I need to be convinced

I'm considering moving to Sky Broadband because I want my phone, tv and broadband with one supplier.
I'm with Zen Internet at the moment and really can't fault them, they've been brilliant, but as you can see My Exchange is not exactly brimming with choice. What are the pros and cons with Sky? Would you recommend them to your family and friends? Are they REALLY unlimited and not throttled or traffic shaped? I really need convincing that I would be doing the right thing.

Yes to unlimited and no throttling, just natural congestion to worry about with other users.

The main downside is the full LLU aspect meaning you may have more fun moving to a another provider who is not full LLU at a later date

I had Sky ADSL and then fibre. I would strongly recommend fibre if you can get it - it's out of this world.

On standard ADSL I was pulling around 200 - 300gb monthly as a household. I synced at 15Mbps and torrents were 1.6Mb/s, general downloads were around the same speed. I had a slowdown for a month or two due to congestion at the exchange but this cleared itself up. Given I've been with Sky for around 8 years now I can't complain.

I then got fibre optic 80Mbps and I shared this with my house and the neighbours (6 of them). So there were 11 of us using it. I could always stream things fine and speeds were still pretty good. Even with 11 people using it I still was getting 60Mbps on downloads and torrents.

I also have BT infinity provided via work for free and honestly the Sky connection is just better. On BT when I'm watching youtube, if I skip part of the video there's a pause for a good 5 seconds, sometimes the video stops working all together and needs a refresh. Also on facebook often pictures don't load at all. This never has happened to me on Sky. Bear in mind my whole house uses the Sky connection - I am the only user of the BT connection, yet the sky one just works better for me.

The Sky hub also gives me better range than the BT HomeHub.
P.s I left my Sky hub connected for 4000 hours and it didn't fault me once. Not one drop out, not one problem. It's a truly set it and forget it router. Doesn't mess you about.

Just make the jump!

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 16-Jul-13 20:37:05)

Guys, thanks for the quick replies they have been helpful. I've just scanned for available wifi in my neighbourhood only 1 Sky connection came up all others were BT, Talktalk and my Zen. I've just got one more question, because my exchange is so small (approx 3000 houses) would that mean the congestion would be fairly light?

Probably, but then you might be blessed with people who are consuming all they can on the few sky connections that exist.

Its the same with any provider, current and past performance may suggest a good bet, but is no guarantee of future performance

In reply to a post by Trev:

Guys, thanks for the quick replies they have been helpful. I've just scanned for available wifi in my neighbourhood only 1 Sky connection came up all others were BT, Talktalk and my Zen. I've just got one more question, because my exchange is so small (approx 3000 houses) would that mean the congestion would be fairly light?

The Sky network is quite heavily invested in. In areas where there is congestion Sky have pretty much always upgraded the exchange backhaul so that there is no longer congestion

Even in major cities it's fine, Sky just invest in more backhaul.

I highly doubt you will see any slowdowns on Sky. If you do, it'll take a couple of months to get resolved but it will be resolved (always has in the past). Sky usually invest before the slowdowns are noticeable though. There's been the odd exception but ultimately it got resolved.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 16-Jul-13 21:24:34)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

There's been the odd exception but ultimately it got resolved.

Like January to May 2012, and January to April 2013? (I forget exactly how long, but months in each case).

If you're unlucky enough to be in a congested area, then it's hell and remains so for month after month. This experience also provides me the experience to say that Sky 1st line support is bad, really really bad. I can't speak for BT but Zen is 1e100 times better than Sky.

I have both Sky and BT Infinity unlimited fibre from the same cabinet. Currently speeds are similar on both but pings on BT are 6ms while Sky are 30ms - was 20ms, then 1.5 months in I rebooted the router (not modem!) and it increased.

That said, I had a Zen connection on the same exchange some years ago and congestion was awful. At a university town, and literally the day students arrived it'd drop to 300kbits/s from 8Mbit/s, 9am to 2am. That lasted for over a year. It affected everyone non-LLU no matter the provider, so was BT's problem, which is why I went with Sky LLU.

And having said that, I've had ADSL at another address for 10 years (last 8 years with Zen, current sync 17Mbit) which has never, ever shown any congestion issues. Full speed, asymptotically flat out all day every day with fast ping (<20ms, which seems good for ADSL).

I'm not sure what my point is. But Sky wind me up something rotten.

My exchange was affected by congestion. Lets be clear it was only a small amount of exchanges affected to start with & it only became so known as sky held their hands up, listed the affected exchanges and informed people of resolve times.

It lasted start of feb 2012 - mid march 2012 for me.
At the time I wasn't happy as my sync was 15Mbps but my real world speed was 1 - 5 Mbps
Thing is they resolved the congestion completely, gave me 6 months half price TV, line rental for £1 and offered free movies.

Tier one support are bad but whilst I suffered congestion I was assigned to Chris at CST in sky. I had his email and he sent me emails almost daily updating me on what was happening. He also got the executive office to call me back...

Like any company they sometimes get it wrong but in the vast majority of my time with sky they have got it right.

You risk congestion on any ISP. A lot of the others do not upgrade the backhaul when congestion hits whereas sky have the dollar bill to quickly afford the upgrades & always sort it in the affected areas.

I can't moan on the whole with sky customer services. They're usually scottish or Irish and I've discussed my favourite alcoholic drink with them before.

I've never had an ISP with such little downtime as sky either.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 18-Jul-13 13:53:42)

Your sky lines just getting more crosstalk than the BT one

Hence the pings are higher on sky

It you put BT infinity on the sky line
& sky fibre on the curreny BT line

I would bet my life the sky line would then have the good pings and not the BT one

You could always go with Talk talk or a Talk talk wholesale re seller.