Sky support terrible

I changed from Be to Sky a week ago due to getting a deal for a free BB for a year, this was a mistake and I will tell you why. As we all know they test the line for 10 days to find your best connection speed. They start at 4Mb and ramp it up till they get a good solid connection, well mine started at 4Mb and has stayed there, why you may ask according to support thats the speed the line checker stated when I signed up.

When we moved over it did say an estimated speed of 1.4 to 4Mb and they say thats what its set at the highest level and they cannot do anything else for me. As far as they are concerned thats the speed I signed up for.

My connection to the exchange is not that great on Be I was getting a sync speed of between 5500 and 6000 which was as good as it gets. So I was hoping to get around that speed with Sky but it looks like they won't budge or remove the cap, spoke to 2 different departments and they say they can't remove the cap from their systems.

If anyone has any advice or a number to call that will allow this changed, its only 1.5Mb but thats a lot when your connection is [censored]

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Mar-13 14:08:09)

Post your router stats so we can see what you should be getting.

From router now:

Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4174 kbps 797 kbps
Line Attenuation 53.5 dB 29.7 dB
Noise Margin 9.1 dB 15.14 dB

That's about right!

Perhaps you were given a 3dB NM on Be but I don't think Sky does that. They may reduce it to 6 dB if you ask them and that'll give you perhaps another 1 Meg speed.

the lowest sky will set is oddly usually 7dB and dont tend to go lower when i was sky i extracted my username and password and use a belkin N1 + DMT tools to get my sync up another meg or 2

Ash

In reply to a post by colinjh:

From router now:

Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4174 kbps 797 kbps
Line Attenuation 53.5 dB 29.7 dB
Noise Margin 9.1 dB 15.14 dB

Should be able to get a bit more but as XRaySpeX said it would need a lower SNR,
With that being said its strange for DLM to set the SNR to 9dB

Move to the test socket and repost line stats again.

In reply to a post by colinjh:

spoke to 2 different departments and they say they can't remove the cap from their systems.

Really only the CST dept have access to profile lines,
Even then they are meant to remove DLM profile line and start DLM again.
Might be work checking over the internal set up, and getting CST run DLM again to try and get lower noise margins.

That speed in my experience is spot on.

I had two lines at the same time with near on identical stats. One with BE and the other with Sky. The Be would sync at 5.5ish and the Sky 4ish.

I don't see how you can say Sky are awful when they have clearly stated you will get 4 max.

In reply to a post by drummerjohn:

I don't see how you can say Sky are awful when they have clearly stated you will get 4 max.

I suppose it depends on how reasonable Sky's estimate is. For instance, I'm currently getting 18 meg, and Sky estimates my line speed "between 10 and 20Mbps".

So my speed could drop by 44% and Sky wouldn't consider it an issue, because it would fall within their estimate.

That speeds pretty spot on for your line. Based on your stats it's right.

You'd have got more with BE as they pushed your line down to 3db probably (something most ISPs only give to really really massively, living next to the phone exchange stable lines).

With DLM it never stops running so if you can keep the line synced constantly and it never drops out DLM will rerun and give you a better sync. It can give a SNR of 3db but only the most stable lines get this. It will take a considerable amount of time to trigger DLM.

I had an uptime of 1900 hours without a drop out and DLM dropped me down to a 3db noise margin after rerunning.

Trick is to never turn the router off.

There's no guarantees though! Sky is all about stability and not speed. DLM aims is to set a speed that means your line will never ever drop out. DLM makes lines not drop for weeks and weeks.

BE are quite the opposite they're happy to allow you on 3db even if it drops 3 times a day.
Sky only do it on lines that don't drop for weeks.

As I say that looks perfect for your line length & I think Talktalk as an example would yield the same sync. It's not just sky being tight.