Sky LLU & Long Lines

Hi

I'm thinking of ordering Sky Broadband Unlimited after my Sky+HD 2TB is installed on 14th Sept, I live a fair way from exchange and estimate my line to be about 4-5Km's long, I havn't yet used the openreach line at my property as only moved in, in may 2013 and took Virgin Cable as speeds where better.

Unfortunatly Virgin Media has already managed to pi$$ me off 3 times in this short space of time and thats on top of the poor reliability of there cable infrastructure.

I'm looking to move to sky as they are a FTTC provider and it will be easier to upgrade once FTTC is available at my exchange and also no fair usage oir Traffic Management on there Sky LLU services.

I am estimated by sky to receive between 1.9mbps - 4.9mbps, I expect around 3mbps, But what I want to know is whether Sky's LLU works well with long line providing good stability and keeping dropouts to a minimum.

Thanks in advance.

Hi pete mate, I sent you a message on the VMC forum,

Ok, That's great here, I have heard similar before, re: more control over the LLU, gonna get on 2 them and see if i can add it to my sky order tomorrow, Absolutely [censored] off with Virgin media.

Unfortunatly Virgin Media has already managed to pi$$ me off 3 times in this short space of time and thats on top of the poor reliability of there cable infrastructure.

I had virginedia 60Mbps I believe yet I couldn't stream YouTube without buffering and it would automatically slow down to 240p. I had packet loss too...

I'm looking to move to sky as they are a FTTC provider and it will be easier to upgrade once FTTC is available at my exchange and also no fair usage oir Traffic Management on there Sky LLU services.

Yep BT infinity may come sooner, Sky is usually a few days to a couple of weeks behind as they need to install a link. In most cases Sky install this in advanced though. At most it shouldn't be long. I have Sky Fibre and I can pull 9Mb/s but I don't notice much difference between their 40Mbps package and the 80Mbps one in reality. I strongly suggest starting at the slower speed and if you need the faster speed you can always upgrade. You can't really downgrade usually though!

I am estimated by sky to receive between 1.9mbps - 4.9mbps, I expect around 3mbps, But what I want to know is whether Sky's LLU works well with long line providing good stability and keeping dropouts to a minimum.

Sky run quite strict DLM. Other providers, even BT in my experience, opt for faster speeds and will accept dropouts a few times a day. On my BT ADSL it would drop daily and often need a router restart to reconnect as the HH would crash.

On the contrary Sky want absolute stability, the way their management works is for the line to stay connected... With Sky they will slow your speeds down a little more if the lines not totally stable. Say the line drops out 5 times a day - Sky will slow it down a bit so that it doesn't do this. Other providers are much more likely to leave it going faster and dropping out.

A Sky line often stays connected for months on end. It's the beauty of their DLM. Some people love it, others hate it. They move from BT or somewhere where they had a 3db noise margin, 10 drop outs a day and an unsustainable speed. They lose speed with Sky and even though it's stable they're unhappy as it's a little slower.

For me I love the Sky approach, it just works and it's stable as hell. Their router also never ever locks up. My Virgin SuperHub locked up literally daily. The wireless on it was also terrible. I don't know if you have the superhub 2 (and if you do it may be better). Sky should be fine for you though. Remember netflix only needs 0.3 Mbps to play in lowest quality, so you don't need a super speed connection to do things.

Thanks for your reply ukhardy07
As far as I know this house did have Sky Broadband before I moved in but before i got to check speed they had disconnected, and they didn't really pay attention to how fast or really how it worked.

I have also since ripped all cabling out of my house as it was a right mess.

Just plug straight into the master socket or even better the test socket and it'll be fine. Sky is only unstable on lines which need an engineer out usually & they're fairly good at getting an engineer out to you & also very rarely bill for call outs (even where they probably should). They can afford to loss-make on broadband as their TV brings in so much profits and forcing line rental down peoples throats means they make big profits on calls.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 04-Sep-13 00:22:31)

I was thinking of putting an ssfp or adsl nation xte-5000 adsl filter faceplate on, but that won't be until after the broadbands activated and depends on line speeds, but I will plug into test socket from activation date to ensure best DLM setup.

I'm also not going to use the Sky broadband until the 11th day as I will still have virgin and I'm assuming it will help it lock on at a higher line profile as the DLM don't detect any stress on the line.

I'm also not going to use the Sky broadband until the 11th day as I will still have virgin and I'm assuming it will help it lock on at a higher line profile as the DLM don't detect any stress on the line.

The only thing you need to do is to keep the router connected. If anything using the lines probably better.

Filtered faceplates a great idea and test socket even better

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 04-Sep-13 00:48:27)

As an ex-Sky customer I would strongly advise anyone from having anything to do with this company. Their business practices are unethical and dishonest to say the least and if the service fails to live up to your expectations (as it does many) the cost of leaving and getting your phone line transferred or reinstalled to BT will be costly either in money, time, inconvenience or all three.

Ten reasons why Sky is to be avoided:

1) The sales people work on commission and will say anything you want to hear, and offer you any deal to lure you into switching your phone line over and sticking you into a 12 month contract. If all else fails, they'll offer you their "try us for 30 days, no obligation, you can cancel and you won't lose a penny" (neglecting to mention you'll lose your phone line and number).

2) The service is slow, slower than any broadband service I've used to date. Even accessing normal websites is slow in my experience with caching of websites. The reason being, they offer so many cheap deals (£2.50 a month for unlimited?!) and advertise so much, the service is just swamped with too many users. The old saying applies, you get what you pay for. If you want a quality service and fast speeds, don't look at big ISP's, look for the smaller, specialised ones.

3) Sky Broadband's IP addresses are dynamic and change often, randomly. Sometimes daily for some users, as in my case. If you need a static IP (or even just a stable IP that doesn't change often), forget Sky. Also there's only ONE dynamic IP DNS updating service in their router (which conveniently for Sky, you have to pay monthly) to use. Despite numerous free and cheaper dynamic IP DNS updating services, Sky refuse customers requests to add them to their routers with a simple firmware release. Discussions and suggestions about dynamic IP DNS updating services are censored/blocked by Sky forum staff.

4) Using Sky Broadband is dependent on having your phone line switched to Sky Talk which is not part of the BT network. That has serious financial and practical implications you need to consider, both in terms of calls and switching broadband later. You won't be able to use widely used money-saving free call services like 18185, even calls to freephone numbers that divert freely, are chargeable calls with Sky Talk (although they won't tell you this, until you get the massive phone bill).

5) Sky's routers have a habit of randomly rebooting and changing their IP addresses (at least mine did). Hopeless if you're running services or gaming, or rely on a stable connection.

6) Sky support is severely lacking. If you have any problems, you're directed to the user support forum. If you want to email someone or be able to speak to someone on the phone, and be talked through a problem, forget it with Sky. They're not interested.

7) When you finally decide to leave Sky (either because the broadband service fails to live up to expectations, your phone bills are too high, or because you've seen a better offer), expect delays and obstacles. Your phone line will be held in limbo for WEEKS forcing you to have a new line installed if you're in business. You're likely lose your telephone number too with many teleco companies unable to port numbers across from Sky.

8) The company and its staff are blatantly dishonest and misleading, in their sales approach when dealing with new customers. Take anything they say or promise with a large pinch of salt.

9) They suddenly "invent" terms and conditions if you take up their "try us for 30 days at no obligation" invitation and then decide to leave within the 30 days.. Like the "you need to give us 30 days notice to cancel" (and thus pay months line rental/broadband/be stuck with high call charges etc).

10) The company, and its staff are all smiles and polite when you're joining, then treat you with utter contempt when you announce you're leaving them. Don't expect cooperation and a smooth quick transfer..Instead, expect obstacles, delays and long waits, despite the governments and OfCom's instance that Internet customers be able to transfer between providers quickly and easily.

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Sep-13 01:03:16)

Received loud and clear hardy!

Morphix:

1) Same with nearly all Broadband ISP's and even most sales staff..Mobile, TV, Insurance ect...

2) I can agree with the fact that it is a very busy network, But if you can only acheive a max speed of 5mbps on an adsl line in your area then Sky's LLU network will cope fine and give the best stability too, Small broadband companies push the adls line to the max ofter putting it on frastpath and 3db snr and this cause packets loss and errors and stability issues, So Sky's LLU is great for lines over 3kms.

3) Nearly all ISP's supply Dynamic IP's some can give out static IP's, Even Virgin Media use dynamic IP's but there Mac address system remembers them for longer and will keep them for a very long time if the modem has not been offline for a long time say couple of days.

4) In my experience as a prvious sky talk and sky bb lite user I had a great experience with Sky Talk only think missing was inclusive 0845 calls and even now they have got them too,

5) All ISP provided and some brought wireless routers have issues, they wouldn't be wireless routers if they didn't, and I'm planning to use Apple's Airport equipment with my Sky Hub which will effectively become a modem once wireless is deactivated and some settings changed.

6) I don't any ISP has good tech support as they are just reading from the hymn sheet.

7) I'm already aware of that and like before a lot of providers use there own line and not bt's TalkTalk do it exactly the same as sky.

8) Most companies do that, Sky is the least to worry about, very few serious cases unlike other I have experienced.

9) Same with nearly all ISP's (30day happiness guarantee, T's&c's apply.

10) I have never experienced that with bSkyb.

My General opinion on Sky in my experience is:

They have always been friendly and understanding, when I have got through to a foreign call center or foreign representative I have never been shouted at or given a cold shoulder when I have ask to be transferred to another UK operator, They have always tailor made packages for me and have been patient whilst trying something they knew wouldn't work, but because I wanted them to try it they did it.

There broadband isn't built for speed.... It's built for cost effective reliability and to come in one package with calls and tv in toe and to also sett no barriers for downloading or uploading and no port blocking.

It is very hard to find another UK isp without fair usage or traffic or port management.