Right guys, as you may already know Sky have launched their broadband service a few months ago and it is now enabled on most Wirral exchanges (can't confirm which ones at the moment as samknows is offline).

Anyway, it is exclusive to Sky Digital customers (don't worry, new customer can take up the service too, and it might work out as good as, if not cheaper then, having a broadband supplier on its own, never mind the fact that you have Sky TV with it.

There are millions of companies in the broadband market nowdays. I personally have been using Virgin.net for the last year and had nothing but excellent service from them, but I am now out of contract and have decided its much cheaper to get Sky Broadband.



++Why Sky???++

So whats so special about Sky Broadband, and why am I going to jump from a service that is both ultra reliable and fast I hear you say. There are a few reasons for my decision to move:

- Cost; I am paying £17.99 per month for Virgin 2Mbps with Virgin - this would be totally free with Sky as I already have Sky Digital and have no intention whatsoever of getting rid - I love Sky+ too much.

- Infastructure - Virgin has both its own network and it also peers with NTL (as NTL are owned by Virgin) so they have an excellent network and the reason it is very reliable - but Sky have an even stronger network. BSKYB bought a company called Easynet about 18 months ago. For people who have never heard of Easynet, they are the biggest independent corporate telecoms provider and have been BT's strongest competitor in the corp market for many years. Because they were previously corporate only, their infastructure is as solid as a rock. They also own multiple data centres across Europe, as well as thier own huge IP Transit backbones, and all in all it makes them one of the largest telecoms companies in the world. The Cruisewirral server is located in the Easynet data centre in Amsterdam

- Sky's Reputation - the sole reason Sky are as big as they are in the television market is due a mixture of sensible investment, in depth market research and very strict product research and development ethics. Cable television is not "really" worse then Sky, it "should" actually be better. But the cable companies of the UK are years behind Sky due to their stupid ruthless investing (which has proved almost fatal to the cable tv industry on more then one occasion), a complete lack of market research (eg. cable companies only ever targetted area's where the masses were nothing more then "working class" or unemployed, because they thought this was the way to get customers), and the fact that every product they have released has been a riddled with bugs and problems and is years behind Sky, with the exception of the excellent cable internet services.

So hopefully Sky will have put as much development into Sky Broadband as they have with everything else they have launched in the past and it should be on the same high quality level as their other services.



++Overview of the service itself++

To get Sky Broadband, you have to have Sky Digital at present. The minimum package is priced at £15.00 per month. But don't go mistaking this for something similar to the crappy "base" packages that cable companies offer. The £15.00 per month package includes to "tv packs" which means you can have all channels like all the UK channels, all the Discovery channels etc, basically anything that isnt Sky Sports or Sky Movies.

Once you have Sky Digital, you can then choose a Sky Broadband package, provided your exchange is LLU'ed by Easynet (I will confirm these asap).

The packages are as follows (fee's are payable monthly as an additional service on your Sky bill:

Free with all packages:
- Sky Wireless ADSL2+ Router (actually a Sky branded Neatgear DG843GT worth about £70 online)
- McAffee Personal Internet Firewall and Anti Virus (i probably wont use, but its good for people who dont have protection)
- 10 @sky.com POP3/IMAP email addresses

- Free - 2Mbps/2GB Usage/£40 one time activation fee
- £5.00 - 8Mbps/40GB Usage/£20.00 one time activation fee
- £10.00 - 16Mbps/Unlimited Usage/£Free activation

Now I have personally gone for the 8Mbps package. My reasons for this are that whilst 2Mbps is more then fast enough for me, the usage limit is a bit too low, and although probably never implemented unless you take the pi$$, id rather have a better amount. I didnt even think about the 16Mbps package as its just a numbers game nowdays, nobody will ever need 16Mbps speed, the package will only be handy for families with more then 3 pc's online and users who use a LOT of bandwidth.

The service is based on the ADSL2+ technology, This means that it can operate at upto 24Mbps as opposed to the 8Mbps of standard ADSL. However, there are three reasons that Sky may be holidng off a 24Mbps service. The first is, they are simply realistic and don't believe anyone needs such a speed. The second is they have researched and found that many customers of the other three UK companies offering 24Mbps have a lot of customers who get nowhere near these speeds, so by limiting it to 16Mbps, customers are more likely to achieve the desired speeds. The thrid reason could be that Sky are keeping 8Mbps reserved for a future IPTV service, similar to their Homechoice service offered in many parts of london.



++Now to the ongoing review of the service itself.++

I telephoned Sky last week to order broadband. It was Thursday night. They asked me to phone up Virgin and get a MAC (migration authorisation code), so that I could transfer the service on my phoneline to them, so they can enable Sky Broadband on my line. They also debited the £20.00 activation fee from my credit card.

I did this, and credit to Virgin, they had no problems with giving me this code (a lot of companies make it hard to get the code in the hope they can hold onto you). They said I would get it in about 5 days via email. The very next day (Friday) the code arrived. So I phoned up Sky on the number they gave me, the woman took the code and confirmed it was correct. She then arranged the delivery of the free Sky Broadband box. She then gave me a few useful direct numbers for customer support and technical support etc and another number should I have problems on the activation date. The call was answered straight away, no waiting around, another positive.

Today I recieved both the Sky Broadband and the confirmation letter of the service activation. The box is of excellent build quality and very stylish indeed. It also includes 3 microfilters, an ethernet cable to get you started if you dont have wireless on your PC and the usual other bits and pieces you expect with a router. It also included the Sky Broadband CD which contains the McAffee internet protection software.

I am now just awaiting activation of the service, so I will update the review when it is activated.

Any questions fire away!

matty i beeen goin round in circles over which broadband to choose as my contract with bt is up, we also payin 17.99 a month but just didnt no were to start, all u ever get off bt is tech talk and i didnt understand it, sky were very helpful with info but u have just put it all into plain english for me and the mrs and ive just made up my mind thanks to u. am goin for the same as u matey.thanks for ur help in makin up my mind :-) :-)

No problemo matey, glad its been of some help already hehe!

Can't wait for service to be activated, will be interesting to see how it pans out.

I like the way that instead of just going like other ISP's and leasing L2TP's (basically the net connections themselves) from BT and then selling them on to end consumbers, they have invested billions of pounds into the purchase of Easynet and taken time getting the network and infastructure ready (it was almost a year from the announcement of the broadband service till it actually launched). They seem to be doing things right (as is usually the way with Sky), and with their infastructure they should be able to offer one of the best internet services in the UK.

Tried today with orange, but they want to make my
uncle wait 30 days + 10 days to clear.
(See other topic 44 Days to Leave ISP (Orange) )

Holding out for sky.
As he has a package already he can have Sky as follows.

Free - £40 Activation
£5 - £20 Activation
£10 - Free Activation

There are caps and bandwidth limits but unsure
what they are now.

Even more credit to Virgin then hehe!

See the first post topic for the details of the packages and pricing info:


Its sensible for Sky to cap, if its unlimited users will take the pi$$! If people take the pi$$, it increases costs (you now understand about bandwidth costs Webby hehe) and causes probelms for users in the long term.

I forgot to mention, the upload speeds are as follows:

2Mbps - 256Kbps
8Mbps - 448Kbps
16Mbps - 448Kbps

Hope that helps.

Right, here are the confirmed exhange details:

Already Enabled
- Arrowebrook
- Birkenhead
- Bromborough
- Claughton
- Mountwood
- Rock Ferry
- Wallasey

Not Yet Enabled
- Caldy
- Eastham
- Heswall
- Hoylake
- Irby

As you can see from this list, Sky have been making a lot of progress LLU'ing exchanges, due to massive investment and the experience of Easynet. Something which other providers are struggling to do, mainly due to cost.

For anyone who is not sure what exchange they are on, you can check using your telephone number here.

Right, got some more informatin through today frm Sky. One letter contained my password, which will be required the first time I use Sky Broadband.

The second letter contained my activation date. It is scheduled for the 6th February, although the letter does also advise me that due to high demand for the service, it may take upto 3 extra days to become to active, which is fair enough, at least they let me know this prior to any longer then expected wait.

They have also advised me that I will not charged for the service until it actually cmes live.

So far, still very happy with the way they are doing things. When I got Virgin, the information prior to the service activation was a tad disappointing, they sent out 3 little booklets and that was it, not much use to be honest.

Think i will be going back with Tiscali when my home BT connections are sorted.

Orange have just told me that there is a 5 month wait due to the demand,
i told him to get his facts right before lying to customers.

I'm having a nightmare leaving orange (Family friend).

Lol, sounds like whilst they may have a new name, their still France Telecom at heart

the joys can only do 2mb from ours wonder if they will let us have the 8mb package limit but only supply 2mb?

The 8Mbps package from your house will probably be the ADSL1 based "connect" service Robbie.

This means you will get the fastest speed your line can go, upto a maximum of 8Mbps.

Got to agree that sky broadband is quality got the mid package for my mum and its fantastic so easy to use and setup compared to wireless routers of old hey webby????!!! Only thing i needed to upgrade was the wireless adaptor on one of the laptops as it wasnt up to speed with the router. Also the customer service from sky is great.

Well its supposed to be activation date today, however Sky have kindly advised me in advance that it could take upto 3 extra days due to the high level of demand for the service.

Ill report back if it comes live today.

Right, I lost connectivity on my Virgin service so ive just rebooted my old router and the connection has been read as 8Mbps now, so I am now running on the new Sky Broadband router.

Connectivity is a bit touch and go atm, but this is to be expected straight after the change.

Seems to be settling down as I am typing this (the internet status light isnt flashing like it was), so hopefully it should all be ready to go now!

WORD OF WARNING - Don't install the McAfee crap that they include unless you want your PC to be bogged down... I installed it to have a look and increased my RAM usage in XP from around the 79MB level (ive highly optimized it to get it this low) at idle to over 175MB and added about 11 processes.

It slows the computer down to crap and also increases the initial load and initilisation time of Windows by 10 times! There is plenty of antivirus and firewall software on the market that dont do this, even freebies arnt this bad.

Uninstalled now though and running sweet.

Right its deffo settled down now, and I have been running speed tests over at ntlhell.co.uk and have been getting impressive speeds around the 6.2 - 6.5Mbps level. This is even more impressive when you consider I am approx 1.69 kilometres away from my exchange!

Speed test result screenshot:

Right, had it installed a few days now, very impressed, its been ultra reliable so far and speeds have been consistently higher then 6Mbps, sometimes as high as 7Mbps.

Upload speeds have been even more impressive, in the region of 420Kbps even at peak hours, which is awsome considering I was previously getting around the 210Kbps level with Virgin.

And I have noticed also, that Sky have changed the official upload speeds, and they are now:

2Mbps - 400Kbps (was 256Kbps, is actually 448Kbps for most people)
8Mbps - 400Kbps (again it was 448Kbps, but again it is still set at this on my router)
16Mbps - 768Kbps (it was 448Kbps, but from what I have read the speed is actually set above 800Kbps on peoples routers)

Obviously it seems Sky are publishing official upload speeds lower then what they are actually setting the speeds at on routers, to cater for network overheads and ensure that people can get nearer to achieveing the published speeds, or in somes cases (like me) even exceeding the published speeds. In my opinion this is excellent business practice by Sky and ensures customers are a lot more likely to recieve the service they are expecting.

Glad to say also that my broadband bill has now officially decreased from £17.99 per month to just £5.00 per month and id be happy with just equal service for that never mind even better hehe!




++Sidenote about Virgin Media Cable vs Sky Broadband++

For anyone who is interested, the £35.00 per month cable package from Virgin Media (formerly NTL Telewest) offers 10Mbps download and only 384Kbps upload speeds, so this makes the Sky Broadband offering even more spectacular. Even if Virgin Media halved the price of their 10Mbps service, it would still be almost double the price of the Sky 16Mbps service and offer less then half upload speed and more then 50% less download speed!

Gone are the days when cable internet was cheaper and/or superior to ADSL...

Right, had no problems with the service since I had it installed, no outages or slowdowns and all in all it seems exceptional for £5.00 per month.

I can download from the Cruisewirral server (tested it by downloading the Cruisewirral DVD ) at phenominal speeds, 840KB/s+ sustained every time. It takes me less then two minutes to download nearly 70MB!! See the below image for a screenshot of the speed I get.

Ive also since established that the router they provide is 108Mbps and not the 54Mbps version I first assumed it was. Plugged a 108Mbps card into the laptop and it runs at 108Mbps no problem. As its using two 54Mbps channels to do this, it should increase the wireless transfer speeds to a bearable level, standard wireless file transferring is slow and annoying imho.

Its as he say's above.

Unbelivable speeds.

Only real question which cant be answered honnestly yet
is reliability.

But i have no reason to think that i would be an issue?

Well this is one of the things I am wondering, if they can keep the service reliable. I am using my old Virgin.net service as the broadband because pretty much had no outages the 12 months I was with them (my modem caused outages, but it was totally fine when running on my router).

But hopefully, as Sky Broadband is "really" actually Easynet, and they are the biggest corporate business provider in the UK and one of the biggest in Europe, and their backbones are renowned for reliability in the IP transit industry, they will be as reliable as I expect they should be.

Only time will tell though...

Hehe don't forget Webby, the Cruisewirral server is in their Holland datacentre! Although I don't think the network uses a direct Easynet link as its a carrier neutral DC, but it for sure linkes up with ESY at KPN-Eurorings, Euroconnex and of course the mighty AMS-IX...

Well, I have had the service for over 2 months now, so I thought I better post an update.

++Stability++ - Totally stable, no random spikes or anything similar whilst I have been using it. No peering issues. No problems with the router.

++Reliability++ - Again, totally reliable, never once failed to connect. No problems with the router.

++Connection Speed++ - Phenominal! I always get a minimum of 850KB/s (approx 7Mbps) whenever I download a well seeded torrent from UK Nova (on Sunday i downloaded Corrie from Friday night at 890KB/s sustained) and whenever I upload, the speed is always in excess of 47KB/s (approx 400Kbps).

++Value For Money++ - Im paying £5.00 per month and gettin 4x the download speed and twice the upload speed I was getting with Virgin for £17.99 per month... splendid lol!

Overall, I am extremely happy with the service I am getting and even happier for the price I am paying.

Sky are apparently finalising their phone line rental service atm, and will hopefully launch it by the summer. The line rental price is expected to be in the region of £9.00, which would mean a £2.50 per month saving over the standard BT price, although this isnt 100% confirmed. It would hammer down the overall cost of Sky Broadband even further when compared with competitors.



On a sidenote, Sky are now leading the way by far in LLU'ing/enabling exchanges for ADSL2+ (the technology used to provide such high speeds):

- Easynet/Sky 942
- Be 649
- Bulldog 626
- Tiscali 403
- Orange 305
- Homechoice 145
- Pipex 51
- Edge Telecom 21
- Lumison 5
- Node4 4
- Zen 4
- WB Internet 1
- CPW/TalkTalk 0 (740 estimated)

In the last 3 weeks alone, they have unbudled a further 37 exchanges, and are set to have 1200 unbundled by the end of summer 2007 (which will give them a reach of more then 70% of the UK population).

So, what exactly do you pay for to get sky broadband?

I am having a bit of trouble with tiscali, i am not really interested in "free" phone call and not to bothered about the tv (although it would be useful).

Can you list the cheapest way to get the 8mb bb from sky please?

The cheapest way overall is to get Sky Digital with two channel packs for £15.00 per month, and then the Sky Broadband "Base" service, which runs at 2Mbps/400Kbps. This is free (with any Sky Digital tv package). It is subject to a £40 connection fee (which is mainly for the router imho) and a 2GB monthly download limit (which according to many Sky is only advisory, and not enforced at present).

The "Mid" 8Mbps package makes most sense for users who want an overall high speed and high download limit. It runs at upto 8Mbps/400Kbps and costs an extra £5.00 per month (bringing the total cost of the package to £20.00 per month). There is a £20.00 connection fee with this service. It is subject to a 40GB download limit, again this isnt being enforced (I am downloading way more then 40GB, probably in the region of 70GB).

If you don't want Sky Digital tv, then you can get the "Connect" package for £17.99 per month, which is based on standard ADSL Max rather then ADSL2+, and runs at upto 8Mbps/448Kbps. There is a £40.00 connection fee with this service.

All in all, if you already have Sky digital tv, there is no reason not to go for Sky Broadband. If you have cable tv, then there may be no real reason to switch, other then the impressive saving that will be made. If you have neither, then the "Connect" service is pretty much the same as all other ADSL providers.

If you are already paying in the £15.00 - £20.00 a month region for your broadband service and you don't have Sky Digital tv, but would be interested if it was included in your broadband service price, then you could look at the charge being for the broadband service alone, and the Sky Digital tv being a bonus.

So to summarise, here are the cheapest ways to get Sky Broadband:

2Mbps - £15.00 per month (with Sky Digital television included)
8Mbps - £20.00 per month (with Sky Digital television included)
8Mbps - £17.99 per month (without Sky Digital television)
16Mbps - £25.00 per month (with Sky Digital television included)

Just been reading alot of really bad reviews about reliability and useless customer service :s

From what I have heard, customer services can be a pain (due to the extreme demand), but the only time I have dealt with them is the few times I rang when ordering the service and arranging it to be connected and they were fine then.

Reliability issues are very rare, as its essentially Easynet, who are one of the biggest corporate telecoms and IP transit providers in Europe. If the service is being touted as "unreliable", its either going to be someone who has genuinely had a problem with their line, but more often people expecting to get the full 16Mbps speeds and only getting say 11Mbps, and VirginMedia fan boys (as we see a lot of on DigitalSpy) slating the service who have never actually had it.

I suppose the thing with Sky is, they won't leave service issues unfixed like almost all other big providers. They are investing heavily into Sky Broadband.

For instance they spent over £1.2 billion just buying Easynet. Since then they have been losing around £400 million a year to ensure they can enable as many exchanges as possible and also ensure they can get the infastructure and service right.

Only in about 2010 will Sky be looking to start actually making this money back from the Sky Broadban service. Thier overall profits have been hammered by Sky Broadband investment.

But its part of a long term strategy to invest in the future of telecommunications as a whole, and will eventually leave Sky as the only company that can fully utilize the BT 21CN when it is rolled out in 2009 (meaning they will be able offer multiple services via your phoneline, similar to cable).

They are not going to invest over £2 billion to risk it all by continuing to have solvable service issues.

No other provider has invested on a scale anywhere near this in the UK since before the telecoms crash in 2001. To be quite frank, no other provider is in a position to invest anywhere near this scale.

Sounds good, but they cant give my uncle or his son
there password for there e-mail accounts.

Always, in my experience, when dealing with the broadband
side of things, have been palmed off or been informed
its now at second level management.

Now the password saga is also a the Higher Broadband department,
and the answers come by post in our experience if you
are promoted to higher levels.

Probably due to the demand, but not nice being on the end of it.

I didnt have my email portal working for about a month, but it didnt bother me much anyway as I dont use it even though its now working.

I know this sounds a bit dodgy for new/less experienced internet users, but why anyone would want an ISP email address for anything other then a spam diversion is beyond me, when there are services like hotmail and gmail out there.

You change your ISP, you lose your email address and get a new one from your new ISP. If you have a non-ISP email address (be it private or public) you never lose or have to change your email address.

ISP email addresses are pretty stupid imho (except the likes of AOL where they let you keep the address forever).

Id just siggest to your uncle to get a hotmail account (if he doesnt already have one), its a far better and more flexible service (and the anti-spam filtering is amongst the best in the world).

One of my pet hates when contacting "technical support" on large companies is getting passed to some indian in a hut getting paid £5 a day to read of aload of speil from "routers for dummies" documents.

I am not racist, but if i ever have a problem with anything i always want to speak to someone who speaks the same language as me, how have you found sky for that?

The only time Sky employ indians on their normal customer services (ie. for the television) is between 00:00 and 06:00 (which is fair enough as the cableco's dont have any customer support at all between 00:30 and 08:00), the rest of the time its UK customer support.

With Sky Broadband customer services I am not 100% sure, but whenever I have phoned up they have always been UK based. I have not heard anyone complaining about them using indian customer support, so I assume they don't.

If they do, I would assume it would follow the same policy as their standard television service customer support.

Im not sure if the customer support is soley for Sky Broadband, or the same as Easynet or Sky Digital.

Ok many thanks, i am going to have a look into this. Firstly i need to get through to Tiscali, which is easier said than done.

Exactly, that's why he wants it for spam filtering, and his son is less experienced.
don't forget the set up disc sets this up for you in outlook.

He doesn't want a Hot mail Account !
He wants what was promised to him upon signing up, that's all.



I think in all the calls ive made on bealf of my uncle 98% of the time was UK speaking. And only twice was there an Indian
at the other end that spoke great English.

Problem is that when there is a problem its pushed to upper management, and they don't get back to you.

Support has no Direct connection to them,
its like any communications are only by e-mail from support to the next level. Trust me that is frustrating.

But if you get the service and its working, it is and seems to be a quality service.

As far as I know there is no spam filtering on Sky's email service...

Either way it will never beat hotmail/msn spam filtering, they are industry leading.

Not sure what the big problem is with hotmail to be honest, its free, it works, its flexible (its not tied down to which ISP you use) and it has the best anti-spam filtering there is, period.

I know Sky are promising email services with the connection, but I am just pointing out the fact that whether they work or not, there is plenty of much much better alternatives out there anyway.

so many really bad reviews, really putting me off.

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/bro...p;tab=1&productid=257&tabindex=0

I have got it anyway. There is an 8 day cooling off period, it is is rubbish, i am going to cancel it.

The sales guy was really helpful and seemed quite knowledgeable. I had a good talk to him about the bad reviews they have got and all my get out clauses. I even asked how often they routed the calls to India and apparently it is only at night due to the low unemployment in scotland.

Let us know any of the problems you have if any along the way?
Or promises that they didnt keep.

As ive said, a hell of a battle to get my uncles activated,
but got there in the end and he's had no problems
since its been connected.

Yes, it will be good to see how yours goes too matey. The more user opinions and feedback the better. Good luck with it. It should be even more interesting now, as when I got mine activated, it seems it was just before the mass customer sign ups, so they are having to handle a LOT more activations then they did when I got mine, will be interesting to see how they cope.

Update so far.

Apparently due to massive interest i have had to pay £40 activation fee for my broadband but i will get this credited back to me on the first bill, i will get approx 6.5mbps. They are coming to fit the box etc this Sunday 22nd and i should get all the other stuff soon.

So are you only getting the Broad band?
Or do you have the SKY Box etc.. ?

Is this a full new Sky Digital television and Broadbnad install? Im a tad confused by them coming to install it if its only broadband, as that costs £50 unless your on the Max service.

You cant get Sky Broadband on its own Mark... the broadband being so cheap (in the case of the Base product "free"), is another way to attract new digital telvision customers.

With over 8million digital tv customers, Sky are finding it hard to get new ones, with the advent of Sky Broadband, one of the targets is to break the 10 million tv customer barrier.

It will then open the way for IPTV services and other future uses of the network.



For Broadband on its own, Sky offer the UK Online service.

I am a new customer, i am taking the 6 packages for £21 a month and the 8mb broadband for £5 and the free weekends on the phone.

They are coming to install the TV stuff on sunday. I will get the router and the install dates through the post soon. Apparently i can use my own router aswell

You can possibly use your own router yes, if it can interact with the Sky router. The Sky Broadband router incorporates a ADSL2+ modem and in the terms of the contract your not allowed to use any other modem. I suppose a lot of it is to help with Sky customer support, so everyone is using the same modem, which cuts down problems when giving out technical support.

weve had sky broadband now for bout 4 weeks and it seems fine, better than bt !!

Had my TV installed last week.

Sky have cancelled my broadband with Tiscali, i can see the 8mb speed on my draytek router, but am unable to connect. I have been 2 days without any internet.

Phoned last night to try and see where my stuff was, spoke to some indian guy that was obviously reading from a script. No use at all.

Spoke to a scottish guy this morning who was suprised i didn't have correspondance or my equipment. Hopefully today or tomoz.

Sorry to hear that. Did he confirm it had been dispatched?? They use Parceline to deliver, they are quite good, mine took a few days to come, but I was given a lead time of 7 - 10 days for the service to come live, it came live after 8 but I already had the router about 4 or 5 days before.

Its a pity they don't allow temporary settings to be used on peoples own routers when situations like this arise, but I can see why they want everyone to use their own router (cuts down on the number of problems and therefore support calls and also helps them deal with support calls more efficiently).

Hope ya get it asap matey, the sooner ya on the service the better, will be good to see some more feedback and opinion.

Still nothing 3 days later.

Phoned on Sat, said the earliest i would get it would be weds.

Gutted for you mate. Whats actually going on with the router? Have they actually sent it out as yet and its held up or have they just not bothered to send it?? Or did they not say.

From them saying Wednesday, it sounds like logistics havent even sent it out yet!

According to one person, it was sent out last week, along with a letter and i should of got it on Friday.

Spoke to someone again, who said they dont normally send it out untill 3 - 5 working days after the activation of the line, i should receive it the end of this week.

Thats weird, they sent mine a week prior to the activation of the line.

I think someones made a booboo somwhere along the lines here and doesnt want to admit it. So their pretending their policies are different now.

By the way if you need to get ahold of Sky for enquiries relating to Broadband, there is a freefone number, its:

0800 051 2595

Just tried it and it works no problems, the call was answered literally straight away. I think its a number that home install engineers use lol, but they cant tell the difference at their end.

cheers, looks as though it was finally delivered yesterday. Need to pick it up from the post office today.

Good good I hope it is matey.

Was it the router matey??

Yeah it was, just plugged it in and it just worked, thought i might have to setup my details, also i cant login to the router, i assume it is sky managed and i need the cd?

Had a guy from virgin media basically telling me sky were rubbish today

I think matty got in to his, i don't know what it is now?

Lol you should have asked him to remind you where Sky One is on their EPG

The router is Sky managed, they have worked it all so you just plug in and go like you say. You can get access to the router config though, use the following details:

IP Address - 192.168.0.1
Username - admin
Password - sky

How imaginative was that password lmao. How has the service been so far? Has it been choppy/intermittent at all as apparently it can take upto 9 days for the DSLAM to fully settle with the fact your on a ULL connection as opposed to a standard L2TP connection. Didnt happen on mine though.

Please do explain/un-abbreviate...

I get the L2TP one, but other members might not?

DSLAM - Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
ULL/LLU - Local Loop Unbudling
L2TP - Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol

A DSLAM basically distributes the ADSL connections to different users.

Local Loop Unbundling is when an ISP had its own hardware in the local exchange and its own national network and is basically free from BT and therefore able to provide whatever services, speeds and pricing it wants to.

L2TP is essentially a vitrual LAN connection, basically the ADSL connection. Uusually this is provided by BT unless the user is on a ULL connection.

It is very up and down.

i am getting a speed range of 3mbps to 7mbps

Give it a week or so and see what happens. Do you know how far you are away from your exchange? If you have seen 7Mbps, I would assume the speed you would get normally is around the 6Mbps level.

it keeps on cutting out.

I wouldn't really advise anyone to move to sky from a reliability point of view. it is a very good deal though

3 points to be made here:

1. I have already told you it sometimes takes as long as 9 days for a connection to settle down after changing to LLU. Its a big change, its very rarely a perfect one. Give it time.

2. Have you informed Sky of the intermittent problems yet? If not then you have no place to complain as if they don't know you have a problem, they can't have a chance to fix it. They are many things, but mind readers they are not. You could find out the gain on the line is too low for instance, something Sky/BT would be able to ammend for you.

3. Give it a couple of weeks before commenting on whether its reliable. If you have told Sky about the problems and this time next month you still have them, then fair enough. Right now its far too early to judge.

I personally have had no such problems, and people I know on Sky Broadband, once they are connected and the connection settles down, they too have no problems with reliability. As I say, give it time, and if you are having problems contact Sky and let them know about it.

1 point is to be made here:

You should of got NTL. Installed within a week, very easy to set up, fairly fast, extremely reliable, good technical services and very easy to set up.

haha

Yeah, as Matty says, give it time to settle and if you're still having problems - switch to NTL....er I mean give them a phone and let them know

Hmmmm... Joe why would he want to pay £35.00 per month for a lesser service (okay its 2Mbps more providing you dont go over their limits at peak hours, but crap when it comes to upload), when he can get Sky BB for £5.00 per month??

For me, Sky Broadband has been more reliable then NTL ever was in the 4 years I had em, none of the crap every couple of weeks I used to get with NTL where their connection would be intermittent between the hours of 00:00 and 06:00 because of them working on Bagu. Doesnt affect most people but they dont half perform maintenace too often. Sky just keeps running for me, no outages as yet. Beautiful fast UPLOADS too (NTL crap themselves when they hear that word lol). Over 3 months now too!

To be honest, Virgin ADSL was the most reliable ISP I have ever had (ive had Freeserve, AOL, Bullshit i mean Bulldog, Zazizam, CWC/NTL over the years), it had both the BT and NTL backbone to rely on. I cant rate Sky up alongside it yet as I havent had it long enough, but its certainly equalled it for reliability so far.

All broadband services offer differences in reliability depending upon the area you live in.

Not having tried sky personally, I wouldn't know what their services are like (hence this topic is trying to help members), but for me and others who live in this area, NTL have been the most reliable service provider, certainly the most reliable I've ever had and therefore, I would never change.

I agree that they are crap when it comes to uploads, but how many home broadband users use or require their service for more uploading than downloading?

Of how reliable and amazing you've been saying Sky's service is, I'm a bit disappointed that at least 1 member is already having problems with it so far, but as you say, it is an ongoing review.

Lets have an element of fairness in all this and stiop brown nosing Barclay Knapp - me and at least two other members who have posted in this thread have had no problems with Sky Broadband. Also although Mark initially had problems getting his uncles service setup, since it was eventually activated, he says its been pretty rock solid (the only problem was with webmail).

Now AX has had it for a week and so far has had intermittent problems, which are very common on new LLU connections anyway. As far as we know, Sky havent had a chance to investigate the problems yet.

So out of 5 members, in all only one is having problems with the actual connection reliability, and he has had the connection for less then a week, in which case it sounds symptomatic of the LLU changeover, but even if it isnt, Sky havent had a chance to investigate them as yet.

Your telling me that when everyone else is affected by maintenance on Bagu or even at Bromley, your the only person locally who isnt?? Cos there are plenty of times when NTL are doing work on their network at the likes of 2 in the morning that cause outages for people. Okay so its not for most people, but hmmm I can safely say that Sky hasnt gone off for me and I surf all different hours.

Also, not so long ago there was major problems for the majority of Bromley customers, where they had limited, intermittent or even no connectivity for over 6 hours, during the daytime too.

DO NOT GO WITH SKY, THEY ARE LYING USELESS RIPOFF MERCHENTS.

I signed up for the £26 a month package and they are chargin me £40 a month because it turns out that deal was not available on my exchange. There was no mention of this on the phone when i booked it.

Got to write to sky head office to explain it as no-one can help

Enjoy the Wait

This is what lets sky down for me, that if there is a problem
its refered to second level.

There is no direct line of communication between level 1 and level 2 only by e-mail. (internal)

Its the most frustrating part of it all,
they wont call you back only inform you by post a week later.

------
I find that situation amazing rob?
Its blasted over the TV £26 ??

Hope its resolves asap.

In other words your not on an LLUed exchange. This WILL have been confirmed to you prior to you signing up. Its pretty fair, Sky charge £17.99 per month for their non-LLU 8Mbps service as they have to pay BT for the L2TP.

Again, Sky are certainly NOT useless ripoff merchants, out of 5 people who are on the service in this thread, 4 are having no problems with their price or connection. When you signed up they will have explained that you would have been going onto their connect service, which is higher priced then their LLU services, if you chose not to listen to them, then you cant really blame them. When people want the best deal, and expect they will get it, they hear what they want to hear.

What do you mean Mark "Its blasted over the TV £26"?? Yes it is, but they do mention they can only provide the service to around 70% of the UK population at present... they are unbudling more exchanges per week then any other ISP is even financially or physicially capable of. Its not their fault that BT's network is so outdated at present that they have to get in there and do the upgrades themselves.

I specifically asked if i could get the £26 a month speak, see surf deal. The guy said there was really high demand on my exchange but he managed to sort it.

At no point was i told that i couldn't have this deal, he even confirmed that it would be £26 a month

Why would i accept to pay £40 a month when i wanted to sign up for the £26 a month?

Looks as though it might be sorted, the customer services that i eventually got through to said i had been missold the product and they are reducing my charges.

IF I WAS TOLD I COULDN'T HAVE THE £26 A MONTH DEAL, I WOULD NEVER HAVE GONE TO SKY.

If they reduce your fee's, it will lose them money, so more power to you

Does this mean sky never make mistakes? I believe you AX

Again i believe you AX as i had similar.

Matty its the customer service were talking about not the actual
broadband its self, but seeing that its under the title of
Sky Broadband - Ongoing Review Of The Service

4 people may not be having issues with there connection,
but i know of 2 myself and AX that are NOT impressed with
there customer support at all. Accept they do and can get it wrong.
Its people humans at the end of the phone, not robots.

Also accept that you missed the point that yes they are advertising £26.00 per month, but they clearly state in all their literature and on adverts that it only applies to 70% of the population atm.

If their equipment in the exchange has reached capacity, they will not keep placing clients on it like Telelwest did when they launched their 10Mbps service and more recently Talk Talk are doing atm, as it degrades the service for all customers. So when their equipment reaches capacity, they place people onto standard BT L2TP's via their "connect" service, which cost them a lot more then using their own equipement, hence the fact they have to charge a lot more.

Well obviously they are.



No one is denying that, my problem is being told that i was on the sky speak see and surf package but actually being placed on the Connect service. Surely there is laws for stuff like that, luckily my conversation with the original sales person was recorded. I am still in my first 28 days as i specifically asked when the 28 days would start and he said once i received all the services. I don't get the phone calls till 14th May

Your missing the point.
AX Was sold / told the wrong information. By a SKY Representative.

Its nothing to do with what ever the other companies are saying or doing.
SKY make mistakes but your the only one that can not see that, as you commented by saying.And it was SKY who got it wrong not AX.

Not Virgin or Talk Talk SKY
The sun does not shine out of there back side when it comes
to customer service in my experiance and i guess AX is thinking
the same too.

AX you didnt understand what I said - if you are on the "connect" service, then they are NOT placing you onto their own equipment/network, they are placing you onto a BT L2TP connection, which is on the BT network and has nothing to do with the Sky/Easynet equipment/network.

They are most likely doing this as they must have reached capacity on their own equipment/network so it prevents clients already on the service from suffering service degredation.

Mark your missing the point completely, firstly WHERE did I mention Virgin in anything (I expected you would miss the point and bring them into it at the mere mention of Telewest tbh even though they have nothing to do with it)?? You just bought them into it, not me. And secondly the point I was actually making, is they have obviously learnt from other providers bad experiences by overloading capacity and that is why they are placing clients on BT L2TP's when their own equipment reaches capacity.

Well, that is not my problem. I couldn't care less if i was on 6 month old or 12 month old technology. If a rep told me i could get the £26 deal, he accepted my application and happily took my money of me, then why should I have to worry about being on the BT Network.

If its in the phonecall that they said £26.00 to you and explained that it would be on the connect service, then they have to honour it. If they didnt say what type of service you would be on, but it was £26 per month, then they have to honour it. If they said it would be £26.00 dependent upon them being able to put you on the LLU service, then they dont have to honour it if they put you on the connect service.

Either way though, you said earlier on that they were going to honour the price anyway (which isnt the first time they have done this for a client), so im not really sure why Mark bought it all up again. The case was closed with regards to the price if they were going to honour it.

As I said, you will be losing them money hehe, so more power to you!

In English = Sky do not have a perfect customer service.

Mistakes are made : Accept it

Lol at least explain where I mentioned Virgin...

ntltelewest is the same service to me, eventhough to you there not, but at the end of the day its the colour of there paper work and a logo that has changed to me.

No one has come to the door and said sorry we have to unplug that wire and put this on in its place.

So Telewest NTL Virgin to a Normal(Non Tech / Geeky ) person is the same thing.

You will notice that you mentioned Talk Talk there too.

They all have reputations for poor customer service,
i cant speak for Talk Talk personally but i ve heard there bad.

Where as NTL i know very well and now as virgin and upto now ive had a very good service.

Where as getting my Uncle Onto SKY took 45 Days
customer service was rubbish, and im not thick when it comes
to calling customer services.

So in my experience SKY is the worst for CUSTOMER SERVICE up to now, but i cant complain about the service since its been up and running.

I find it extremely arrogant to assume that someone has not listened to the customer service agent.
Which its another example of SKY's Poor customer service which just adds to the poor service i received with sky.

There Not Great at Customer service trust us.

So if your prepared in the slightest to listen to our experience you can then begin to accept that its not perfect and there for
fall in to the catergory as the same as the rest in respect that mistakes are made.

Great Service - IMO
Crap Customer service

This is where I expected you would get confused - I was talking about Telewest when they launched their 10Mbps service, long before they merged with NTL, and years before they became Virgin Media.

When they launched their 10Mbps service, their network simply didnt have the capacity to provide such a service. Overnight their network went from being able to provide stated speeds to everyone, to struggling to be able to provide 1Mbps at peak times, even to the customers on the 10Mbps service.

Talk talk are suffering similar problems now, this is why the reliability and speeds on their service is suffering heavily.

Sky have obviously learnt from these two companies mistakes (in the very same way ATi took heed of what happened to 3dfx in the graphics card industry, changed how they were doing things, and as a result have since become the number 1 in the industry), hence they are placing clients onto standard BT ADSL L2TP connections instead of on their own network, to prevent problems for customers. Its a good strategy for them to be taking, both from their own poit of view and from mine as a customer.

It helps prevent serious network slowdowns and failiures. Overloading a network can slow everyones connections down, overloading equipment can be fatal and cause unreliability.

And one other thing, you are always moaning to me about NTL/Virgin customer service and their apparent lack of quality of service, their cutting corners on everything, so how can you say "Where as NTL i know very well and now as virgin and upto now ive had a very good service" - if its been so good, why would you be complaining about them all the time??

I wouldnt speak too soon either, Joe said they were the most reliable ISP the other day in this thread and then a couple of days later he couldnt use his net for a whole night and regretted saying it lol.

When will the penny Drop

Customer Service

Is that clear enough? Where moaning about customer service
and you still go on about there "Service" Broadband etc..

Its not perfect - like the rest of them and that's being nice.

haha tis true.

It's all about each others experience with each ISP.

For me, NTL have given me the best service over 5+ years I've been with them. Infact, the fault the other day was I think the first I've ever had since being with them over all this time. So either since Virgin took over, their service has downgraded (as probably the same with their customer service) or it was just a fault at a bad time (soon after they took over).

If sky are using BT's network to cope with loads, it is a very good idea, but the customer shouldn't have to pay extra for it.

If you are offered the same service as everyone else, you expect to pay the same price as everyone else, reguardless of how that service is brought to you.

That's just my opinion anyway, sky may have different opinions though.

Didnt get too bad a review from Watchdog... both Virgin Media and Sky got the same ratings from Watchdog iirc.

So if Virgin CS is so amazing when compared with Sky, why are they rated as pretty much equal according to Watchdog - Orange and Talk Talk were the companies that were crucified in their report, with BT surprisingly coming out top for customer service.

Lol, so why do Virgin, the so excellent service, charge some customers half the price they charge other customers for exactly the same services???

And Joe, I know for a fact I can list at least 10 major outages on Bromley in the last 7 years or so that WILL have affected you as a CWC/NTL/Virgin broadband customer, so either you are being economical with the truth, or your a spin doctor lol.

Sky make it clear they have two services - their LLU service for clients that are surprisingly on their LLU network, and their connect service, for clients who can't be serviced by their LLU service at present (usually its because the exchange isnt unbundled, but it sounds like they are starting to place customers onto the service when their equipment reaches capacity until the next upgrade phase rolls out - which is fair enough).

They usually make it quite clear which service you will go on to, if they dont then they are liable to charge you the price they quoted. I agree. But just because there has been an issue with the price being charged (it was sorted out hours ago according to AX, god give me stregnth why Mark turned this into a Virgin Vs Sky thread when I originally started it as a Sky Broadband Review thread) it seems everyone is having a pop at them for using two different formats to deliver what is essentially the same service.

If we all want to do this, I can have pops galore at NTL/Telewest/Virgin as I know their network inside out, with its DAVIC/DOCSIS/euroDOCSIS setups, Bromley have interactive, Lanley dont, Videotron dont even have digital, some area's have 20Mbps yet area's paying the same price are still on 10Mbps, some clients cant even get faster then 1Mbps, some cant get faster then 10Mbps, I can have pops all day long, but at the end of the day theres no point in questioning how they run their network as its been run like the complete mess and shambles it is for almost 5 years now, and their clients seem to be satisifed with the "lesser" service they have provided to their customers, so who am I say how they should be running it...

Matty this is about SKY's Customers service as you seem to think its amazing and its not. No one's mentioned Virgins customer service in this thread? The only time ive moaned about there CUSTOMER SERVICE is when i haven't been able to squeeze that few quid out of them. Your assuming a hell of alot out of that statment, and AX said it was there mistake as it was on tape. That's what were saying, there customer service is flawed just like the rest of them, and we hope you read what we are saying and stop raving as though they dont make mistakes. Well they do and they can now join the rankings of the rest of the bunch.

Ahem, you stated you are happy with NTL/Virgin wheras you wouldnt be with Sky cos their customer service is shit. All I was stating is that they are both ranked as bad as each other, and also you have moaned to me in the past as to how bad and incompetent VM CS can be, yet when it comes to this thread they shine above all others just because Sky's broadband CS hasnt lived upto expectations.

Read above to see AX's Deal which i would guess other SKY customers are paying more



I havnt set out to do that, what ive set out is to show you that there CUSTOMER SERVICE
is not as good as you suggest.

There service once up and running however i can not fault (Upto now +2 months).
I cant remember the last Down time i had with NTL but then again
i'm not up as late as i used to be.

I can remember it lol, last September was the last outage of any real network significance on Bromley

Havent kept upto date on Bagu outages in the last year though.

Ive just red something about the delay you had earlier on in the year Mark. It was a Sky customer service guy talking about the problems with delayed activations. The reason most are delayed is because Sky currently rely on BT Openreach to enable the connections in the exchanges.

Initially they were quite happy to do it, but in recent months it seems BT have realised that Sky are now real threat in the broadband industry, and as Openreach is a BT company, they seem to be taking the pi$$ as much as they can. According to the guy, OFCOM are currently investigating the service Openreach is providing to Sky as they are not happy with the way things are happening either, as it only really affects the customer at the end of the day.

He also stated that when they attempt to contact BT Openreach now to find out what the hell is taking so long, they can phone up 4 times on the same day and get 4 completely different answers. So it seems Sky are powerless at present to speed activations up until OFCOM kick BT's ass for shitting on Sky and more importantly the end users of the service. So when Sky say "theres a delay at the exchange", they really arnt joking, there is a delay, usually caused by BT Openreach doing things on a very relaxed "they get done when they get done" basis rather then rushing or prioritising things, and theres not much Sky can do about it.

Damn BT cheeky Grrrs! Glad im on Sky Talk now, dont wanna give a penny more then I have to to BT! Bring on Sky phone line rental!

We will see, it might just be them palming me of.

Still, as i predicted, nothing has been done. No-one can help me.

Been told to give it 2 weeks, see if i do hear from anyone. I am now out of my 28 days becuase of this. It turns out the my exchange was sold out which is why i was put on this account.

If ye are having problems, have ye tried contacting BT to check things like the gain ans the noise on the line etc??

Not really your responsibility, but it seems Openreach and Sky don't get on atm, so things take forever to be done.

I am having no problems with their service any more, i am actually quite happy with it.

My problem is that i ordered a cheap service and got put on an expensive one

Just tell them you will cancel the direct debit and take the issue to OFCOM if they dont resolve the pricing issue.

still nothing

So i'm guessing if i go to switch from Tiscali to sky i'm going to be without 'tinternet for ages?

I was without internet for about 3 or 4 days, then very dodgy internet for a couple more days

it is very slow at night time. I am starting to wish i never switched.

Unlucky, night time speeds for me are ace, getting 800 - 900KB/s from the fastest servers in download speeds, always get the same upload speeds no matter what time of day.

However if you are on a BT L2TP as opposed to a Sky one (hence your on the "connect" package) then the problem will actually lie with BT's network rather then Sky. They are quite probably over-subscribing your exchange, hence the reason Sky are being very bitchy about how many subscribers they allow on their hardware.

Have ye phoned Sky to let them know yet? BTW, by slow, how slow do you mean? Because on BT L2TP ADSL MAX lines its actually RADSL not straight ADSL anymore. So one is extremely unlikely to see near the 8Mbps quoted limit for them lines even at the best of times. At peak id say more like 2 - 3Mbps.

Done a line check and was getting about 500k.

Was taking 10 - 20 seconds to load google.co.uk

When ye think ye are getting a slowdown, test the speed using the cruisewirral server. Download the Cruisewirral DVD from http://www.xload.cruisewirral.com/images/cruisewirral-dvd.wmv and see what speeds ye get.

I always use it to test me speed as LeaseWeb's network is stunning and it always gives far better and more realistic readings then most other servers and speed tests.

I don't doubt what ye saying btw, just hleps give ye a better indication.

Ok cool, i will try that.

I suppose i am just spoilt in work as i have the free reign of a Leased Line

right, first of a series of test

8am 25/5/07 downloading the dvd at 300kb/sec

Do you mean Kbps or KB/s?

KB/Sec

Yu cheeky git lol

Friday 25 17:36 - 400kb/Sec

Not bad speeds then - remember RADSL and ADSL2+ are both dependent upon how far you are away from the exchange, how good your line is and how subscribed the DSLAM is.

Its almost certainly over-subscribed in area's like Wirral, so if your not on Sky/Easynet ADSL2+ hardware, the speed will suffer a bit.

I get around 800KB/s, but im only 1.69km from the exchange and am on Sky/Easynet hardware as opposed to a BT L2TP.

Just had the exact same happen with a work colleague, was told they could have the full package for £26 a month. Only to get their "this is what your paying letter" for £54 a month with only 2 channel mixes.

Although my broadband might be this BT Connect, it is complete rubbish, hardly ever works

Need to wait till my next bill to see if mine really is sorted.

Not Good

Requiring a router reboot every day at the moment.

At least the TV works

my uncles needed that in the first week.
and i hate to say it but broadband is fine

still having loads of problems, took about an hour to connect this morning.

Of course, it is the exchange that is at fault. Considering i have never had any technical problems with tiscali, all the problems start happening with Sky.

never had a problem with sky broadband meself

The "technician" was trying to blame my computer, apparently because i didn't install their free virus program that is the only reason why my computer couldn't connect to the internet.

even though i explained to her that i am a network technician and could connect to the router and could see that was down.

Sometimes you have to play them,
and say, "Yes ive installed your anti virus software" now what ?

My broadband is still down 90% of the time.

When it is working it still disconnects after 10 mins

Sky technical support, although useless, have been quite proactive so far.

Sounds like a problem on your line/L2TP rather then a problem with Sky tbh. They are probably relying on Openworld to fix it.

Im just coning up to the 5 month period and still recieving nothing but great service, my connection is used for streaming 128Kbps music 24/7 at the moment!

Didn't realise it was that bad Rob.
If its every 10min (Exactly) there has to be a timer some where
knocking it off?

Rob are you connected via a wire or wireless?

I am connected via cat 5. I can see the router perfectly. The router is dropping the connection to the internet.

Apparently the problem with the exchange has been fixed.

The problem apparently lies at either the line going into the house (the quality of the phone is fine) or the equipment.

I never had any problems with the reliability from Tiscali

Have they offered ayou a new router?

As the voice part of the line is only the 0-4kHz signal, and the ADSL signal is on the 25kHz and above signal range (its protected by a 21kHz safeguard), it is quite normal for a line having problems with one service not to be with the other service, so your voice calls could be running fine whereas the internet is goosed.

Do you know what sort of leases you are getting on the IP from the DSLAM on your router and also from the router on your connected PC at all? If not, dont worry, its just if you do, it could be a leasing problem.

Do you know if they have considered the fact that your on the standard ADSL service and not the ADSL2+ service and the SNR can only be 75dB on ADSL and not the 90dB of ADSL2+? This can cause problems, especially if Tiscali were providing an ADSL2+ connection over a bad line previous to you moving to Sky. To be totally honest though, anything over 50dB can cause problems, dependent upon the gain on the line.

Its all a bit weird, the problem is as you say, either the box or the line. If its the line, its up to BT. Id suggest to them you should have a replacement box to rule that out, and if it solves the problems, then it was the router at fault.

i was gonna say that, no i wasn't but a replacement router
could be a simple step forward.

or it could just be the idle time set on your router if some one has messed with it? haha

seems to be a little better at moment

What has changed?

Nothing.

It seems to be really bad in the mornings and at weekends.

Going to see how it is this weekend. The problem is that i got so cheesed of with it, i not really used it recently.

Just been browsing around the Sky Broadband site and found this price comparison tool:

Sky Broadband Price Compare Tool

Its actually extremely good, very informative and best of all, its accurate and tells the truth (for instance, there is at least one package that I have found that shows Sky Broadband isnt the cheapest overall for something).

Remember, you will only really save money if you already have, or want to get Sky Digital TV. As my mother has done though, instead of pay around £120 for an ariel upgrade to get freeview and so she can get the likes of UK Gold etc and a crystal clear and high bit rate picture on her TV, she was paying £18 a month to Wanadoo, but when she moved house, she got Sky Digital and took the Sky Broadband 2Mbps service for free, so she is actually paying less then she was paying Wanadoo and recieving digital TV as well as broadband.

Well I passed the 6 month mark yesterday and so far ive had nothing but excellent service.

Havent had to phone up technical support to comment on them, other then when I first signed up to give in my MAC.

Overall the service has been rock solid and the speeds have been amazing at all times of the day, I easily push past 7Mbps, and have seen the connection go over 8Mbps recently, the usual speed I am getting off BBC iPlayer is past the 7Mbps mark.

The upload is also excellent, my usual speed when uploading to my web servers is around 410Kbps, considering the speed is supposed to be 400Kbps, I can't complain lol.

So for £5.00 per month, and someone that was happy with 2Mbps for £17.99 per month, I am extremely happy with it.

Lets hope it stays this way!

I have got a new router through on mine, just waiting to install it, although it has been slightly more reliable. But my sky TV Box has started playing up now.

I have had to power it down and power it backup 3 times in the past 7 days. Also, it has "crashed" about 2 times aswell.

Just my luck.

How old is the box and what model is it? Over time, especially on Amstrad and Grundig boxes, various capacitors dry out in the power supplies, causing allsorts of problems. It can also happen prematurely due to excessive heat, so make sure you are not covering any air vents.

Another thing that tends to happen is the decoder's can play up, and of course the LNB can be dodgy which can lead to random but sometimes continuous signal problems.

If the box is under one year old, it will be under warranty and will be replaced by Sky straight away.

It is a few months old, i got it at the start of my contract (a few pages ago in this topic) They have told me to ring them back next time it does it.

we not had ours that long, but again the service has been top notch... am glad i listened to ur advice and chose to change matty..

Good good, glad ye happy with it fella, hope it continues to be good for ye

cheers dude !!

Hehehehehe been doing some FTPing tonight from one of me servers (uploaded 23GB in just 4 days to a server - started downloading some stuff tonight) and I must have the best 8Mbps connection ever... it is constantly FASTER then 8Mbps lmao.

So much for "upto" 8Mbps haha! This aint supposed to happen surely:

Hmmmm... just been browsing around my account online, and I have the option to change to a Sky Landline - this means a launch of their landline service is imminent!!

The cost is £10.00 per month and makes you independent of BT, with your TV, phone and broadband now on a single bill.

I shall be taking it, BT have been screwing me for far too long now, they are charging me for call barring and caller ID - I only have the line for fecking internet and business, its hardly ever plugged in lately the robbing gits argh long live Sky, at least now it wont be £18 a month or whatever it is BT charge me, a nice round £10.00 per month suits me fine.

Thanks Sky

Ive just phoned up Sky to change my line rental over to them (I didnt fancy doing it online as I wanted more details of how it would work etc first).

When you phone the normal customer services, they can't do the change for you, you have to telephone Sky Talk customer services instead.

08702 41 99 99 - Telephone number for Sky Talk customer services.

Call was answered straight away, they will be arranging everything for me and will inform BT to stop billing me and of the changes etc...

They have also given me the line rental at half price for the first 3 months to say thank you as im one of the first customers to take it haha!

The change to using Sky for your landline as opposed to BT will NOT affect any services on your line (eg. your broadband), it will not require a change of number, and there will be no "downtime". You cannot currently use the service however, if you have a telephone linked alarm system (I assume such as the pensioner/disabled systems and the likes of ADT - they can clarify this for you).

I will recieve a welcome pack within the next ten days, plus confirmation of the line change and updated billing, and the change should be active within the next 10 days. I will now pay £10.00 per month to Sky instead of £18.00 per month to BT for my line rental!

Result!

So for a summary, the details and price of the base package now is:

- Sky Digital TV
- Sky Talk Freetime
- 2Mbps Broadband
- Sky Talk Landline
- £26.00 per month

The beauty of it is now it's all in one bill and independent of BT - and of course cheaper!

Two updates:

Sky Talk Landline
My service has been activated, and now Sky are charging me £10.00 for me landline rental instead of the £18.50 BT were somehow taking off me every month...

The service offers quite a few free features, like standard ones such as voicemail, 141, 1471 etc, but also features that BT charge you for such as caller display and automatic number witholding.

The welcome pack included a proper booklet for Sky Talk Landline etc, however Sky are still not promoting it, so I am assuming they are keeping it low key atm whilst they work out the most efficient way to transfer people over and also to help prevent mass over-demand of the service like they had with the broadband.

£8.50 per month saved on me landline rental cost, cheers Sky!

Sky Broadband
For the first time since I got Sky Broadband, I experienced a minor outage last night. I am not sure if it was related to Sky Broadband itself, or more a connection fook up at LINX or summit, basically for a very short period of maybe 5 minutes, I was unable to access any non-UK servers, including Wikiwirral of course, which is located in Holland.

It all came back after 5 minutes or so, and during the time I was able to access my own websites (on UK servers), but none of my US or NL servers.

Not a problem, as I say, it is more likely to be a fook up at LINX or similar rather or maybe even a DDoS resulting in the null routing of a carrier/peer I was using than Sky itself, but still its worth a mention.

Other then that, 9 months on, absolutely fantastic service!

My Uncle Just Moved House.

Previous and New Address Had Sky.

Before the move, we called sky to say what do we do?
They said a week before you move give us a call.
We Did.

We were advised to call again to inform them when we were
at the new address.
We Did.

1 week later we get a call to say "Your Broad Band is Now Up And Running".
After unpacking the computers, no connection?

Called SKY ?
They said it had been "Ceased" ?
We explained about the call a week ago saying that the broad band was up and running.
Not interested.

Now they will have to reactive the connection again,
and possibly loose the current family e-mail address?
But were not sure of that yet, we have to wait for the pack
to arrive with the account details.

Summary
Even though we followed SKY's Advice, And were informed it was all up and running.
They Still Got it all WRONG.

Customer service just passes the Buck

I had similar problems with Tiscali when moving house.

I must admit, my sky has been pretty reliable in the past few months :), Just hope i never have to change anything

I told you about the reasons behind this already Mark, there is extreme over-subscription at the moment on all Wirral DSLAM's, they are trying to get more capacity turned up, but BT Openworld arnt very willing to move their feet.

So new connections are fast becoming a pain in the arse to get (I know your not seeing this as a new connection, but in reality it is), as is getting BT Openworld to activate telephone lines. This is why Easynet are still trying to get access to exchanges, but BT have stopped them since Sky bought them out.

This leads to two problems, which both affect the end customer, the first being the fact that right now, Sky are struggling to meet the intense demand for the service locally, because they have to rely on BT Openworld to upgrade their DSLAM capacity, and secondly, because they are still relying on BT Openworld to activate lines for DSL.

Sky have already supposedly "poached" more then 300,000 BT Broadband customers since launching their service (as well as a further nearly 800,000 from other ISP's), so BT are not happy and trying to do everything they can to slow Sky down and damage them, the easiest way being making life hard for Sky to turn up new lines etc...

Sky have obviously lost track of this somewhere along the line, reading between the lines, it seems that what has actually happened, is they have requested activation on the new line from BT Openworld, and BT have given them a date for activation. They have either then hit problems with over-subscription on the DSLAM, or BT have have not stuck to the date for activation (more likely given the circumstances). After a certain period with no connection, Sky's systems for some reason then see's you a new customer which is part of the resulting problem, but also BT wipe it from their activations list, and then Sky have to request it again.

Ive just got a letter from BT asking me to pay £2.50 to leave them for Sky landline... which I am gladly going to pay, because the sooner I am rid of the cheating ... the better. BT are in trouble, and they know it, its only a matter of time before they either go bankrupt of Sky just end up buying them out.

Keep us updated on what happens.

It the wrong advise from SKY Customer Support my gripe is.
If the correct advice had been given, then we could be 7 days ahead of the activation, while boxes were still being unpacked.

Not the end of the world, but Naughty for passing on the
wrong information, and giving the wrong information.

Not Good SKY

For new customers to Sky, make that a free Sky+ box atm, as I can give you a voucher code which will entitle you to a free Sky+ box instead of a standard box.

Cheers to Waddi for reminding me to update this lol.

Well i'm cancelling my VM and becoming a New Sky Customer.

I will keep you updated.
I become a TV Customer this Saturday, but the broadband will be a little after.

Not that i wasn't on the whole unhappy with Virgin Media
just more about the direction and lack of infer structure.
So made the jump with the "Fee SKY + BOX" and Sky re-paying
me for the BT Reconnection

Its now or never for me and goodbye VM After 12 years.
I think i will listen to them beg first lol

Matty the prices you have above are correct but you still
have to pay £11 BT.
But i got the 8mb thrown in too.
And x2 mixes which then brought it down to £21 as i couldn't
make up my mind lol.

You dont, heres the breakdown of the monthly charge for the absolute base charge:

- Sky Digital TV - £16.00 per month
- Sky Talk Freetime - Free
- 2Mbps Broadband - Free
- Sky Talk Landline - £10.00 per month
- £26.00 per month

Remember im quoting the absolute base charge, nothing extra. I dont pay BT anything, as my landline is now with Sky, if I have a problem with it, it is probably BT Openreach who fix any hardware problems on the line, but it is Sky who I contact to resolve any issues.

For those who are in a contract with BT of some sort and can't choose Sky for their landline, they can take BT's lowest price line rental which works out at 50p per month extra, however I was somehow being charged £18.50 per month by BT despite never using the line for calls etc, so I advise people to keep an eye on their bills.

One other thing to remember is that Sky arnt yet advertising their landline, probably to see how it goes first, but it is available, you have to contact them atm, although you can also change to them online via My Sky.

Mark,

When are BT coming out to reconnect you.
A Sky+ STB cant be installed without connecting it to a non-cable landline phone.

21st December is the BT Line.
This Saturday is the Sky Dish and TV Stuff.

Broadband will be after the BT install, i have to ring them
to say "I have BT Now" set up my Broad band.

But i'm going to do a over lap with virgin.

If that's right what you say Mr Wadfather, then i will be on the
phone and getting them to not bill me until the phone line is in.

I will wait to see what Mr Engineer says lol..

The engineer that installed mine said he could install without the phone being active (we were putting in another phone socket extension at the time) but the box wouldn't update untill it was connected to a phone line, VM landline may be suitable for activation and updating, but it isnt for broadband tho.

The reason for requiring the BT line is actually because of the Interactive Discount Policy, your Sky box must remain connected to an active BT landline for a minimum of 12 months for you to take advantage of the discount.

After 12 months, it doesnt matter, but if you disconnect it from the landline for a period of a few days or more during the initial 12 months, Sky will know and you will recieve a letter from SSSL informing you to reconnect it.

I personally left mine disconnected for nearly 3 months during my first 12 months and got a few letters etc... Nothing serious. But by rights, I could have been liable to the full cost of my boxes (bear in mind I had a £199 Sky+ box (the retail cost at the time was £299) and a free standard box, both were subsidised), so it could have gotten expensive if Sky had have wanted to go down that road. You only need to keep one of the boxes connected if you have a multiroom subscription.

Cheers
Will wait to see

My installation is this Saturday and today i received my card for the set top box.

I also received an e-mail with similar information about the install.

So far so good

Mine is playing up again

Well i got 3 letters 1 of them had my sky card in it 2 days ago.
I even got a reminder e-mail.

Engineer called me this morning
All fitted and working in 30mins.
Engineer sold me +1 remote and mouse thing so i can use the
2nd remote on a second tv upstairs.

http://www.tvlink.co.uk/tvlink.htm

Mines the Top Black one cheap one lol

He charged me £25 for the remote and the link thing,
a little high but the hassle factor was removed.

NOTE : That little link thing doesn't work if you go through
a booster box, and a setting may have to be active on the
sky box to switch on the 9v feed to the RF lead.

So now i have to wait for a couple of weeks for BT to arrive.
BTW this is all running off my NTL Line lol

To be fair, he has actually charged ye less then the RRP of the TV-Link - http://www.tvlink.co.uk/acatalog/Copy_of_tvLINK.html

Should have been £25.52+VAT

Dont forget, Sky+ remotes have an RRP of £25 alone, although they can be picked up for £15 in certain outlets.

I eeeee we will give him that, but i did make him a brew
And i got a Thompson Box

Did he install a Thompson Box without being promted, or you have to ask for it?

The TV link is £14.99 in Argos and thats without a remote, sounds like you got a good deal.

I prompted him with a cup of nescafe
Which he dually accepted.

--------
SKY ANYTIME
I needed to update the box to the latest software.
Its now active but can take a few days to start to filter down.
I did have to call customer services to ask how to
Go into standy by.
Turn off the power
Press the Back up Button in
Plug power back in keep pressing the button.
You get 3 lights on the front and a huge updating message
on the screen. Done that and its Done.

Just looked an i have 3 things in the listing after 24 hrs.

--------
Remote Record - Registering (Nightmare)
Setting the account up make sure you have your viewing
card details or you can not upgrade that account.

So after being told that there is an issue with the "Upgrade Account" via the web, i had to register again, having my
details to hand.

The users you create, make sure they don't share the same mobile
number for remote record, or this can fail the registration
via the set top box. You have to deactive where ever that
mobile number exists in the account you want it to ignore,
replace the last 4 digits with 1111 and then cancel the
remote record service, yep aload of messing around.
And telephone calls, in the end as tech minded as i am
i have to get customer support to resolve this.

Now i register another user via my primary account.
I want them to have remote record.
Its registered via the web, registered via the box,
but wont let me as i'm not registered, this is a
second level support issue and they will get back to me.

So i bet when my phone bill comes in it may be stupid.

because i was having so many issues with the remote record they
gave me a land line number that just sent me to the main options,
and then there advice was to keep trying diffrent options, i then
kicked off as one does, saying i'm not wasting my money calling
up and selecting diffrent options because you guys have the wrong
number?? Spoke to Mr Super de visor, and he put me through.

The Number for Remote Record and registering any of the other sevices is :

TEL : 0870 609 1357 ( Not 0870 580 0800 )

Apart for all of that, up to now happy with the TV and the SKY +
I could view my bill via the Telly lol

Got my mum signed up, and £50 M & S Vouchers on there way

Mums all sorted to have sky installed

After waiting a week or so


Engineer Turns Up

But can install sky?

Because : ----------------------



Its been re-booked for the 29th now

Was it a BSKYB engineer or a 3rd party contractor?

Id get onto Sky and complain heavily about it, they should be able to forward the install to before Christmas, if not possible at all, they should be offering a discount.

Ask if you can use a 3rd party contractor.

I will get the full storey as mums go she said i dont know lol

Okay there still having an issue with my second account
and the Remote record.

Its now at the second level of Tech Support.
Its crazy as someone must have used the mobile number
i have registered and it can be found in the system.

A very helpful engineer called up, and we went through the
motions again. Until again they cant find the number in there
system. At that point he told me they cant search as there
query keeps timing out.

I told him to search by 1 year at a time to shorten the
query criteria, "Cant do that" in other words if i wasn't
compitant with databases and how you query them,
i was able to inform him that i wouldn't be parmed off with
can not search a database, because you can.

They called to day and i missed them, so i will keep
you updated, its taking a bit longer to sort, but the
bottom line is if someone uses your mobile number
to register "Remote Record" your stuffed. And they cant
just remove it from someone's account. They have to
contact them and ask them to remove it.

Pain in the ass i say.

Any further developments on the install of your mums system yet?

She's waiting until the 29th. She's okay with that ive since
found out that because the dish is to go around the
back of the house the dish needs to be Higher than normal,
i'm guessing more than halfway up the side of the house.

And because of that need a Double ladder ( I think).


BT INSTALLED My Telephone today.
Remember i have sky paying for this, but its still £124.99
and the engineer also said its a rip off.
He works for Open reach and says no matter who it is
there getting charged the full wack.

Anyway its installed now, and he didn't have to touch the wiring
at all, even though it only needed a switch on at the cab.
I'm happy that i got sky to pay.

Now i can phone sky and say send me the broad band
which i will do in a mo

Hummmmmm

Just ordered my broadband, and they say that i can only
max out at 4mb due to the line?
This can be anywhere from my house to the exchange.

So even if i got 16mb Broadband i would be maxed at 4mb
There is 3 miles between my house and the exchange,
but this is 3 miles of cable, and not as the crow flies.

I wish i new more of the actual details at the start.
But its still faster and cheaper than virgin media
so pros and cons at the mo.

Now i just have to wait for the router to arrive
no time scale given for delivery but a max
15 day for the broad band.

p.s i only got BT installed today,
and the letter says wait 4 or 5 days (NOT) lol

This is standard. I did say your line check would probably come up as 4Mbps, if further then 1.5Km it never goes about 6Mbps.

Mine came up as 4Mbps, but the proof is in the pudding, I download at the full 8Mbps no problem.

As you say though, even if you only see 4Mbps, its faster and cheaper (by far) then any competitors, and you got the free Sky+ to go with it lol.

The 16Mbps package for 90% of customers will only really be of use if they download copius amounts each month or require a better upload as most people wont see abouve 10Mbps downstream on their lines.

Yeh hopefully i will be able to pull some nice speeds
Proof will be in the pudding.


My gripe was, when i called up about getting sky in the begining
they said please wait while we check your post code.
And i could get the broad band service.

No when i call they instantly informed me that i could only
ever archive 4mb. So i'm saying why not tell new customers
that at the start too.

I did have Virgin call me up to say can we offer you anything
to stay? I said a Sky Dish lol...

So after 12 years with Virgin / NTL its bye bye on the 15th jan.
And there coming out to get my box. They can keep it lol.

Router Arrived Yesterday, its not a "NetGear" its a black one
made by Sagem, the only difference is that there are no aerials
and the menus are the same as the netgear only it has sky logos
in it. You can however stand it on its side,

I have it half configured to switch over, just have a couple
more internal tweaks to copy over from my existing router.
ADSL isn't alive just yet, but shouldn't be too long now.

They still have not called me back about my Remote Record issue #189527 - 20th Dec 2007

Yeah, you got the V2, only released in December, its supposedly rock solid in operation, more reliable (basically tweaked) then the V1. Hardware and software is still developed by Netgear, Sagem manufacture the unit though, possibly as they usually offer lower OEM costs then most manufacturers.

You can stand the V1 on its side too.

I "may" be changing to o2 Broadband in a few weeks... I have been offered their 8Mbps/1.3Mbps service for £5.00 as I am a contract customer and enquired but stated I was on Sky at the moment.

Ive not been using my Sky+ service for months, mainly cos my LNB was goosed for a long period of time so the second feed wasnt reliable enough, and I have come to the conclusion that right now, as even though its fixed im still not using it, its constantly turned off, the BBC iPlayer, ITV.com and UK Nova are perfect substitutes, I may just get rid of it after my contract is up in February.

Im in two minds, as I love Sky broadband, and if I get back into the swing of using the Sky+, its the best thing since sliced bread, but I havent had the box turned on for weeks now, and im essentially paying for a TV service im not using. Im not even missing not watching the football on it either lately!

The other thing that is attracting me to o2 broadband is the higher upload speed of 1.3Mbps (amazingly, they are one of only a handfull of ISP's that allow you to run a web server using their network lol) and a few extra features they offer like 1000 email to SMS per month, which would be handy for things like server outage alerts and trouble tickets regarding my business.

Still, I have no complaints with Sky Broadband, so I will be doing a lot of research to see what the service is like first. I get top notch speeds and reliability from Sky Broadband, and I love Sky TV in general, I have also been a Sky TV customer myself for nearly 4 years, so its a tough decision...

Id also like to retain Sky Talk Landline and Sky Talk Freetime rather then going back to shitty BT if possible, so that has some bearing on my decision as well. Not sure if they offer it as a seperate service to their TV service...

When does your broadband get activated Mark? Im gonna have to phone Sky in the next few days, still aint made my decision about what im going to do though.

Not sure?
Its about 10-15 working days after the install (24th December)
So its got to be any day. If i have time later
i will try it all connect up via my laptop
as i may already be active but not sure.

Mum got BT installed today.
So now we can call and ask for her broadband and skytalk.

Not sure if i said why the delay was with fitting the dish
and what it was that they needed the "High Team"
as it was fitted on the the chimney breast. On the Roof.

But she's happy now,
she missed east enders the other night and watched it back with +


They have been trying to call me this week,
at the same time everyday, haven't they realised i'm out at that
time of the day yet

I think ill be phoning up Sky in the morning to cancel the TV... and I doubt they will let me keep the broadband at £5.00 a month, in which case ill be moving to o2. It should revert to the standard "connect" price of £17.99 per month.

I will see what happens though. I'll be sorry to see it go if I have to get rid tbh, im thrilled with both the speeds and reliability of the service.

If its hassle free why move?
Hope it works out for yu?

Why pay £20 per month after removing the sports channels for the TV service if im not using it? Im not particuarly missing the sports channels anymore, only had them for the Liverpool matches and to be quite frank, after much initial optimism, we are going nowhere this season, on or off the field. Its better to watch the highlights on MOTD then the full matches and any big games I can go the pub down the road, and still spend less then the £17 per month the Sky Sports was costing!

Think I only watched about 5 or 6 games at my flat last season anyway, so its essentially £200~ a year im paying to watch a small amount of games. May as well go the games, would be cheaper lol.

Im not stupid, if I dont use something, I wont pay for it. Ill still be able to reconnect to Sky TV if I want to at any point, but it is a false economy keeping the TV just to get the broadband at £5.00 per month, essentially im paying £25 a month for me broadband or summit like that.

Its just that after 4 years of being hooked, ive grown used to not using the Sky+ now and converted to IPTV practically instead, caused by problems with my Sky+ LNB, which although they are now fixed, I am just not used to using it anymore.

I was offered broadband from o2 for the same price of £5.00 per month with a couple of things that will benefit my business on top. Even if im not allowed the special price, its still only £7.50 per month.

If Sky let me stay on at £5.00 per month without the TV, ill be keeping Sky Broadband no question about it, but if not im not into paying £17.99 per month when I can get it from o2 for £5.00 per month.

Just like I wasnt into paying Virgin £17.99 per month when I got a better and as reliable a service from Sky for £5.00 per month.

Its a buyers market, and im a well educated buyer who isnt afraid to try something else to get the best deal. Besides, o2 have a 100 day money back guarantee; if the worst thing happens, I jump back to Sky after a few months.

My Sky Broadband became Alive sometime today

Going to do some download testing tomorrow and re configure
my router and settings (Fingers Crossed).

Need to get my old router / network to work with the new router.
Hopefully shouldn't be too much of a pain.

1. Downer ive noticed with the SKY Router is that
the "Remote Management" isn't active in the settings?

I will when i speak to sky ask why, as i do need it to activate
firewall rules if im away.

Router was ordered 21st December and is active on the 7th Jan
A few bank holidays and weekends there.

Finally got around to swopping out Virgin and networking home on SKY now.

No problems with it up to now, its hammering it.

Ive worked out that i have 34kb upload and i think its 7/800 kbs
I haven't had time to work that out properly.

I like to think i have the 8mb or there abouts.
I download the cw video in about 45 / 65 seconds it paused and then gave me the seconds again.

Found a speed tester and it was in New York so that was crap.

Will let you know as things settle down.

I was only on a 2mb with virgin so everything will seem
faster anyway.

+++++++++++++++++++++++
Virgin Media

Called me up to beg me to stay. And they said that i could have
4mb broadband + V+Box + Installed for Free for £30 per month.

I said C yu

If ive been with virgin for +10years under all its names
how do i know if i'm having good value for money or not?
So i said lets see in 12months.

Bye Bye Virgin (I'm loving the sky + )

Told ye the speeds are unreal... its nice to see they got you connected okay, seems like they are getting better service from Openworld nowadays.

Its been spot on for me since the day I got it, nearly a year now and in all that time (bear in mind im a very heavy user due to my business) ive only ever had a 5 minute "outage" where I couldnt connect to servers outside of the UK - this was most probably actaully peering issues at LINX though, which is beyond Sky's control to be fair.

I told ye ye would get better speeds then what the line checker suggests... 6Mbps+ is a nice speed for £5 a month lmao!

O yeh also because i think i only opted for

1) Docs
2) and Variety packages

They sent me a letter saying i have access to all for 2 weeks
for no extra charge lol

It wont make me get any more channels but will enjoy the moment.

must admit it, best thing me and chiccy ever did was read matty's on going reviews and then follow his advice and join sky... its so much better for us than bt ! cheers dude !

Glad it worked out well for ye Jonah matey!

Hehe anyone else on these forums moved their landline across to Sky yet? As in paying Sky for everything instead of BT for the landline?

Small saving to be had, but better still, BT support is shite, and always nice to have everything on one bill, I find BT's bills are harder to understand then any other companies, they always try to hide little charges etc...

matty do they do the line rental too yet!?

Aye, I changed over back in October when the service had literally just launched... noticed it in me "MySky" online control panel thingy majig...

£10 per month, all the standard BT line features plus free caller display.

Saving of £1.00 on the BT landline rental, but for me it worked out that BT were somehow charging me £18.50 per month (I paid by monthly direct debit and it was going up every month). I could never work out how this was, as I pay Sky Talk for me calls and have nothing extra on the line from BT.

Also, they charged me for activating caller display one month, which I never asked for, £4.99 it cost me ffs! I rang up to complain and spent 30+ minutes waiting before hanging up!

So moving to Sky Landline saved me £8.50 a month and a whole load of hassle from BT!

Here is the post I made about Sky Talk Landline:

thinkin of swappin phone over too matty, wot are the chareges like for mobile calls ?

Cheaper then BT and Virgin, thats all I know really. I have a booklet somwhere listing all the prices, ill dig it out.

If you have Sky Talk CPS (Freetime or Anytime) then it will remain the same as it is now. The only difference is that you pay Sky for the landline, and its only £10 per month.

almost all our calls are mobile...

http://mysky.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/skyproducts/skytalk/pricesandoptions/tariffguide

Thats the link to the latest tariff guide for Sky Talk.

cheers matty !

I still aint phoned to cancel... im a wimp! Lol.

Still not 100% sure I want to, but I really ought to hurry up and decide pretty sharpesh tbh, dont wanna leave it for months and months like I usually do, just a waste of money.

If I have time tomorrow, I will phone them.

Just phoned up to cancel, call was answered in under a minute buy a Pakistani/Indian operator. Once I told him I wished to cancel and explained the reason's as to why, I was forwarded to a very friendly Scottish operator, had a nice chat about Liverpool FC lol; the guy on the phone recommended getting an engineer out to at least check the system over and ensure its working, if not, get a replacement box/dish before I cancel. Completely free of charge, even if there is no fault, I wont be charged. Not tied into a 12 month contract for doing so.

If, after that, I still want to cancel, he will be more then happy to put this through for me. But I will have to cancel the whole lot; can't keep the broadband (which I knew anyway) or surprisingly the Sky Talk or Sky Landline.

So, I have a few more days to decide what to do, after which, if I quit, ill be off to Toucan for £8.99 per month landline as im NEVER going back to BT and off to o2 Broadband for me net.

Still not 100% decided, phoned up with the intention of cancelling today, but the guy made sense in getting the system checked over free of charge with no obligation, as he said, it will serve me well if I decide to get rid because it will still work for viewing TV no problem.

We shall see, the engineer is coming out on Friday to do any repair's nessecary, and I now have to ensure the old LNB is as it was; im hoping to get a new box with Anytime on, otherwise ill be off to be honest as im quite simply not using the TV service nowadays.

Will be sorry to see the broadband go, Sky are cutting off their noses to spite their faces tbh in not wanting me to stay as a landline/call customer with Sky Talk. They are probably about to lose a loyal long-term customer, but ive helped gain them at least 10 more customers over the years, so they wont be bothered too much lol.

I would be leaving as a happy customer however, and would have no problem going back with them if I need to or recommending them to friends and family in the future.

There is an air of tension settling over the forums....


I got a letter from sky today confirming my £124.99 rebate to BT
which will be credited to my SKY account.

My Mums Broadband became active today too

Got My £50 M & S Vouchers From Sky (Mum has them Claimed)
And because ive had to call them over a couple of
issues and about 4 hrs of calls, guess whos getting there
calls refunded

Just have to send in my Bill.

Still awaiting my issues to be sorted.

Remote record
and e-mail not working.

Ive pretty much Raped Sky and i think there Grrreat lol

I wonder if i can get anything for my inconvenience lol

All for £30
Sky Plus Box
Bt Installation £124.99 Refunded (credited to my sky account)
M & S Vouchers £50
Just had 2 weeks of all channels for free
Going to get my call costs refunded

The way i'm going sky may as well give me it for free
My Broadband is Rock Solid.

Heh... I told you they were good.

Im phoning up in a min to cancel the whole lot... the guy's who came out on Sunday were from Firstline Digital in Chester; didnt even bring a new Sky+ box just a normal box, so no replacement possible.

All they did was replace a single connector and got on their way for £65.00 that Sky have paid them!! Couldnt even be arsed to replace a bolt in the Sky Dish!

Needless to say, Sky won't be happy with them, but am not arsing about waiting for a proper Sky engineer, I can fix it myself in 10 minutes its not rocket science, need a new box though cos still have the old Amstrad issue of sound problems although not as bad since I forced an update and waspped the HDD on her a few months back.

Will be phoning Sky in a minute to cancel, then phoning o2 to arrange the migration to them.

Oh yer, I didnt like the build quality of the TUTV box either, so I dont think ill be getting that; at least not straight away.

They just launched a 250GB model for £129 so am kinda hoping the cost of the 160GB model comes down a few pounds.

TUTV ?

Top Up TV

Have you canceled yet then ?

nope not had the time.

Will be when I have the time to phone up.

Well... I have just ordered o2 Broadband! I was going to hang on to Sky as im damned happy with their broadband service, but as o2 will only do the offer of free activation + a 100 day money back guarantee until the end of today, I decided to have a good read around and see what came up.

Some excellent review's about the service, people moving from allsorts of ISP's and getting better speed's, o2 even chasing BT to get a MAC code on behalf of the customer. These things are important to me as im happy with the service from Sky Broadband.

So, the bonus's for me are:

1000 Email - Text per month (handy for my business)
Upto 1.3Mbps Upload (again, handy for my business, sometimes I do a lot of uploading)
Still upto 8Mbps downstream
Freephone UK customer support (free from my mobile too)

£7.50 per month as opposed to Sky's £5.00 per month.

The reason I have finally decided to jump ship? Not because of the Sky Broadband service in any way, but simply because I am now in a scenario where I am not using the Sky much, and the ponce's who came out to fix it the other day replaced a connector and got off - Sky paid them £40 for that pleasure!

So unless I manage to get a Sky engineer out, the service won't be back to normal. Therefore, even though I can fix it myself again, I am now losing interest in the service altogether and am on the verge of getting a Topup TV box solely for the PVR function's.

The way im looking at it is, if I don't get rid of Sky then thats fair enough, but say I do in a couple of month's or whatever, then it means I am then lumbered with having to find a new ISP, which would almost certainly be o2, but by then they will be charging for their activation and wireless box etc...

I can move back to Sky no problem, and o2 are including a 100 day money back guarantee. They will also allow you to move house once per 12 month's with no charges for doing so. And I don't know for sure ill be still living here in 12 month's.

But all in all, it give's me freedom; if I leave Sky, I dont lose my broadband deal. Im not leaving o2 as I have a great contract with them that I won't get elsewhere, and they have always treated me fairly and provided me with an excellent service. Not that Sky havent to be fair, but I will not be getting rid of my mobile phone; I may get rid of the Sky.

So got to phone up Sky now for a MAC code... wish me luck!!

Aint phoned up Sky yet... having to charge the handset as it hasnt been plugged in for a good few days - shows how little I use the home phone lol!

Anywayz, so far, I have recieved 2 texts and an email from o2 regarding the order. Looking like the stories of them keeping you informed every step of the way are true.

Already sent me the freephone number that I can contact them on, should I have any issue's obtaining a MAC code from my current provider or indeed any other questions!

Just phoned Sky for the MAC code... £74p the phonecall lmao one thing I wont miss when I move to o2.

Anyway, they will send it via post within 5 working days and I can phone up again in 3 working days (Tuesday) to obtain it earlier.

Find it a bit weird how Virgin managed to produce it within a few hour's and yet Sky take day's, but still, its within OFCOM regulations so I can't complain.

Interesting grass hopper

You will have to start a O2 Broadband topic

I still have 3 issues running with sky
i may at last have 1) e-mail resolved next week.

But ive heard that before now again and again.

As you say matty my broadband is rock solid

Lets hope your change over is not too painful.

Just phoned up Sky... off peak, cheaper you see!

The call was surprisingly under 4 minutes including the menu system, rather impressive tbh... anyway, they gave the MAC code, which I then phoned up o2 for free and gave them.

So the migration is now all set to go!!

Will be interesting to see how it go's... gonna get o2 Mobile Web unlimited if I have any problems during the migration, to ensure I have net access... £7.50 a month and now actually unlimited 3G web not bad imho!

Good Luck.

So have you given sky the 30 days notice ?

For what?

I dont know to say your canceling sky?

im not cancelling Sky? I can still keep the Sky on without the broadband, its the broadband/sky talk that you can't keep if you cancel the sky.

What was this post about then Matty, You confuse me some times. I'll try and keep up to date in future.

Yeah I phoned up to cancel, and they are still in the process of "fixing" the problem that I have... im happy to give it a few month's to see how it goes.

They sent an engineer out last weekend, but they were from Firstline Digital as Sky engineer's dont work on a Sunday. Basically, Sky got ripped off, and I still have the problem... Sky will have paid them £60+ for the call out, and all they did was replace a connector, which is not the source of the problem, they couldnt even be bothered going down to the van to get a bolt which is missing from the dish!

Sky had recommended them to replace the box if there was any fault at all found with it; they bought a normal Sky box, so didnt bother to check the box for fault's as they couldnt have replaced it.

Anyway, a proper Sky engineer is coming out tomorrow to see what the problem is. If it's not sorted by then, I will fix it myself again and hang on a few weeks to see if I use it much; if not I will be ditching it, provided TUTV work's okay. Just lost interest in Sky, dont even watch any of the channel's anymore!

The o2 Broadband becomes active on the 14th. This is now confirmed so I will be ditching Sky Broadband; had no problems whatsoever with it, but if I ever ditched the Sky TV, I would have to find an ISP fast, so it essentially break's me free from that worry.

Well, the Sky engineer has just been... a proper Sky engineer this time, not a 3rd party company.

As soon as he saw the box, he told me it was "shagged" lol. He knew this because the Sky demo was rotating the wrong way, meaning there was some sort of hardware error with the box.

Anyway, he was thorough, replaced the LNB, the bolts and the box itself with a Thomson PVR3, so it mean's I have the latest box with Anytime and 80GB hard disk space etc...

Unfortunatly, the new box isnt the exact same width as my SVHS recorder (its smaller) like my old one was so I dont like it to look at, but at least this one seems to work so far haha!

The guy was great, if I have any problem's with it within the next 31 day's, he left his number for me to ring, and he can come and investigate/repair the issue without me having to phone Sky again!

Quality service, quite happy with it now, the guy has done a proper job, checked everything on the box was working before he left etc...

I shall see if I start using the channel's again before I consider jumping to TUTV now... Sky should be thankful, this engineer has thrown them a lifeline.

I will be emailing them (cheaper then calling lol) to voice my opinion of the service that Firstline Digital provided, it almost lost them a customer, if I hadnt have been generally happy with Sky over the year's I wouldnt have called up again for another visit I would have cancelled.



So this what Firstline Digital did:

Two engineers came out and:
- Replaced a connector on the back of the box, which didnt fix the fault.

This is the difference a proper Sky engineer makes:

Single engineer comes out and:
- Noticed the box has a hardware problem straight away.
- Checked over the dish bolts etc.
- Checked over the signal quality and connections.
- Replaced the box.
- Replaced the LNB and all connectors.
- Replaced the broken bolts.
- Checked over the dish and LNB after the new one's had gone on.
- Thoroughly checked the box was working as it should be.
- Talked me through the software update sequence and the extra features of the PVR3.
- Left me his work number and advised me to contact him direct instead of Sky if I had any further problems in the next 30 days.

This new box is pretty good, just comparing it to the old box:

PVR2 Power Consumption:
60 watt max
50 watt typical

PVR3 Power Consumption:
40 watt max
15 watt typical

Also, the new box has front and rear USB2.0 socket's, the old one didnt.

Well, my o2 Broadband should come active sometime today, so I will start a thread for an ongoing review of that, will update this thread as and when the o2 become's active though to advise how I get on.

Well....... my time with Sky Broadband ended at exactly 09:00!!! Lost full connectivity, so swapped to the o2 box and it's all up and running fine!

To round it off, ive been extremely happy with Sky, enjoyed 100% uptime and lightning speed's in the 12+ month's I have had it, and if it wernt for other reason's, I would not be getting rid.

I would certainly recommend it to anyone!

Anywayz, I will now bow out of this "review", so I will let other's who have the service continue to post about anything notable and their general happiness/anger with the service, as I know there is a lot of peep's on Wiki using Sky now.

I will still pop in this thread though to give my two pence and to ask how it's all going!

A big thanks to Easynet/Sky for the last 12 month's of ultra-fast, ultra-reliable broadband, which has cost me a total of £62

O O oo

Got my e-mails fix last week
And Remote Record Fixed ( I Hope today )

I will have to scroll back to see how long that took.

sweet sounds like they finally go their arses into gear then...

Shame it took a while, but their internet service is second to none.

Have u used the RR as yet?

Sky seem to be having some lag in there Broadband this afternoon?

I'm experiencing, random page can not be displayed,
and my uncles is worse, he's not getting his attachments from his e-mail with sky.

Last time it happened it was for a few hours and resolved its self, or they fixed it.

Gutted... best thing is to telephone Sky and complain lol.

Plus if you have Sky Talk... its FREE to phone Sky customer services now

Mine went fine about an hour after writing the message
My Uncles is a different story.

Will check up on that today

Lag in the broadband, thats an under-statement mate

just phoned Virgin Media, and i am now a customer of thiers, with the installation on 15th April

Sky is being cut off on the 14th

Thats funny, coz my connection is better than ever, maybe the lag may have been because of upgrade to a exchange or something along them lines.

I was getting a constant 4.7, now Im more like 7.2,

Long live SKY.....

You'll be sorry, both Me and Mark have both switched to SKY from Virgin because of their poor service. I personally was having trouble downloading anything over 7mb, you tube vids or streaming over 7mb wouldnt 100%buffer either. it would get to 7mb then freeze, you tell it to continue and it will start from the beginning. very stressful.

The only thing Virgin beats SKY on is on demand, that was cool, especially on the XL TV package, you have access to loads of old series, red dwarf, little britain etc.

My Dad has a V+ box and for £75 is worth having, HD content isnt much cop like, but surely it will get better, but all SD channels are also run through an upscaler. and the PVR function is useful, imho not as good as the SKY+ PVR feature but that may be coz Im not as familar with it. also the Free HD on-demand is good just to show of the capabilities of HD to your jealous freinds or family.

No chance, Virgin have run out of capacity. They are even having problems committing to allocating bandwidth for ITV HD...

Ha ha, glad I jumped ship.

The Gadget Show Put SKY VIRGIN And Free View and rated them.

Just on the ease ability Sky won.
And because of there choices available.

I guess were all happy as long as we get the service we pay for.

I had the broadband off them when it was NTL and we had no problems with it

We will see, the wireless pack arrived today, and so did the letter confirming the installation as 15th between 1 and 6pm

So no doubt they wont turn up til at least 4pm

And just to make matters worse for THEM, its not going downstairs, its going in the back bedroom

Do you live in a semi, as they wont install in the back of
terraces, we had this problem in the in-laws house. mid-terrace 3 storey.

NTL was pre 20mb/50mb service, which is a drain on the whole system.

but Mark never had any problem with downloads or speed, did you Mark?

No mine was fine, i moved due to the pricing and infer structure of Virgin. Having to ring up every 6 months for a bargain or Fair Price.

Sky + Has changed my world.
But imo i'm now paying a fair price for a good service

i am mid-terrace 2 storey, but the advisor said just point where i want it installing

my mate in the same street is also mid-terrace back room, and they installed it there for him with no problems

The advisor was trying to sell you it tho.
Suppose it all depends on the individual technician you get.
Official policy is that they will only install into a point where the can run the wire to the wall at ground level. and they wont do any internal work anymore, i.e run wires through the house.

How do you plan on getting the cable to the back of the house, i.e up and over the roof, we were told it was possible but they have to send a special technician out who is Heath and Safety trained for heights and is equipped with long ladders.

when the inlaws were getting Virgin BB installed it went like this.
Sales advisor said it can be fitted anywhere in the house. Ist technician comes to do an install, tell him its to go in the back bedroom of the 3rd storey of a mid terrace, tells us its a no can do and explains the policy. This was no good, so the technician goes on his way without doing the install, we phoned Customer service and after a bit of haggling with them, they offered to credit the account if we went and bought a wireless router and we had it installed in the front of the house. we accept, another technician comes out and its a different guy, whilst hes doing the install, we're chatting away and he tells us we're the 1st to get wireless paid for that he knows off, how did we get it, we expained the situation and he laughs and says he would of fitted in the back, by attaching a peice of string to a ball and throwing it over the roof, then pulling it back once the cable is tied to the end. no need for high ladders.

Whats the wirless pack and how much did it cost.

my mate has his cable running down his entry, so there's another possibility


and the wireless pack is the just the wireless router, and its included at no charge if you get 4mb (10mb soon) or higher

Was the sale's person kind enough to inform you of their ever worsening "traffic management" service??

You get an upgrade to 10Mbps "unlimited", but don't you even dare use it at peak time's, or you shall be throttled by as much as 90%!!!

It's about the only thing NTL have bothered to invest in...

well its in on tuesday

and my sky broadband goes off either tonight or tomoorow sometime

Vigin Broadband & TV installed

Phone call 1 to customer services just finished. Needed my password to activate the broadband

So far so good....

And the neighbours have complained ALREADY about where the engineer has drilled the hole for the cable

Ouch you replaced Sky TV with Virgin... the broadband is fair enough if you have had a bad experience, but the TV!!!

Did Scott ever tell you about the time he had the TV from them, the odd occasion it worked, it was bog slow, they replaced the box a couple of times (he kept getting Di4000's ffs) and after a few month's he refused to pay the bill and told them to come and collect the pile of shit.

He is still with them for broadband (although he rekon's his service has been intermittent in the last couple of months), but sacked them off for TV.

Just about everything bar TVOD on Sky pisses all over Virgin's TV offering. Welcome to the world of interactive (yeah right, a walled garden is NOT interactive Virgin).

Besides all that though, why have the neighbours complained, what did the engineer do lol??

lol

They were moaning about the location of the hole where the cable goes in.

Its in "thier half" of the entry apparently,
but the engineer drilled the whole as close to the dividing wall in the front bedroom... he didnt know where it was going to come out

Layout of the houses

My House:
Front room overlaps entry
Back room stop before entry

Thier house:
Front room stops before entry
Back room overlaps entry

So its still technically in our property, NOT thiers

Lmao I hate neighbour's like that!!!

tell them to fook off !

After getting bored waiting for o2 (well BT Openreach) to unbundle her exchange, Rhea moved over to Sky's £5 a month package the other day.

It happened on Tuesday, before 10:00 iirc. No problems whatsoever with any of the install or changeover.

Havent been at hers to test the line as yet, but she says its noticeably faster then the crappy Orange 2Mbps she used to have.

When I am staying at hers next, ill take the opportunity to test he line and post the results.

for some reason, mine is going really slow recently.

Not sure if anyone knows yet, but Sky will be announcing price rises within the next month, and will mail customers directly regarding it.

All the plans will be increasing by £5.00 per month from January 2009. However, if you take Sky Talk, you will remain eligable for existing pricing. Also, subscribers who joined within the last 6 months, will be guaranteed their existing pricing until January 2010.

Makes me glad i am with O2 Home Broadband then.

8 MBps for £7.50 (£12 if you are not an existing O2 customer)

I have my pay as you phone with them, so am eligle for the discount

Hehe Tony you should do a short review of your experience with them in the o2 Broadband Thread.

Sounds like you too are quite happy with them, which is good to see.

I have a feeling this move by Sky, is to gain more customers on their Sky Talk service tbh. There is lot of money to be made by becoming the CPS on landlines, and in times of hard economical affairs, Sky would like to be one of the few companies that can defy the current loss-making trends, which is something they are actually quite capable of.

Already have Matt

Although Sky were quite good when it came down to the service, just the customer services team were hopeless

Only changed over from Sky to O2 because they had a better deal for me at the time AND i was removing the Sky TV package

Ditto; had no real problems with Sky, but was (and still am) undecided on whether I will be keeping the TV service as I hardly use it nowadays, so had to get away from Sky Broadband to allow me to cancel the TV without any problems of changing providers quick etc...

Also, o2's service has many benefits which I find handy for my business, such as an insane upload speed, unlimited transfer and email - text. On top of this, every review I had seen of them at the time, was positive all the way, and it still seems that way.

Come to think about it, all these months later, im still with Sky for my TV, landline and telephone calls lol.

yeah i have found that difference

O2's uploads are much faster than Sky's

Quite handy for me too, as i use certain programs that require of lot of uploading

Im very happy with Sky Broadband, been with them for 12months and have never had a problem. I have found SKY's customer service to be very helpful in other area's (TV and Phone) but never had a reason to phone them about broadband.

The price increase if you dont have SKY talk confuses me tho, why wouldnt you have sky talk if the option was there, My BT line rental contract has just expired, so as planned, I phoned sky and switched to them for line rental, which is cheaper than BT and gives some features for free that BT charge for.

After quite a long time of happy service, i have just had nearly 2 weeks of unexplained downtime.

Loads of calls and several engineers later, i am finally back online.

strange, problem at the exchange or on your line? anyone else in your area lose thier connectivity that you are aware of? if openreach had to be called in then it sounds like a pretty serious line fault.