Forcefully moved to a slower broadband service?

estebanrey · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:23

I came home today to find a brand new Sky Broadband modem waiting for me. Perplexed, I opened a letter I got from them the day before (assumed it was advertising junk so hadn't read it at that point) and found a rather excitable Sky rep telling me I was now with them and how appreciative I should be that they've cut my bill from £22.50 to £20 a month.

However, after looking at their website I'm a bit annoyed. I'm currently on the BE 24 meg (2.5 meg upload) package and Sky will be putting me on their 16 meg (1.3 meg upload) package. So it seems I'm losing a third of my package for tiny discount.

Now, it's true that I rarely get (if ever get) 24 meg. My speeds at around this time of day I get (speedtest.net) 12.44 Mbps down and 1.9 up, but at midnight time I'll get 19-20.

I will of course ring them but don't want to make a fool of myself. I've had my current package for donkeys years now and I know there have been regulations introduced since meaning providers can't advertise their top speed so easily. So am I actually being downgraded, or just sidestepping to a more 'honest' package?

AndyCroft1982 · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:27

Im currently with sky and in regards to speed i am on the "up to 20 meg" package and only get 4 meg at best so please excuse me if i dont feel your pain lol. However, im on the sky unlimited and it truely is unlimited downloads so its really good in that aspect

estebanrey · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:28

AndyCroft1982 said:
Im currently with sky and in regards to speed i am on the "up to 20 meg" package and only get 4 meg at best so please excuse me if i dont feel your pain lol. However, im on the sky unlimited and it truely is unlimited downloads so its really good in that aspect

My current package is unlimited though, so I'm not gaining anything in that regard

HecFam · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:34

We've had this problem with a number of Clients on BE, The worst thing is that sky do not offer any static IPs unless you're on a fiber package which has been a nightmare. The Sky package is also aimed at home use, so its really nothing great for business use.

We managed to stop them from "upgrading" most of our clients, for around 15 days until we can make arrangements to move to other ISPs.

MissChief · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:39

All that's happened is the rules around advertising their package. They now can only advertise 'up to' speeds that at least 10% of their customers get over hence the now 'up to 16Meg' advertising. If your line can support a faster speed then you will get it, don't worry.

estebanrey · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:48

Oops, just noticed the latest letter actually says I'll be paying £12.50 a month, the one that said £20 was from January.

Still not sure if I'm happy though if I'm losing performance. I'll presume I'm not locked into a 12 month new contract so can still move.

I'm looking to move anyway, I've always favoured more independent ISPs, especially now with all those Court Orders hitting the 'big 5'.

estebanrey · 4 Apr 2014 at 17:50

MissChief said:
All that's happened is the rules around advertising their package. They now can only advertise 'up to' speeds that at least 10% of their customers get over hence the now 'up to 16Meg' advertising. If your line can support a faster speed then you will get it, don't worry.

I thought the "up to" thing was what they used to be able to do and now they have to give an "average" speed?

I just phoned Sky and they said the 16meg was an 'average' speed. I'm lucky enough to live within 300 metres of the exchange so I've always had good speeds.

Tonester0011 · 4 Apr 2014 at 18:21

Same here buddy, my bebox wasn't working so done the live chat to be basically ignored. I'm not interested in the money saved, went with be because of the upload speed. It's about 3 times slower on sky, so will be leaving them soon.

tribz · 4 Apr 2014 at 18:41

HecFam said:
We've had this problem with a number of Clients on BE, The worst thing is that sky do not offer any static IPs unless you're on a fiber package which has been a nightmare. The Sky package is also aimed at home use, so its really nothing great for business use.

We managed to stop them from "upgrading" most of our clients, for around 15 days until we can make arrangements to move to other ISPs.

I'm on be with a static at home. Sky have written to me saying they'll assign me a new static IP address once they migrate me.

OP, welcome to the club. My work bonded connection went off yesterday. It was only when I rang them that they told me they'd moved us to sky and we weren't having bonded lines any more.

Sky were useless. They hadn't a clue what a bonded line was or the Be migration when I rang them.

KIA · 4 Apr 2014 at 18:41

MissChief is correct.

Orcvader · 4 Apr 2014 at 18:59

You won't be losing performace. Due to advertising rules instead of being able to advertise the maximum possible speed (24mb) you have to advertise the speed that at least 10% of their customers get (which is 16mb in Sky's case). The maximum possible speed is still 24mb and it's still ADSL2+/LLU. Only thing that may change is how Sky routes you to the internet but apart from that you shouldn't see a big difference from your current connection.

tribz · 4 Apr 2014 at 19:14

What are the uploads like, on Be I get 1.1 - 1.3Mb

Tonester0011 · 4 Apr 2014 at 19:22

tribz said:
What are the uploads like, on Be I get 1.1 - 1.3Mb

Depends if you paid for pro and have Upload+ available to you

I get something like 0.5 with Sky atm. At least with BE i could stream watchable quality to Twitch, with ^^ that i'd struggle to stream 7 or 8 pixels lol.

Caged · 4 Apr 2014 at 23:49

Orcvader said:
You won't be losing performace. Due to advertising rules instead of being able to advertise the maximum possible speed (24mb) you have to advertise the speed that at least 10% of their customers get (which is 16mb in Sky's case). The maximum possible speed is still 24mb and it's still ADSL2+/LLU. Only thing that may change is how Sky routes you to the internet but apart from that you shouldn't see a big difference from your current connection.

You will lose Annex M, which is a major reason Be still has so many customers.

tribz · 5 Apr 2014 at 10:48

Just rang Be this morning to get my MAC code. All Be services are ceasing on the 15th of this month. Anyone with a MAC migration going through will have their serice extended to the end of the month but they were pretty keen to stress to that if you want to move, now is the time to do it. I just managed to get my MAC before I was due to be moved onto Sky.

Draeger · 5 Apr 2014 at 16:08

Is there really that much of an urgent need to request a MAC at this time? As far as I'm led to believe if you don't take Sky up on any of their offers current BE/O2 customers will be migrated over onto a 30 day rolling contract unless they decide to make the switch and sign up to a deal with Sky.

tribz · 5 Apr 2014 at 16:30

Depends how important the connection is. One of my Be connections just went off when they moved it onto Sky. It hasnt come back up yet. Thats given me enough incentive to manage the migration on the other connection on my own terms.

Westyfield2 · 5 Apr 2014 at 18:53

MissChief said:
All that's happened is the rules around advertising their package. They now can only advertise 'up to' speeds that at least 10% of their customers get over hence the now 'up to 16Meg' advertising. If your line can support a faster speed then you will get it, don't worry.

Hmm, that's better new than I thought. I'd heard that Sky would be ditching the Annex M 2.5M upload?

MagicBoy · 5 Apr 2014 at 18:56

No need to over-react! They're quoting a typical speed, don't worry about it. I get 22Mb on my "up to 16Mb" Sky service.

MissChief · 5 Apr 2014 at 19:29

Hmm, your mention of Annex M may explain why I've started seeing configured upload speeds of 2560kb/s although most lines I've seen don't get anywhere close to that. Will investigate further when I'm back at work a week on Monday.