hi
am from portlaoise myself, however living in donaghmore now, near rathdowney.
i currently have chorus and to be honest i never have had any trouble with them. then again i have chorus digital not cable so not sure how good/bad their cable service is.
my mother still lives in portlaoise and she has tried getting chorus-digital and she has been told it is not in the area yet, go figure. her son, out in the middle of nowhere can get it but she is unable too!!
i personally think there are good and bad experiences with both sky and chorus.
my brother was with chorus (lives in mountmellick). he moved over to sky (not sure why). recently he moved back to chorus. his reason(s) for moving back to chorus was because sky were unable to setup a direct-debit on his current account. apparently sky were trying to setup a direct-debit from his irish account and get the money DDed to their english account. anyhow, to cut a long story short my brother was paying by CC each month and then paying the money off the CC from his current account. Sky sent him a bill for over 100-euros there last week, saying they had not received any payments from him, even though he would call them up, give them the CC details etc AND the payments to sky showed up on his CC statements. anyway, he figured it too much hassle, got chorus put back in and is ignoring all letters etc from sky in the future.
just goes to show, some people have great experiences with one company and others do not. same for all companies. luck of the draw?