In reply to a post by RevK:

Sorry you did not appreciate it - but yes, as it also explains, if you are somewhere with at least a forecast 56Mb handback threshold for FTTC, we are ALREADY guaranteeing 56Mb/s speed on that FTTC, which is the same as Sky do. It is not new. It applies anyway.

The idea of the post it to not just point out how daft the Sky offer is, but to highlight that you already get the same guarantee.

This is not what Sky are doing.

If I do a BT Wholesale check at this address:

https://imgur.com/hz88j45

(Which is not my house, I just checked around until I found one in the speed range)

Sky will sell me Sky Fibre Max with the 55mbit guarantee.

https://imgur.com/N3tf6WR

So, it seems that your assumption that they were doing this based on the handback threshold is wrong, as the handback threshold here is 44.6Mbps. They are taking the risk that if I cancel they will incur a hefty fee.

By your policy, you could only "guarantee" me 44.6Mbps at this address whereas Sky will guarantee 55.

If, for example, I was on ADSL2+ here, I might decide the extra money for fibre is worth it for 55mbit, but not 45mbit, In that case, the Sky offering is excellent for me, as while no other provider will do better, I can go back to ADSL2+ if it does not achieve the desired result.

Thanks for checking, I will update my blog.

However, sky will not make your line do 55Mb/s if it does not. That is my main point here. If it does 55Mb/s for Sky, it would for any ISP, and if not, then it won't for any ISP.

In reply to a post by RevK:

Thanks for checking, I will update my blog.

However, sky will not make your line do 55Mb/s if it does not. That is my main point here. If it does 55Mb/s for Sky, it would for any ISP, and if not, then it won't for any ISP.

Oh yes, you're entirely right, and as you've said before any system of broadband speed advertising is a massive can of worms. "Average speeds" mean that the best way to do it is to have a separate (identical) product at every mbit speed tier, only advertise the 80mbit one, then on order say "Sorry, you can't get our 80mbit product, but we can offer you our 50mbit one" or whatever.

I just felt the sky claim worth some further investigation

Indeed, thanks for being so thorough. I should have done the same before posting. I may have to look in to how many lines fall in the gap and consider offering a similar "guarantee" ourselves at some point. I'm certainly prepared to consider in an individual basis if someone asks.

In reply to a post by RevK:

Indeed, thanks for being so thorough. I should have done the same before posting. I may have to look in to how many lines fall in the gap and consider offering a similar "guarantee" ourselves at some point. I'm certainly prepared to consider in an individual basis if someone asks.

Actually, given your policy of never being the bottleneck, which you are better at than any other ISP, and your tenacity with fault resolution, you could probably just offer a blanket guarantee of "No BT FTTC based ISP will EVER give you a better speed than us".

I don't think you can guarantee that, nemeth. Sky or TalkTalk could if they wished, as they have control of the Openreach line profile stability settings, and they do not have the BT Wholesale IP Profile system in between. They only need to restrict traffic to the sync speed.

Unless if course you mean BT Wholesale based ISP. It is important these days to specify which part of BT one means. Most people don't use the words "Openreach' or BTW when they mean them. It causes a lot of misunderstanding.

Plus with low noise margins the variation between modem side of routers will be more of a factor, even beyond the G.INP and Vectoring option

Also might end up down a rabbit hole where there was less crosstalk when user was with ISP Y but now six months later and with ISP Z the crosstalk is having more of an impact and vectoring not available from the cabinet

thanks for the info, that is useful, so its possible sky are using the handback for this. Or ,maybe not after reading nemeth's post.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 22-Sep-17 02:54:12)

Assuming sky dont bother with an engineer or the engineer fails to do anything useful, then I would actually say aaisp is more likely to achieve the speeds than sky as you guys use the speed openreach DLM profile whilst sky uses standard, so DLM is more likely to take stability action on a sky connection which of course reduces sync speed.

This approach from sky is interesting because previously sky would accept faults when throughput was below the guaranteed speed, on the older pro product (one I am on), but this new marketing is just for sync speed only.

RevK I think you should make all home FTTC products one month commitment only like you do on ADSL, that completely outdoes what sky are offering and you should be able to do it now openreach have reduced the wholesale commitment to one month only.

BTW are dropping the 12 months commit on FTTC in January, and we expect to be able to offer FTTC on one month term from then.