Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Sky Broadband - Ongoing Review Of The Service

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.