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To be honest, I hope everyone bb whichever ISP they are on works as it should do, im a firm beliver in people getting the services they are paying for.

Somewher along the line, you connection has been screwed up, and it is amazing how BT Wholesale (or BT Openworld if your not on a "connect" package) havent been able to resolve it as yet.

As its starting to drag on matey, id recommend you cnsider contactng Ofcom and trading standards, you only need to send them a basic letter of complaint, Ofcom for sure take all complaints seriously and can put the wheels in motion to force BT to resolve things, trading standards can just give Sky and BT an xtra push because if they dont, the complaint gets added as yet anoher un-resolved, which eventually one or both companies can be fined for.

From what I hve established, 30% of people seem to have problems getting Sky activated, but once its done, its reliable. The rest seem to have it activated and running fine in general. Any problems after activation seem to go un-reslved for long periods of time because BT are dragging their heels with everything to do with Sky basically because they are losing hundreds of bb customers a week to Sky, so both BT Wholesale and BT Openworld, who are responsible for managing and maintaining the line and exchange wont do much.

Sky have prviously had applications for the opening up of the maintenance to Easynet declined on two occasions from what I understand, so until Ofcom finish investigating BT for their malpractices with regards to Sky, its just a waiting game, and apparently if one is having problems and phones BT, thy are all too happy to guarantee they can hav your srvice up and running within days if you switch to BT Broadband.

Yet again, the customer is the loser in a battle for supremacy in the telecoms industry.

as matt says as long as we get what we pay for does not matter who it with the only think that matters is what the help is like when it breaks down so we all need to start fighting to get what we pay for and not take any shit from them

I wish i could argue it out and get my BB installed but they said they wont do the construction for me to have it.

so im cutting my losses and paying the £125 + £50 (not enough points on credit check) then paying £31.99 for the first 6months and then £37.99 for the next 6months to have just a phone line connected with a BT home hub & BB internet.

im just gonna have to deal with watching freeview TV.

I dont want to take the chance with the negative talk on Sky BB and risk the real chance of being stuck with a crappy ISP for X amount of months and be unable to play games online. so im just going to get BT to install the lot (less hassle)

Anyone have any problems with the BT home hub?.

ide say my internet usage was like this:

40% online gaming
10% Torrents
5% music downloads
20% web browsing
25% video streaming (watch alot from stage6 on my tv)

(% is usage not MB's downloaded)

as you can see gaming takes up most of my internet usage and anyone that knows about it will understand how important it is to keep a constant connection with a good Ping.

Im surprised Microsoft havent set up an ISP in this country (I dont know if they have anywhere else).

With enough media propaganda I think a lot of people would sign up thinking it the only one compatable with windows vista or I.E or MSN etc.

My mum is with BT home hub, they have had no problems with it since leaving talk talk

Microsoft used to own 10% of NTL and 15% of Telewest... they were actually looking into buying them out and merging them in about 2001/2002, but then NTL and Telewest both decided to shit on Microsoft and chose Liberate 1.2 (known as CR3 on CWC/NTL) for their STB software over Microsoft software, so Microsoft promptly got rid of their shares in both companies.

Had Microsoft have got ahold of NTL and Telewest at the time, cable in the UK would have been mega by now...

As for Liberate, their software was slow, shite and way out of date... they went bust a few years later and Comcast ended up buying the remains of the company.

If MS had took over cable, we could have media centre STB's and all sorts by now. DOH

how is the majority of internet delivered in the good ol' USA?

Cable, phone line or other????

and what speeds are they upto now?

Cable is prob about 60%, DSL is prob about 40%... dunno about average speeds, not even sure on top speeds anymore, I do know that there is a cable provider offering 30Mbps (Cablevision iirc??) and my mate has 10Mbps as standard with charter.

AT&T offer a nationwide VDSL service now, dunno what the speed is, they are currently upgrading the network to VDSL2 though, i think it should be nationwide by the end of this year iirc, its about 50 - 100Mbps.

Dont be fooled by numbers though matey, faster internet services is just a marketing scam tbh.

but I like big numbers..... lol

Is Sky BB free if you have SKY TV. if so, what tv package do you need to be on?

I should add that upload speeds in the US tend to be higher then comparably rated services in the UK, thanks mainly to them using more advanced and newer technologies such as VDSL for DSL services and DOCSIS 2.0 for cable services.

Sky Broadband is the following pricing, you only need the basic TV package which includes 2 "channel packs" (basically non-premium channels like UK Gold, Discovery, Nikelodeon etc are available):

2Mbps/448Kbps - Free
8Mbps/448Kbps - £5.00 per month
16Mbps/800Kbps - £10.00 per month

All these services are on ADSL2+ and are only supplied as "upto". I am 1.69km away from my exchange and can max my 8Mbps service no problem on both upload and download.

Sky have another 8Mbps spare on ADSL2+, nobody is sure whether they are reserving some of the DSL spectrum on the line for IPTV, or whether they are using the full spectrum and just leaving it as upto 16Mbps because they know its unlikely people will get above 20Mbps unless they live very near the exchange lol.

My guess is IPTV though, as they are rolling it out to SkyHD customers soon (could be 2008 though), with a view to offering a full IPTV service when BT complete the full upgrade of their network to the 21CN in 2009, as this will be perfect for high bandwidth applications like IPTV services.

What about Vodafone Mobile Broadband

1.4mbs, 3gb limit, wireless connection anywhere theres a 3G signal - £30pm

it could be an option....

looool its built for emails and basic web browsing on the move, will have a strict FUP and also the ping will be poo on it hehe.

Not ideal for gaming lets put it that way.

Iirc, T-Mobile and Three do better deals then that if you want the web on the move.

Thats right Matty.

I am on T-mobile now to send this message and they only charge £7.50 a month for full web n walk. tbh i think its amazing as i can send live web cam footage wear ever i am even when driving and the download speed are pretty good. (dont know the actualy speed, ill do a speed test.)

The only thing is tho that it will be no good for gaming and i would be unable to use it with my Xbox on Xbox live as i doubt ide be able to install the nokia software onto the Console its self.