Your experience with Sky Broadband. I have been with Orange broadband for 5yrs, now the time has come to get faster broadband. Orange only offer up to 8Mb in my area. (As I live less than 1.5KM from my exchange. I get average DL speeds of 8.5Mb. (1.2MB/s)) Orange won't unbundle my exchange, so I can't receive the maximum my line will allow. (BT say it will get 19.5Mb maximum and 17Mb minimum.) Sky and Talk talk have unbundle my exchange. I'm thinking of going over to Sky, as I already have the TV packages. So I need to know if Sky is any good, or do they just cap your speeds and torrents?
I have heard that sky broadband isnt very good but everyone caps stuff now anway. (Especially torrents as you mentioned)
I've been with sky for 3 years now and its been relatively pain free. I moved flat last week and they disconnected my old line and enabled the new one within a day even though they said it would take 3 or 4. They run tests for the first 10 days to find the most stable / fastest speed on your line. During which time i have noticed drops in connections, but as far as i can tell that is Sky disconnecting me completely to change settings at their end. Rather than just a poor connection. They claim these line tests will end on Tuesday so i will report back then and let you know if everything is stable. In my old flat i never noticed any slow periods or traffic shaping, always got full bandwidth with torrents. So.... i would recommend Sky! Good luck.
Thanks for the replies. @Hamfunk - Thanks for sharing your experiences. I have now just ordered Sky broadband. Half price for 12 months (£3.75 +line rental). Edit- Just rang Orange to cancel, and they now say they can give me those speeds through 21CN WBC £18.50pm inc line rental with 2 months free...Result! (Was paying £24pm inc line rental for upto 8Mb). Edit2- Now have to ring Sky to cancel my order...
Its funny what the four little words; "I wish to cancel" can bring about. How do you find orange? I've been on talktalk (tiscali) for ages now. Time for a change at renewal i think.
Recently got Sky fibre for our student house in Bath. Connection was quickly set up (they're just piggybacking BT Openzone) and We got a good download rate of 37Mb/s. That's where the good news ends really. Streaming speeds vary from acceptable to unusable. At some times of day you can watch 1080p youtube but more often than not it will be way too slow. Also I've yet to stream even an SD BBC iPlayer program without buffering. It seems like every 10 minutes the connection just dies for a minute only for streaming. Skype also struggles to get a good connection and p2p traffic is throttled down to about 3kb/s during daytime. I'll emphasise again that the download rate is consistantly pretty good. Downloading from Steam and other sites generally does get a good 4-4.5MB/s but it's just the other services that seem unreliable or frustrating to use. Generally not all that pleased with it, especially given what we're paying for it
@Instagib - I have been on and off for 5yrs with Orange, thinking I would get faster speeds else where, but that was never the case. First time I was with Orange for 18 months contract. I was getting 6.5Mb constant, as that was the maximum my line could support. I left Orange to go with O2, as I was a mobile customer at the time, and it was cheaper. I stayed with them for 2 weeks, as the connection was just horrific. Capped to 3Mb all day everyday. So managed to get out of that within the 30days cool off period. My friend then recommended to me that BT was excellent. Offering again up to 8Mb. So I joined BT. I hated it, as soon as 5pm came around all traffic was capped. (Never had this with Orange including downloading torrents). So after 8 months with BT, I opted to buy out of the contract, and go back to Orange. So back with Orange again, my speed increased as I took the line rental out with Orange, so I now got 7.5Mb all day everyday inc torrents. Then my Exchange got updated to 21CN WBC and my broadband shot up to 8.5Mb peaking at 10Mb in some cases, on a upto 8Mb plan, again torrents where unrestricted. So now came the time, that I could get faster broadband with other providers, as Orange said they couldn't update my line as my line was capable of only up to 8Mb, when their broadband checker stated my line would receive upto 19.5Mb. So I was fighting with them for a couple of weeks, telling the boneheaded scripted technicians that my Exchange has been updated to 21CN WBC to allow upto 20Mb broadband without the need of them unbundling my Exchange. So after tonight of ringing to cancel, I get put through to a nice English Girl, who understood my language, and gave me what I wanted, and more, to keep me with them. So overall, I rate Orange on their broadband, (Though I don't know what their LLU service is like?) Customer services is OK, if the operator can understand you. I am happy to be staying with Orange, as my experience has been good, and I know what I'm getting. So I too would recommend them.
I have had sky for about 3 years now, i pay £10 a month which is part of a package of tv, and phone line (pay line rental to BT), the £10 a month is actually there top broadband package unlimited etc, But due to my area i cant get the top speed, and sometimes i do feel it is capped at peek times but seems good enough for me.
If you have the option of sky llu or FTTC then its worth going with sky but dont go with sky if you can only get sky connect- basically bt asdl resold- its best to go with BT or plus net etc. Your exchange has FTTC planned for 2013, which by then the EE (what orange is now) fibre packages will be running for a while by then, not much feedback about them yet as their new but most people either go BT or Sky for FTTC.
I've got Sky Broadband, but after ordering and having it all setup, i've discovered they don't allow under any circumstances the use of your own router, or Home Server, as it breaks their T&C's, and they wont release the connection info so you can use your own router. Thankfully, my Draytek router has a secondary port for a 2nd ADLS/DSL connection, so it's not a waste of money. Sam
On the router front, use what you want. A friend of mine has been using his own router since he signed up with them 4 years ago. There's plenty of places to get your login details online (its a combo of the router serial number and something else).
You've got 21CN at the exchange so you can go for any ISP offering ADSL2+, you're not limited to just Sky & TalkTalk.
Been with Sky Broadband a year, and for 6 months it was the fastest internet I have experienced after 6 months they switched me onto their lines from BT, latency doubled, lost 4Mb download, Sky customer service is useless regarding my loss of performance. Still, even with the loss I have no reason to complain, it is still decent, just not as good as it was. Price is not bad but having a sky line is costing us due to the amount of 0870/0844 numbers we call, Sky is the only phone provider that doesn't include them in your free minutes.
FYI Sky do not cap or shape your connection in any way. If you are experiencing slower download speeds during certain times of the day, then that is due to the amount of people using it at that time.
+1 to what Tichinde said. A quick google and its easy enough to get your username and password to use your own router. I've been using my own for years so i can get wireless N. Pretty straight forward and if there is ever a problem, just connect the sky one back up!
I was with ticali till Talk talk took them over I went with plusnet I'm getting 11.5mg contant all day no slow down at anytime with a 60g download and unlimited free download from midnight to 8am english call center as well lol
Thanks for all the replies. Seems like the poll shows some peeps getting excellent service, whilst others wouldn't recommend them. I guess it is down to how close you are to your exchange, to how good a service you will get, like any broadband provider. Well Orange are in the process of updating my broadband service, so I will report back in 10-12days, once my broadband finds it's most stable speeds.
