BT or Sky Broadband?

Your own experience isn't necessarily a reflection on everyone else's experience though - you will always find someone who'll say they're happy with their ISP, even if that ISP has major issues.

The Sky LLU service is better once you're connected and they seem to be ironing out some of the issues with getting connected in the first place. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
 
tolien said:
Your own experience isn't necessarily a reflection on everyone else's experience though - you will always find someone who'll say they're happy with their ISP, even if that ISP has major issues.

The Sky LLU service is better once you're connected and they seem to be ironing out some of the issues with getting connected in the first place. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
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good point I guess, still - just my opinion.
 
tolien said:
Your own experience isn't necessarily a reflection on everyone else's experience though - you will always find someone who'll say they're happy with their ISP, even if that ISP has major issues.

The Sky LLU service is better once you're connected and they seem to be ironing out some of the issues with getting connected in the first place. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
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I've just got with them afetr been with ADSL24, 13 mb for a tenner can't argue with that. Just need to be careful on how many of them DIstros you download thats all ;)
 
There is only one way to find out yourself. Thats join em. If it's a bad experience then do not go with them again. Simple as. Yes, people will have good times and bad times but it is up to you to be with who you want.
 
andrewbell1984 said:
There is only one way to find out yourself. Thats join em. If it's a bad experience then do not go with them again. Simple as. Yes, people will have good times and bad times but it is up to you to be with who you want.
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that's all very well saying that but bt have a minimum contract term of 12 months. if you end up being throttled to kingdom come..... what then? sure some people are lucky and get good service but it's one hell of a gamble to take. they really are viewed as one of the worst isps at this moment in time. just have a look here....

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings_comments.php?isp=44

and here's how they compare....

upload


like i said, plenty of happy customers too but it's just too much of a risk to sign up with them. there's no rhyme or reason to their throttling. light customers are getting terrible service while plenty of heavy users say they can max out their connections 24/7. hardly fair is it?
 
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What I dont quite get is why people say don't get BT/SKy etc because of all the bad things people say about them? What you've got to take into account as well, is the fact that BT have the most adsl customers, so for arguments sake BT has 1 million customers and 10% of them complained, thats 100,000 complaints, where as joebloggs.net ISP has 100,000 users and 10% complain, thats only 10,000 people, so your more likely to see "BT is bad" due to the sheer numbers involved...
 
ljt said:
What I dont quite get is why people say don't get BT/SKy etc because of all the bad things people say about them? What you've got to take into account as well, is the fact that BT have the most adsl customers, so for arguments sake BT has 1 million customers and 10% of them complained, thats 100,000 complaints, where as joebloggs.net ISP has 100,000 users and 10% complain, thats only 10,000 people, so your more likely to see "BT is bad" due to the sheer numbers involved...
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that doesn't make any sense. why not sign up with an isp that gets hardly any complaints? or at least sign up with one that offers monthly contracts? maybe an isp that doesn't promise something it cannot give. anybody with half a brain knows it's not feasible to offer unlimited broadband for 20-30pounds a month. you know you're more likely to get a decent service from an isp which has clearly defined caps and usage limits. how about an isp that has call centres based in the uk? it's not like bt is the only isp out there? :confused:
 
marc2003 said:
like i said, plenty of happy customers too but it's just too much of a risk to sign up with them. there's no rhyme or reason to their throttling. light customers are getting terrible service while plenty of heavy users say they can max out their connections 24/7. hardly fair is it?
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I'm assuming that chart showed fast.co.uk as the number one ISP? What a load of tripe, you pay them nearly £60 a month for a 100gb download limit on a business MAX connection, spend > 10 days "training" with your speed crippled to around 1mb then spend the next few months with high pings and a dire download rate at peak times, quite a stark comparison to the BT connection I have on our other line, low pings, persistantly good download rates and no downtime whatsoever for less than half the price, Fast.co.uk's response to this? Pointing out that with their package you don't have to speak to someone in India when you have a problem. I don't know about anyone else but I'm not envisaging spending a great deal amount of time on the phone to anyone and even if I did, I don't know if it's more irritating to speak to an Indian who can't understand me or some bloke from Liphook who thinks he's never wrong.
 
The DSLZone UK ratings are pretty crappy - they don't take account of the number of users giving an ISP a particular rating, so it only takes a handful of users giving high scores to push an ISP from unrated to top ranking (and conversely a handful giving low scores could push fast.co.uk off the scale).

Cuchulain said:
spend > 10 days "training"
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There's a 10 day training period with any IPStream Max connection, whether it's from BT Retail, fast.co.uk or anyone else.

Cuchulain said:
with your speed crippled to around 1mb then spend the next few months with high pings and a dire download rate at peak times
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Are you sure that's a fault with fast.co.uk, or BT Wholesale?
They certainly should be doing more to fix it, but that's easy enough fixed - "MAC key please". At least the contract term's a quarter of BT's.

fast.co.uk is a Netservices (who compare pretty well, going by thinkbroadband) resller AIUI, though I don't know what the relationship between the two is (i.e. whether NS are doing any of the support or whatever).

Andybtsn said:
I don't suppose someone could answer my above question pleeeeease!
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Phone Sky - it's not a bad test of how long you have to wait in a queue to get an answer?
My understanding is you would - Sky Talk is over and above your BT line rental.
 
tolien said:
The DSLZone UK ratings are pretty crappy
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probably not the best in the world - it only takes 50 votes to get included on the chart. but one thing of value is the number of people who dislike bt. i try not to pimp any particular isp but so long as i can dissuade people from signing up with bt then it's all good. :D
 
tolien said:
There's a 10 day training period with any IPStream Max connection, whether it's from BT Retail, fast.co.uk or anyone else.
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That's a "maximum" figure, fast.co.uk told me 3 working days, so, on top of it all, they lie.

Are you sure that's a fault with fast.co.uk, or BT Wholesale?
They certainly should be doing more to fix it, but that's easy enough fixed - "MAC key please". At least the contract term's a quarter of BT's.
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They did nothing other than blame my router, I then moved the router onto the BT connection and it was fine, moved it back, high pings, crap download speed, they then blamed my wireless, at which point I cancelled my contract.

fast.co.uk is a Netservices (who compare pretty well, going by thinkbroadband) resller AIUI, though I don't know what the relationship between the two is (i.e. whether NS are doing any of the support or whatever).
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The problem is that Fast.co.uk assume that the be-all and end-all of providing an internet connection is being available at the end of the phone on a geographic number and they honestly believe that offering broadband that in comparison to BT was rubbish was good value for money because I could talk to someone quickly, ok, they were technically useless, but sure, they were still sitting by that phone waiting on calls.

I don't know the takeup figures for BT broadband, presumably there are countless more people with it, perhaps that explains why there are so many complaints, I suspect that if you compared the number of faults in relation to the amount of customers they have, fast.co.uk probably wouldn't come out smelling of roses.
 
marc2003 said:
that doesn't make any sense. why not sign up with an isp that gets hardly any complaints? or at least sign up with one that offers monthly contracts? maybe an isp that doesn't promise something it cannot give. anybody with half a brain knows it's not feasible to offer unlimited broadband for 20-30pounds a month. you know you're more likely to get a decent service from an isp which has clearly defined caps and usage limits. how about an isp that has call centres based in the uk? it's not like bt is the only isp out there? :confused:
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What I was trying to get across was the fact, that dont instantly dismiss a ISP just because it seems everyone is complaining about them, the bigger the ISP the more complaints you'll see, as it has more subscribers. Thats all I was saying.
 
I can't remember if it's sky or VM, maybe sky but their service is significantly cheaper if your on their LLU rather than routed through ADSLMax, I think it's the broadband connect package, the 8 meg one.

Also, in rare cases, the LLU racks may be saturated with lines, meaning they have to put you on ADSL Max instead. Increasingly likely as sky transfer over existing customers to their broadband services.

Don't know if thinkbroadband.com has been mentioned, but it's ace, used to be ADSL Guide.
 
ljt said:
What I was trying to get across was the fact, that dont instantly dismiss a ISP just because it seems everyone is complaining about them, the bigger the ISP the more complaints you'll see, as it has more subscribers. Thats all I was saying.
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the total subscribers is irrelevant. all i know there is enough unhappy customers to make bt a bad choice. one thing even happy bt punters will agree on is that the overseas call centres are a disgrace. surely that on it's own should be enough to put prospective customers off. and it's not like bt are cheap either. they're pretty uncompetitive once you start breaking things down. :)
 
marc2003 said:
the total subscribers is irrelevant. all i know there is enough unhappy customers to make bt a bad choice. one thing even happy bt punters will agree on is that the overseas call centres are a disgrace. surely that on it's own should be enough to put prospective customers off. and it's not like bt are cheap either. they're pretty uncompetitive once you start breaking things down. :)
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The amount of subscribers is not irrelevant.

For example let's say:

BT has 1 million customers and they get 100 complaints, that's 1 per cent of their customer base who aren't happy

Fast.co.uk has 1000 customers and get's 10 complaints, that's also 1 per cent of customers who aren't happy but the figures show that because they've only had 10 complaints, they must be excellent.

As for BT not being cheap, what is there to break down, free home hub, free connection and £26 a month for the option 3 package, what do you define as "cheap"?
 
Cuchulain said:
The amount of subscribers is not irrelevant.

For example let's say:

BT has 1 million customers and they get 100 complaints, that's 1 per cent of their customer base who aren't happy

Fast.co.uk has 1000 customers and get's 10 complaints, that's also 1 per cent of customers who aren't happy but the figures show that because they've only had 10 complaints, they must be excellent.

As for BT not being cheap, what is there to break down, free home hub, free connection and £26 a month for the option 3 package, what do you define as "cheap"?
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Thats what I was trying to get across, but I must be crap at explaining lol

I just picked BT as an example, I'm not trying to defend them, just merely used them in my example as they are the biggest adsl provider in the UK, that was all.
 
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