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Now that I have been activated I've got some comments about the Sky Broadband Order/Implementation experience.
The History is;
1. Ordered the Max service on Jan 29th
2. Advised of Feb 7th activation date
3. No activation and on Feb 12th lost my old Pipex 2Mb/sec service
4. Broadband Customer Services gave me the 'faulty tie pairs' story and suggested it would be 3 weeks to resolve
5. On Feb 13th BT landline order status for LLU provision changed to unknown.
6. Wrote to Sky Customer Relations on Feb 13th, Recorded Delivery, reporting problems and concerns
7. Reply to letter on Feb 22nd confirming activation around March 5th and with some compensation
8. March 5th and no activation
9. On March 9th note from BT landline order status that LLU provision moved to May 14th
10. Invoke the James Murdoch email ploy on March 9th
11. Start getting regular progress calls from Broadband Customer Services - no actual progress but maintaining contact.
12. Reply to my James Murdoch email with more compensation and promising action.
13. On March 14th BT landline order status moves from May 14th to March 16th
14. March 16th ends and no activation. I send second email to 'James Murdoch'
15. On Sunday March 18th get call from Broadband Customer Services saying I will be activated on March 19th.
16. Activated on March 19th. Broadband Customer Services rings to check all is OK.
17. I write to 'James Murdoch' to say thanks for all the help in resolving the problem.
Current stats;
ADSL Link �������Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8096 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 42.0 db ����26.0 db
Noise Margin ����12.9 db ����14.0 db
Real life download/upload speeds - 6.5Mb/0.6Mb and noise margin very stable - less than +/- 0.5db change
So I expect I can get more speed by asking to be switched to ADSL2+ but will wait and see how things run.
My conclusions to all this;
1. All the Sky Broadband people have been helpful, bar one techie, and tried to do what they can.
2. Whatever Sky inherited from Easynet in the way of processes for order implementation just doesn't scale to the level of Sky's marketing aspirations and advertising activity.
3. Prioritisation is a real problem. By accident I found 2 cases of orders placed after my original activation date which were implemented successfully on my exchange. Why were Easynet being allowed to connect new customers but leaving existing orders outstanding?
4. I accept that equipment failures do happen but why aren't unallocated ports on DSLAMs not used straightaway rather than abandon the job which is what currently happens? With a bit of help I discovered that the time to connect to a Sky LLU port is 2 minutes, including testing which Easynet/BT engineers don't do. I'm told that a lot of Sky LLU problems have arisen from poorly installed equipment at the exchange. it was suggested that there are not enough engineers to cope with demand.
5. Sky seems to be erring on the side of caution - delivering a conservative solution that is reliable rather than bleeding edge. Not good news for game/bit torrent users but welcome for everyone else.
I could have been more forceful but the risk of antagonising Sky staff isn't worth it. Being persistent and raising the stakes as soon as you have useful new information does seem to work. I suspect that Sky is at work to improve all aspects of the order/activation process but the BT system for landline orders is archaic, BT knows it is woefully inadequate and is being pressed to improve it. In my view BT Openreach's processes to do with LLU orders are a throwback to the days when the Post Office was responsible for telecommunications.
By comparison with my experiences of Pipex I find Sky to be rather good, even though I only had a need to contact Pipex on a few occasions wait times were typically 20 minutes and more. With Sky I got to speak to real people within 5 minutes in about a dozen occasions. And Sky contacted me on a Sunday! Never would happen with my previous ISPs.
Your mileage may vary.
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