Who's on SKY broadband?

radar19

radar19

radar19

Associate
Joined
2 Jul 2009
Posts
1,035
Location
Lincolnshire
Had enough of being charged up the wahzoo by BT and looking to change. We are currently a SKY TV customer as thats where we looking first.

What's the general opinion of SKY broadband? The ADSL stuff, not the fibre as we can't get that.
 
I joined on 4th of Feb not got any major complaints, I use my own router as the hub they suppy you with is not very good, my connection has been very good no problems at all although I believe there are some exchanges that are congested

There is just one thing that niggles me I got broadband free for 12 months if I took the phone package,I have read that if I ever want to change my bb supplier I may have to pay a reconnection fee to get back to a BT line
 
Had sky BB for a few weeks, no complaints so far. Getting nearly 20mbit sync with actual download speeds of around 17mbit and a ping of 25ms.
 
It works, but you get what you pay for. Technical staff who have less of a clue than me, customer services who might randomly cancel your order, and SLOW connection - Mr BT man said I have an excellent connection quality, yet I only get 6mbps and a ping well into the 40ms. My old connection (UKFSN so Entanet) my ping was <10ms and connection over a mb faster...
 
Used them for 5+ years, can't really fault them. Close to the exchange so get 22Mb and no downtime that I can recall. No caps and no traffic shaping which is nice.

Only thing I can criticise them for is trying to charge me when the router expired after 3 years. You have to use the supplied equipment so they've got you cornered. Swiftly kicking off, followed by a threat to cancel the entire package soon had a new one sent out free of charge.

Only potential downside is for those that use ISP provided email. They are migrating users from a Gmail supplied system to Yahoo ... and it's rubbish. Doesn't even support IMAP!
 
Last edited:
Had it for 5 years. Very reliable. I use my own router, which isn't allowed officially.

Google found me the info I needed to extract my user/pass info. They absolutely will not supply it to you. They were happy to let me cancel rather than give it to me (or give me a replacement router).
 
nutcase_1uk said:
It works, but you get what you pay for. Technical staff who have less of a clue than me, customer services who might randomly cancel your order, and SLOW connection - Mr BT man said I have an excellent connection quality, yet I only get 6mbps and a ping well into the 40ms. My old connection (UKFSN so Entanet) my ping was <10ms and connection over a mb faster...
Click to expand...

Currently we get about 16mb but according to the Sky tester we can receive a maximum of 11mb.

Ben Cole said:
Had it for 5 years. Very reliable. I use my own router, which isn't allowed officially.

Google found me the info I needed to extract my user/pass info. They absolutely will not supply it to you. They were happy to let me cancel rather than give it to me (or give me a replacement router).
Click to expand...

So I cant use my own router? How do you about extracting your username and password as I'm not looking forward to using their equipment.
 
Not officially, and you'll be unsupported if you hit trouble.

Sky are migrating their network to a connection type called MER rather than the usual PPPoA. 99% of off the shelf routers won't support this.

I upgraded to the Sky Hub and it works just fine. It's more reliable and quicker than the older Netgears.
 
radar19 said:
Currently we get about 16mb but according to the Sky tester we can receive a maximum of 11mb.



So I cant use my own router? How do you about extracting your username and password as I'm not looking forward to using their equipment.
Click to expand...

As I said, Google is your friend. I had no choice other than to use my own router. Unless you count cancelling or paying for a new one from Sky.
 
Ben Cole said:
As I said, Google is your friend. I had no choice other than to use my own router. Unless you count cancelling or paying for a new one from Sky.
Click to expand...

As said above I kicked off and they sent me a free one as I was out of contract on the TV package.

That said you'll get a secondhand Netgear 934 for a fiver on eBay, and the new Sky Hub is a decent upgrade if the £30 offer is still on.
 
Yeah can use 3rd patry routers if you have a little play around.
Your exchange may not have been migrated to MER yet.

As for speeds, mine have been rock solid at ~16Meg after the first few days at 4meg that apparantly everyone connects up at.

Speed has been consistent with no traffic shaping and no FUP
 
Absolutely terrible ISP. Because they don't use traffic shaping and our area is massively over-subscribed, around 5pm-1/2am every day, I go from having 12-14mb to around 1-3mb! The whole network just jams up! iplayer, 4od and youtube are pretty much out of the question at these times.
They also refuse to accept that the problem is Sky's and tell me that my computers have viruses (not a chance!) that causes this! I only found out the cause of my issue because Sky admitted that over-subscribing in *a few* areas was an issue, on the news a few weeks back.
My advice is ... found out how many people in your area use Sky broadband. The best way to tell is to see how many Sky wireless routers are in range. If there are a lot, don't bother!
 
Been with sky bb for over 3 years and considering i can only get a mere 2mbps due to where i live there service and customer support has been top notch! A quick call to their customer solutions centre and your line can be tweaked as quick as.

Manage to squeeze a little more out of my sky connection by using my own router compared to the sagem i recieved from them
 
Had SkyBB LLU Unlimited for quite a few years and was always really pleased with it. On Sky Fibre now and even more pleased with the extra speed :)
 
Spuff said:
Absolutely terrible ISP. Because they don't use traffic shaping and our area is massively over-subscribed, around 5pm-1/2am every day, I go from having 12-14mb to around 1-3mb! The whole network just jams up! iplayer, 4od and youtube are pretty much out of the question at these times.
They also refuse to accept that the problem is Sky's and tell me that my computers have viruses (not a chance!) that causes this! I only found out the cause of my issue because Sky admitted that over-subscribing in *a few* areas was an issue, on the news a few weeks back.
My advice is ... found out how many people in your area use Sky broadband. The best way to tell is to see how many Sky wireless routers are in range. If there are a lot, don't bother!
Click to expand...

I bet you're not on their LLU service and more likely on the access service.
My Speeds max at all times of the day
 
~Divine~Wind~ said:
I bet you're not on their LLU service and more likely on the access service.
My Speeds max at all times of the day
Click to expand...

Definitely on LLU Sky Broadband Unlimited.
Occasionally, the speed will rocket back up to full speed at peak times but it never last long, maybe a couple of minutes, and then I'm back to snailband speeds.
The reason I moved to Sky is because they don't have traffic shaping/FUP and I thought this was great. As it turns out, traffic shaping is usually there for a good reason.
 
MagicBoy said:
As said above I kicked off and they sent me a free one as I was out of contract on the TV package.
Click to expand...

I fully expected to be sent a free router also but they wouldn't budge. I guess it just comes down to who you speak to. I was out of contract obligations (over 12 months) on both TV and BB. I was fully prepared to cancel the BB but after I cooled down and realised I could use my own stuff I just didn't bother. My one man stand just wouldn't have acheived anything other than me going without the net for a while.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom