2008 09:22am
My girlfriend and I were customers of Primetel when they first arrived in Limassol, we lasted 2 months. Their internet was acceptable, and the TV was slightly better than greek TV but their service levels were atrocious. They just didnt want to know about any problems.
We went on holiday for 2 weeks, and when we came back there was a massive phone bill (Well £80, but thats not the point) on the itemised billing it clearly showed that people had been calling all over the world even though our house was empty and I never connected a telephone to the socket as I just wanted Internet.
Primtel did not want to know. Eventually, I went to their head office in Limassol, paid by bill, handed all the equipment back and cancelled the contract. Since then at periods of every 3 months, WITHOUT FAIL, I get a phone call from their offices in Nicosia, demmanding their equipment back and payment for the last 2 years!! Even though every time they have rung me I explain that I left that address 2 years ago and handed all their crappy equipment back to them.
The last phone call was yesterday, and I actually lost my rag with the girl, because he grasp of english was such that she couldnt understand that I had no equipment to hand back. She says "hand it back", I say "I Have already, 2 years ago", She says "oh, well when do you think you can hand it back in then?" OMG!!!
So be warned, Primetel are a bunch of cowboys and not only do they mess you around as a customer, they mess you around as an EX customer even more
8
reviewer: lou
august 17 2008 04:35am
About the ports on the Primetel's modem:
All the ports from 1025 until 60000 are open and forwarded on the internal ip 192.168.2.10. (If you want you can call them on 133 and ask them to open the rest ports from 1-1024 also)
So just make sure that your pc has this ip, its better to set it manually:
IP Address:192.168.2.10
Subnet Mask:255.255.255.0
Default Gateway:192.168.2.1
DNS Servers:217.27.32.196 and 217.27.50.125
If you need more than one pcs to have open ports then you can put your own router after the modem with the ip 192.168.2.10 and then from your router forward again the ports to any ip that you need
9
reviewer: yiannsicy84
january 21 2009 12:47pm
Primetel sucks...
Read rule 10.2 from their terms and conditions documents https://www.primehome.com/Main/Main.aspx?id=425&lang=EN
10.2 The Company has the right to monitor and control the volume of data transmitted via the Interactive Services and/or the Internet Services. In the event of the client exceeding the usage allowances applicable to the provided Internet Services the Company reserves the right to reduce, suspend or terminate the Internet Services and /or the right to re-grade the Internet Services to a different speed and/or usage allowance at the appropriate charge.
So one day i get home from work and I find that my 2MB connection behaves like a dialup. I call them and they tell me that I exceeded their limits and I have a penalty. WTF? So I what if I downloaded a game or movie in 1 day?
I am sure that when I signed I asked the representative at the store if they have any limits and she told me "Definitely not"
(big mistake that i did not bother to read the terms).
<WARNING> Read the terms before you sign with them. <WARNING>
10
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