Broadband switching: what you need to know

Broadband is the vertical where staying put costs the most. Irish providers compete almost entirely on an introductory price that runs for six or twelve months, after which the account rolls onto a standard rate that is frequently half again as much and sometimes double. Nobody sends you a letter saying “your price is about to rise sharply”. The direct debit simply changes.

If you have not looked at your broadband bill in two years, you are very likely paying the standard rate for a plan you originally chose because it was the cheapest.

Availability comes before price

Broadband is the one utility where the cheapest plan may simply not exist at your address. Before comparing anything, find out what your line can carry.

Enter your eircode on each provider’s own availability checker. What comes back will be one of:

• FTTH / full fibre — fibre all the way to the house. The fastest and by a distance the most reliable. Speeds from 500 Mbps to 2 Gbps are common where it exists. Delivered over the Open Eir, SIRO or National Broadband Ireland networks depending on where you live.
• Cable — Virgin Media’s own network, mostly urban. Fast download, historically weaker upload, though this has improved.
• FTTC / part-fibre — fibre to the street cabinet, copper for the last stretch. Speed depends on how far you are from the cabinet; anything from 30 to 100 Mbps.
• Fixed wireless or 4G/5G — a radio link rather than a cable. The fallback in rural areas without fibre. Usable, but latency and contention are worse and many plans have fair-usage caps.

We do not check availability by eircode on this site — no comparison site can do it reliably across every network — so treat the broadband comparison as a shortlist and confirm on the provider’s checker before you commit.

What speed do you actually need?

Providers sell speed because it is the easiest thing to put on a billboard, and most households buy far more than they use.

A rough guide: streaming 4K video takes about 25 Mbps per stream; video calls take under 10; a games console downloading a large title will use whatever you give it but is not urgent. A household of four streaming, working and gaming simultaneously is comfortable on 150–300 Mbps. Anything above 500 Mbps is bought for headroom, not need — with two exceptions: large uploads (video editing, backups, running a server) where the upload speed is what matters, and households where several people work from home on video all day.

Where a gigabit plan is priced within a euro or two of a 500 Mbps plan, take it. Where it costs €15 a month more, you are almost certainly paying for a number.

Compare on the whole cost, not the headline

Three figures decide what a broadband plan really costs:

1. The introductory monthly price and how many months it runs for.
2. The standard monthly price it reverts to afterwards.
3. The setup fee, plus any router or activation charge, minus any bill credit or voucher.

Add them up over the contract term and the ranking changes. A €35 plan for six months that reverts to €65 is dearer over two years than a €45 plan that never moves. Our comparison shows first-year cost with setup fees and credits included, alongside the standard monthly price, so both questions are answerable from the same table.

Two further details worth checking in the terms:

• Annual price increases. Some Irish providers write a fixed increase into the contract — a set amount added each April, applied even during your introductory period. That is a real cost and it compounds.
• VAT. Broadband carries the standard 23% VAT rate, not the 9% reduced rate that applies to electricity and gas. All prices we show are VAT-inclusive.

Contracts, and the month-ten reminder

Most Irish broadband contracts run for twelve or eighteen months, with an early-termination charge if you leave inside the term. The practical consequence is simple: the moment to act is before the introductory price ends, not after.

Set a calendar reminder for month ten. That gives you two months to compare, to ring your provider’s retentions team, and to switch if they will not match. Retention offers are real and are frequently as good as the new-customer price, but you only get one by asking, and you have far more leverage when your contract is genuinely about to end.

How the switch works

If you are moving between providers who both use the Open Eir or SIRO network, the switch is a line transfer and is handled between them — you order with the new provider, give your eircode and the account details of the old service, and they arrange the changeover. Downtime is usually minutes to a few hours on the switchover day, and often none at all.

Moving to or from Virgin Media, or on or off a fixed wireless service, is a different matter, because the physical connection is different. Expect an engineer visit, and expect a gap between the new service going live and the old one ending. Do not cancel the old service until the new one is working. Overlapping by two weeks costs less than a fortnight without internet.

You will normally be sent a new router. Keep the old one until the switch is confirmed complete, then return it if the provider asks — an unreturned router charge is a common sting.

What to check before you sign

• Is the price the whole price? Look for line rental, a mandatory phone add-on, or a separate router charge.
• Is there a data cap? Rare on fibre, common on 4G/5G and some fixed wireless plans.
• What is the upload speed? Cable and FTTC plans can be very asymmetric. If you work from home, this matters more than download.
• Does a TV or mobile bundle actually save you money? Price the broadband alone and add the standalone cost of what the bundle includes. Bundles frequently win, but not always.
• Is the introductory price conditional? Direct debit and e-billing are common conditions.

Start on the broadband comparison with your speed requirement in mind, then check the shortlist against your own eircode. If you are also due to look at energy, the electricity comparison and the switching guide work the same way — and the same month-ten discipline applies to both.