Sky broadband any good?

New Avon Arms
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paultap

Well-Known Member
Hi Guys
My phone and broadband contract with BT has just come to an end and I am looking around for a viable alternative rather than just renewing. I am quite happy with my existing broadbands performance although the area that I live in doesn't support a particularly fast down load speed from my exchange , With BT it is usually around 3.5mb but it is reliable and adequate for my needs.

Phoning Bt gave the following prices to renew..... £15.99. Phone line rental ( per month)
unlimited internet useage works out at .............£13.50. ( per month) Contract is 12 months

however, I am using a home hub 3 wi-fi router, new members to BT's broadband get the latest home hub 4 and a half price contract at £8 a month (for 6 months) instead of £16 but are tied into an 18 month contract. My main gripe is that on renewal I cannot get an updated router, I have to continue using my existing one... If this fails I would apparently get a new home hub 3.


As an existing Sky TV customer I am being offered an equivalent combined telephone and broadband package from sky for £15.95 a month line rental with an internet charge of just £3.75 per month on a 12 month contact... A saving of £10 a month!

it looks a no brainier to switch, but looking online I have read quite a lot of complaints about the poor performance of sky's non fibre optic internet with many people stating that being previous BT customers, that they now wish that they had stayed with BT.


if anybody is an existing sky broadband customer I would be very grateful for you views on its performance.... Especially if you have switched from BT.

many thanks.
 
Paul. I regularly make poor decisions, but picking Sky broadband must rate as one of the worst I made last year. Worse than my chrono mistakes. Regards JCS
 
I always advise people to stay away from cheap 'bulk' broadband... it's ok whilst it works but when it doesn't (and it will almost certainly happen) the nightmare you will have trying to get it put right you would gladly pay any of the price savings you've made to avoid having to go through it again.

The economics of these companies works on quantity, not quality. They can afford to p*ss you off and lose you as a customer. You are 0.0001% to them. For every one of you they lose there are another 10 signing up due to temptation of cheap prices.

I depend on broadband for my job so it's a little bit different for me but I use Zen which is more expensive than many but the quality of service (in terms of support as well as network performance) makes it well worthwile. I have a web server running in my study at home with a higher uptime than even our dedicated web hosts for this site. :D

Alex
 
we are just in the process of changing from sky to virgin !! sky has to be the worst internet option in the uk. JMHO.
 
I use Telecom Plus (aka Utility Warehouse) and found them good. If I get issues I get to talk to someone in this country and they are very helpful. If you want to you can put the gas/electricity & mobile with them too, and they all put it on one bill which makes keeping track of the household bills very easy.
 
I stay in a rural area and had Sky initially and it was utter utter pish. You couldn't even watch a you tube clip without constant buffering. Changed to BT broadband and it is night and day, I'd ask your immediate neighbours if they have sky to see how it is first.
 
I've used Sky for the last few years, works absolutley fine, I spend a lot of my time during visits sorting out my mothers and mother in laws pc's and they are both with BT, most of the problems have boiled down to changes made by BT, and the fun thing is, as soon as I leave another change comes through and I have to go back and sort it all out again!
 
simple answe coming from an IT tech ,,, Sky Broadband /? NO NO NO NO , it is not worth it , fair usage policies and slow times during peak points and if you live in a non fibre optic area the speeds are ridiculously slow, if you have ADSL then BT is truly the only one that supplies a full package without losing on your line rental
 
we had sky rubbish BT petty poor the back up was awful phone up to complain we had no broad band and he said had been trying to fix the line and that the board band would be working. little did he no that just before my wife had been speaking to the engineers at the bottom of the lane they had told her that because of flood water it had damage the junction box and would have to be replaces and That BT new about it but would not act on it until there had been enough complaints to warrant replacing the part it took about a week to fix when we ask for some money of the bill for are troubles they said they had no record off this indcident so unless you want to be lied to don't use BT ,we are using talk talk and they seem to be ok ,good luck with that:thumb:
 
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a top bt it fella ages ago told the world we on this side of the pond have plumped for a system thats near useless it cant cope and will never give the speeds other countrys have, so there you have it ,guess what our countrys bought another pup,
 
The thing with ADSL broadband (over a copper phone line) is that:

a) a large part of the physical infrastructure will be managed by BT Openreach no matter who you go with
b) the reliability of the service will be determined by (amongst other things) the quality/age/length of your physical phone line

If you live right next to the exchange and your house is new and you have nice new shiny copper cables then your chances of having a more reliable service are better than most and thus you might go with a cheap service and never have any problems at all.

Then layer on top of that the actual network, which is managed by your broadband provider. A poorly managed network will result in poor speeds, high contention, capping etc

If you are lucky and your budget service works and and performs well enough for you and you never need to speak to anyone then all well and good, it's really only when things go wrong that you find out how good your provider is and in the UK, with old, creaking telephone lines your chances of having a fault at some point are high. Then you will need a provider who will actually be proactive and can trace the fault to find out if it is on their network or with BT and if it is with BT Openreach to manage that aspect of getting it fixed on your behalf because dealing with BT direct is also a complete nightmare.
 
having been in the industry for a few years i think you ar right to shop around,

what's best for me may not be for you,

I worked in catv and phone for many years but i would not go for the people that took over the company i worked for for years,,, that being virgin.

tried sky a while back....... crud is the word.

As CSl said above a well looked/kept up to date network is where it is,

so i moved back to BT as the dp is about 30 yards from my door and is dp3 of the new build of BT in this area, so the broad band is sorted but the software on the pc needs updating...............but bullets and powder comes first ;)

good luck with the search, you could see if they will give you a 3 month trial before you commit, but you would have more luck finding the winning lottery numbers.

bob.
 
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