Sky Broadband

Just noticed Sky broadband has appeared as a LLU provider on my exchange, so went to the Sky site to see what speed I could get (currently on Max and no date for WBC) and apparently Sky no longer do a Broadband only package. I dont want Talk as I get a BT discount on rental and have no need for Sky TV, how long has this been the case?

I read on here it happened on September 1st.

Great. No use to me now. Grrrr.

There was a discussion on here about it a couple of weeks ago, you could probably still find it as this forum has been pretty quiet.

Most people, myself included, didn't seem happy with the change as it effectively locks you into their LLU service and makes it much more painful to migrate back out again.

I'm already on Sky BB without line rental and even though this change doesn't affect me (yet) I plan to move away from Sky when the contract is up at the end of the year. I do not want someone else dictating what bundles I have to have - I want the choice of where I get the different components of the service.

EDIT : In fact the discussion is still very recent : here

Edited by ian72 (Wed 14-Sep-11 08:15:56)

Surely you wouldn't have to move away from the Sky Contract at the end of the year? I can't see Sky forcing you to take line rental at the end of the year?

The BB product on its own is hard to beat in all fairness. {LLU not Connect}

I've nearly had it a year and it is great.

Not so much that I have to but I did have a faster connection with Be and main reason for Sky was to try out Sky Anytime+. So far anytime+ isn't doing much for me and so was considering a move back to Be - and at some point they are going to want to move customers over to their line rental and will probably force the issue by increasing the prices for the standalone broadband - that possibility pushes me a little closer to moving back to Be.

What bit rate does Anytime+ appear to use?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

What bit rate does Anytime+ appear to use?

You mean when downloading to the Sky box, or when playing the movie?

Have to say I haven't looked and not sure how I would get that. The SD downloads I think are not dissimilar on the disk to if they were recorded off sky so quality is seems as good as a broadcast. HD stuff is only delivered via the satellite anyway and so is essentially the same as if they had broadcast the thing.

The actual download appears to happily come down at line speed.

I have been impressed with the quality of the stuff available for download, just not the quantity. There are quite a few movies but what I really want is to watch "box sets" of TV programmes and anytime+ is pretty poor for those, I expect it to get better earlier this year which is why I took a punt on it but I don't think it is improving and movies is not enough of a draw for me (especially as I also have Lovefilm and can't keep up with watching the movies from that at the moment. let alone anything else).

I am now in the process of leaving sky, this being one of the reason.(swap over on Tuesday)

When sky were still newish, they were by far the best provider, but the last year our so has well in my eyes seen a major back slide in the quality of there service (bb I'm talking about here) and their customer service is now atrocious, to say the least.