Is Sky Broadband Superfast the same as Sky Fibre Max ?

Last October, (which is now almost 8 months ago), Sky said that they would be uprating my line from Sky Fibre Unlimited (40/10 mbps cap), to Sky Fibre Max 80/20 mbps cap), for free but it did not happen and now apparently it won't happen because Sky Fibre Max is no longer available no new customers. - That said; I would still prefer a higher speed product with a higher cap since the costs are similar although I do realize that a higher cap may not result in a higher speed.

When I contacted Sky about my not having been changed to Sky Fibre Max they did offer me Sky Broadband Superfast with a new 18 month contract but the predicted speed of Sky Broadband Superfast for my line was only 24 mbps down which seems ridiculous since my line usually has a rock solid flat-graph of almost 38 mbps with the Sky Fibre Unlimited line sync speed being capped a 40 mbps.

I told them that I wanted the Sky Fibre Max that they promised me but was told that was not possible as that no longer offer Sky Fibre max to people who are not already on it, (although those already on it can keep it), and I now suspect that the Deslam in my cabinet is full.

Are Sky Fibre Unlimited and Sky Fibre Max lines physically separated in the exchange/cabinet or is it just a programing limit that needs to be changed to move my line from one product to the other? - If it is just a programming change it seems churlish not to just change me to what was promised, (even though I realize that I may not see a speed increase).

At present my broadband contract with Sky has ended and I can move to another provider if I wish to but for the most part I am reasonably happy which creates a dilemma since my router indicates that my line could potentially support a download speed of over 55mbps. (That speed may be overly ambitious since my line down attenuation is 18 db but a higher cap is always desirable).

Is Sky Broadband Superfast the same as Sky Fibre Max or are there speed differences and are the speed caps the same ?

If the Deslam in my cabinet if full; would moving from Sky to another ISP move my wiring to another Deslam ?

I ask this because a line fault was repaired last week, (ie. crosstalk on an Openreach wire). - This was corrected last week and although my present thinkbroadband speed test is back to a rock solid almost 38 mbps my router now reports a sync speed of 40 mbps and it now also reports a max rate of 40 mbps instead of the max rate of over 55 mbps that was previously showing before the repair, the physical moving about of the Openreach wires and a profile reset). - My line down attenuation is still 18 db.

Sky Broadband Superfast is a merger of the old two products one of which was Sky Fibre Max and thus covers the

40/10
55/10 and
80/20 FTTC products

The change has mainly being just a name change, and possibly some policy changes in what they offer to customers, but the underlying 40/10 and 80/20 services remain the same. Suspect you've reached the sales support staff knowledge limit, in trying to ask for a switch to the 80/20 underlying product rather than a 40/10 i.e. all they see is your product name has changed so they think it is job done.

Can you post line stats that the Sky router shows.

Sky don't sell 40/10 and 80/20 as 2 separate packages.

They will use the estimates for your line to decide wether you should be provisioned on 40/10 or 80/20.
By the sounds of your quoted speeds they would put you on 40/10.

There are many reasons why the max attainable can drop from 55Mb to 40Mb. I'll list just a couple of them.

OpenReach could have used a different pair when fixing your fault and this pair has a different attainable rate. Every line has differing levels of crosstalk/interference. Some lines may have sections of Aluminium while others may not.

Crosstalk could simply have eaten away at what the line can achieve.
Crosstalk is the interference from other lines with fibre on your cabinet.
Personally my line has lost about 20Mb to crosstalk in the last 2-3 years.
It's not uncommon to instantly lose 10-20Mb when a neighbour (particularly those whose line runs along side yours all the way to the cabinet) has FTTC activated.
When my neighbour turns their modem off my max attainable jumps 8Mb.

You could have had Interleaving enabled on your line before the fault.
This artificially exaggerates the max attainable above what the line can achieve.
When faults are fixed OpenReach reset the DLM on the line which can remove Interleaving and so the max attainable would drop to a realistic figure.

The present line stats are;

Line Status:

Current Rate (kbps)

Upstream 9548 / Downstream 40000

Max Rate (kbps)

Upstream 9548 / Downstream 40838

SNR Margin (dB)

Up 5.4 / Down 6

Line Attenuation (dB)

Up 42.1 / Down 18.5

A quick look at the stats suggests you would see zero benefit from being put on an 80/20 profile.

In all likelihood your sync speed may drop below 40Mb over time as your local fibre cabinet continues to fill up.

If you are fortunate enough to be on a Huawei fibre cabinet then you might be able to get another (roughly) 8-10Mb if the DLM reduced the target SNR margin from 6dB to 3dB.
DLM would only consider this on a Huawei cabinet and when the line isn't reaching its current cap.

You can find out if you are on an ECI or Huawei cabinet by following this guide.
https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/cabinet-lookup.htm

Going by the physical appearance of the local cabinet; it is a Huawei cabinet.

I do not object to receiving a speed that is somewhat less that the capped speed but I would want to be synced at the full capped speed and I would certainly not be comfortable with being limited by lack of capacity in the local Openreach Equipment and/or duff Openreach Equipment keeping me on lower speeds and a hidden artificial speed cap that was not automatically increased when higher speeds were achievable.

Last week, when the Openreach Engineer was checking for the crosstalk fault he changed the wires to another Deslam in the cabinet and he said that that previous Deslam which had G.Imp was full and the Deslam that he moved my wiring to did not have G.Imp. - (I am not sure if that is relevant as we are about 750m from the cabinet).

Apparently all of those changes were mute because the wiring crosstalk was considered to be in the wire between the junction connection on the outer wall of the house and the Openreach Master Socket just through that wall but before he changed that wire he had seemed sure that it was closer to the cabinet and that is why he changed over the Dslam.

Either way, at the end of his visit, his device said that the crosstalk reading were clear but when he left the speed was terrible. - The reason for that could be that he requested the profile reset, prior to finding the crosstalk fault, as he was about to leave before he found the crosstalk fault, (after I pressed for more checks for crosstalk), which meant that his subsequent testing was being carried out while the line was under its 10 day training period and my connection speed was down the toilet (at 24 mbps) after he cured the fault and he left site.

Since then the speed has gone back up to where it is now.

Nothing against the Openreach Engineer but I have never been very impressed with Openreach; where the rest of Europe tends to have full FTTP we have [censored] FTTC and instead of having lots of spare capacity in the wiring and cabinets; we tend to have just enough capacity so that when/if a fault develops there is always the chance of being swapped onto a Deslam that someone else escaped from a few weeks earlier or someone else's complained about wiring spares.

The reason that I would prefer a product with a higher cap is the possibility of contention in that I would expect a lesser number (perhaps 20) 80/20 wires would be grouped together and a greater number (perhaps 40) 40/10 wires would be grouped together grouped together and if my line stats did allow for greater speeds that should arrive automatically.

Only Huawei cabinets have G.INP.
That sound like you have both a Huawei cabinet and an ECI cabinet.
The Huawei cabinets are better kit.

The 15Mb drop in attainable will be from the lack of G.INP.

If you enter your address in to the broadband availability checker and post the exchange/cabinet number I can check if you have both DSLAM's.

https://my.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_...

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 03-Jun-19 20:40:05)

Hi John83,

Thank you for your assistance.

I have sent my exchange and cabinet details via a secure message.

Regards,
Fido

I am fairly sure that I was previously on a Huawei Deslam because about three years ago, (when my cabinet was updated), my line was totally dead for over three days and that was due to Huawei having updated the cabinet and accidentally turning off my connection so having suffered a long loss of service for almost four days during the upgrade I certainly do not want to be on an inferior product.

As I recall the Deslam that I was on,(which did have G.INP), had over 140 ports, all of which were full except for the one that they moved my connection from. - (Unnecessarily as it turns out since the crosstalk was elsewhere), and the Deslam that my connection was moved to, (which the Openreach Engineer later said did not have G.INP), apparently had only about 48 ports and only 12 of those were used. - (I am not sure if that helps).

If I was switched to an inferior type of Deslam can I press Sky to move my connection back to the Deslam that it was previously on, (bearing in mind that my original Deslam port may have been immediately snaffled by Openreach for another customer who wanted a faster connection ?

Also; If my cabinet does have both a Huawei and ECI Deslams in the same cabinet, and I have been unnecessarily switched to the ECI side, (which is considered to be inferior and does not have G.INP), if I change ISP would that put me onto another Deslam or would that make no difference to the Deslam for my line ?

If it is the case that there is no capacity and my connection was unnecessarily switched to the ECI side that would be like sending your car in for maintenance and the engine being replaced by an engine with half the power because they found an intermittently defective starter wire.

Lots of ifs.

Switching ISP will not see your VDSL2 port changed, migrations cost so little because Openreach does not need to visit the cabinet

Huawei updating a cabinet sounds like a tall tale, there may have been a firmware update to the chassis/line card but would have been scheduled by Openreach, and they should have been able to turn your connection back on.

You can try pressing Sky but to be honest it will get you nowhere other than them maybe saying - you are free to go elsewhere if you want.