Skyconnect to Be* LLU. Will it be better?

skyconnect, which I know is a resold BT connect service, is absolutely horrible due to oversubscription and not enough capacity paid for etc. Perhaps some other bandwidth issues are also a cause, but........

It's acceptable between about 5am-1pm, but then it starts to show a bit of strain as the day goes on due to the "fair" traffic management.

Even when I was with ZEN internet, for 1.5 years, I noticed some funny issues that were indicative of the bt connect re-sold service, notably emails and funny youtube behaviour.
I think their extra bandwidth made the contention less noticeable.

The biggest problems now with this sky service are as follows.
(router was re-booted recently just to make sure everything was as normal (ie. [censored])

So, I sometimes can't send emails at the worst times of, say, 9pm-11pm. Thunderbird shows connecting......connected to server but then it times out because there just does not seem to be any data getting out.

As I write this, I note that I have been on "connected" status for the emails for about 2 mins now, but no delivery as of yet.... This was evident near the end of my membership with Zen, which, as we all know, had more bandwidth allowance.

I just tried to re-send the email. It was on connecting for about 15 seconds, now on "connected" and timeout...........

Anyway, the other annoying issue is clearly trying to watch streaming vids.. I use dumeter and it shows like 20KB/sec( 160kbps) on youtube vids but sometimes it's so weird, like there is always a delay or many lost data packets.

This obviously, as is well documented on skyuser forums, happens during the traffic management times.

So, If I go to BE* or other reputable llu services, can I "definitely" expect a more constant streaming of vids/outgoing emails, or can I still expect sometimes to have [censored] downloads, [censored] youtube and other sites etc?


Also, I was wondering, if sky connect cannot provide even an outgoing email potential, are they in breach of contract supply and therefore, can I migrate, without them being able to charge my account legally?

Any good threads or comments will be much appreciated.

The web experience is far worse now than it was about 3 years ago......Then, I expect, without LLU, that may always be the case, even with 21CN

What exchange are you on? If you check it on this site and post the link to the result, or just the exchange code, we will know what is available to you.

EAROC- rochford, southend-on-sea...... It has LLU BE* O2, talktalk etc.

That's good. I know you had probably checked, but it's amazing how often a poster asks about Be and two days later after a few people chipping in it turns out they can't get it anyway .

Anyway, your main questions get the answers you want.

On O2/Be you get normally get 83% or more of your connection speed as actual download, 24/7. Occasionally, at times like the height of the last Ashes Test mine dropped dramatically though, to an atrocious 81% . So nothing to worry about there.

(The reason you get that sort of figure instead of up to 100% is because that's how the internet works - there are overheads of 15%-18%. On Sky Connect, or any BT-based service, the IP Profile accounts for most of that).

Big advantages also are there isn't a profiling system like you have now. If you get a low sync speed for some reason, as soon as you sync again at the normal level your downloads come back straight away, no "up to 5 days" wait. And having no allowance limits or FUP limit to worry about is a dream.

However there's also a few things you may not know - the two main ones are the cashback you can get through Quidco; free periods; and the email side of it.

Be do not supply email services. Their sister company O2 does. For most people O2 also gives a far better deal than Be and the performance is identical. Did you have a particular reason for asking about Be?

For full information see MKD's excellent comparison document, especially the costing page. For a taster how about this from a recent post of his:-

"Have produced an updated cost comparison - link in footer as usual. It leaves Be between 441% and 36% more expensive than o2 over the first year, and between 26% to 5% more a month ongoing (that's WITHOUT considering what you do/don't get beyond synch speed at any subscription level, and without any optional extras of course, that's why one needs to compare beyond plain cost!)."

Regarding email, if you are using Sky email and intend to use your new ISP's email, I strongly advise against that. It is usually less reliable than dedicated hosting companies or even googlemail/gmail. These also make it so that if you migrate in the future you never need to change email address again, which saves an awful lot of hassle.

The two often recommended, though there are many more, are 1 & 1 and Purple Cloud. I use this as you can see from (the links in) my sig. I like them even though 1&1 is cheaper. I have my own domain (.co.uk or .me.uk) at £7.50 every 2 years and the Home email service at £10 per year to go with it. That's under £1.15pm equivalent.

You could sign up for one today and have it running within a few hours. Then you start sending on it and tell all your contacts now. You just listen as well on your existing one to pick up any you have missed, and on migration day nothing changes.

I doubt if you would get anywhere other than having a nervous breakdown trying to argue your way out of paying off the Sky contract. Fair enough have a go, but if you fail look at it this way - with the total first year cost of O2, including cashback and free months, you save more than enough to cover it and solve all the performance problems as well.

Thank you RobertOS,


Your point about people not knowing that they could not obtain a particular ISP service which they started a post about made me laugh, knowing how frustrating that can be.

Your answers are nice and clear. I have, for a long time, thought about 1&1 for email. I learned with Freedom2Surf (in their glory days), Zen active8000 and from others' painful posts' that using an isp email address is possibly a real liability for the future.

I think, like my Zen approach, you have an increased chance to obtain what you desire from a service when you pay more...

I use aol and gmail for email. Aol is looking bad due to funny ideas about silently blocking emails from some websites. However, I would never ever knock aol's data safety. In the 4years of using aol email, there has never been a loss of data, with IMAP.

Ooh, that drop from 83 to 81% argh Well, better than a drop from early hours sky connect of 80% to about 10% during the absolute worst times of day/week/special internet interest events......

The only thing that concerns me about O2 or BE* is the currently unlimited downloads with very little restrictions. I wonder how the Spanish owners turn a profit on that and will it threaten the quality of services in the future? Still, I am sure they would keep customers even if they propose a £5 raise per month....... Service quality, like zen's, is far more important.

Okay, you make very good points with cashback co's and free months, as well as "why argue with sky- just pay them dammit and chortle to yourself, knowing that youtube/emails will actually have more chance to work properly..

Well, MKD's excellent comparison chart makes the changeover seem like a no-brainer...
BE or O2... with currently £75 or £50 cashback respectively..

My only questions now are

1) Which service is consistently more applauded out of the 2?

2) If I have 4 months remaining with sky broadband and their service triggers me to leave the Sky/btconnect product, purely because it gets even worse than now, does anyone have a good idea of what are my chances of forcing them to refund any charges that they apply as a cease/breaking contract charge (say 3x £17 =£51) when I finally transfer to O2 or BE, even though they are in breach?

(I should probably ask this on skyuser but thinkbroadband (under it's old name, which escapes me)has been around longer lol)

After all, a service without the ability to send emails when you want to during the evenings, is truly a real epic FAIL and I can prove it by vid, screenshot, whatever.

The only thing that concerns me about O2 or BE* is the currently unlimited downloads with very little restrictions. I wonder how the Spanish owners turn a profit on that and will it threaten the quality of services in the future?

By the time they get to that you would be past the minimum term.

Re Q1 they both seem to be equal. Be has an advantage for gamers in that interleaving is easily switched off on the top two packages. Several posts reckon interleaving actually increases sync speed though. I suggested a reason for this today in another thread.

You don't get the 3 free months with Be. See the updated first year and ongoing costs Page 4 that is separate from the main document. O2 seems to be cheaper overall, especially if you have/know of an O2 mobile that you can associate with it - doesn't need to be in your name or even your address.

Both seem to have occasional DNS problems but I don't.

For a variety of reasons many users of both replace the supplied Thomson router with a Netgear 834 variant. Importantly it has to be a Netgear with a Broadcom chipset, some have AR7 (doesn't work well on O2/Be) and some Conexant (performance unknown by me). Even with the same model the chipset varies by version number so you have to be careful.

With Netgears on O2/Be there is an occasional loss of routing when left idle - easily fixed in a few seconds. Only happens to me maybe twice a month.

Re Q2, not within my competence sorry.

Edit - And I'm not "OS". Quite the opposite

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 04-Sep-09 12:35:43)

Thanks again RobertoS, lol

I am a lamer gamer, so I don't play games Interleaving comments are noted though.....

The O2 mobile thingy is very interesting........ hehehhhheheheeheeeemaahahahahaah oops.

I use opendns..

Any router can't be really be worse than the current issue. I actually have 2 routers lying around anyway.

Yes, I was thinking a journey over to skyuser would be far better for answering Q2 anyway..
Stick with what you know and all that.........

I have an Orange mobile, but this is part of what I posted when I joined O2:-

Then I remembered I have a spare mobile. So I got a free O2 SIM, registered it to my post code, and have to top it up by £10 every 3 months. (Whereupon they "reward" me with another £1). I get 500 free minutes in the first month after a top-up, which leaves me £11 to spend over the next two. Seeing as our quarterly calls bill with BT is about £10 anyway I should easily break even - especially as we have free evening and weekend calls on BT at no cost over the basic £10.50 rental.

Blasted O2 users. Hijacking our network. Just because we were losing the company several million pounds a year

Edited by Andrue (Fri 04-Sep-09 14:48:04)

Hehe,


Just to clarify for my part-time coherent mind.........

Do you know if the procedure still exists, ie.....

1) If a family member/friend an active iphone with O2 sim, can i register it somehow to my account (using just the postcode?)and then pay only £8 ish per month for O2 broadband?
Is it a condition that you have to top up your phone every 3 months or is that your master phone so you need to pay to keep it active??

Hmmmm. Terms and conditions.

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=envelopes&_armrs=...
I should perhaps try and almost complete the signup process to see.......