Sky Connect? (any Northern Ireland users?)

Hi all

i have BT broadband at the moment. my contract is up so i'm looking to change ISP.
i've looked into Sky and their package seems pretty good, 40gb monthly usage, up to 8mb speed.

however they can only offer me the Sky Connect package at �17pm.
what exactly is this?
at the moment I get 2mb speed with BT, is this likely to be worse on Connect?

does this mean additional equipment or will I just use my router as normal?

i'd love to hear from any Northern Ireland users who have sky connect, how are you finding it etc

many thanks

If all they are offering is the sky connect package then it sounds like you're connected to an exchange that has not been unbundled by sky and as such they cannot offer a lower priced service.

You could check this on samknows by putting in your postcode and phonenumber.

Speed is determined by the distance you are from the exchange, if youre on BT max and only gettin 2mb out of a possible 8 then you're gonna be stuck at 2mb on any adsl service you move to unfortunately. You could possibly check line stats from within your router just to check that BT haven't actually throttled you by mistake though...

thanks, that's a great site

i called sky and they said i must have Sky TV also to get broadband. at the moment this is going to be too expensive to have sky connect and TV (about �35 per month)

i've never heard of BT max but it seems it's available at my exchange.

- Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area.
However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max

ADSL status: Enabled as of 10/12/2003
ADSL Max status: Enabled as of 31/03/2006

this also seems like good news

05/03/2008 Be Unlimited has set an enablement date of 30/06/2008 for the Donaghadee exchange
19/10/2006 BT have set a target date of Q4 2008 for the switch to 21CN for the Donaghadee exchange

whats 21CN in a nutshell?

Would be worth holding out till June and see if Be gets enabled on your exchange - they are beter than the standard BTW providers.

You shouldn't really be worried about 21CN, it's more to do with internal behind the scenes changes that don;t really affect what the end user sees, i think it offers similar data rates as the LLU providers aswell but to regular adsl providers.

Also the BT Max thing, as i said, check your distance from the exchange / line stats within the router, that can limit the speed which you see. As far as i know BT by default puts all its users on the Max product so you may already be seeing the maximum speed you will ever see.

Hey,

I was offered Sky Connect for 5 pounds/mo. It was fine, faster than PIPEX which we had (which was stuck at a BRAS profile of 1mb - when I tried to get it fixed I was told I "should be happy"). With Sky Connect I got the faster speeds; BRAS of 2 (my line syncs at 2.6ish).

But, then they switched me over to Sky Mid - it's great. No problems at all. One thing to watch out for are Sky's call charges, they can be lethal. I made a few mobile calls to ROI and have been charged 40 pounds! Made me so mad, but I've learned now and am using different call provider things I found online (and Skype) to avoid this in the future. Bill is now down to circa 30-35pounds a month (26 for phone, family pack, broadband) + a few daytime calls.

I am impressed; it gets the full out of the line (Mid, however).. so if I resync and get a higher speed, I'll get higher throughput.


Good luck - PS what exchange are you on (I'm Newry; NINY)


M

i'm only about a mile from the exchange at the most. as far as router stats go, is this what you mean? from the router:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2272 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 30.0 db 17.5 db
Noise Margin 30.1 db 25.0 db

when i went with BT broadband it was the 2mb package they were offering (8mb was not being offered back then)
how close to an exchange do you need to be to get say 8mb connection?

to MDTyKe: i'm at the Donaghadee exchange NIDD. Sky do offer some great packages but when i contacted them they never offered the connect package at �5, you were lucky. if i can wait till June this Be unlimited looks good

If you plug your downstream stats into http://www2.farina1.com/ADSL/default.aspx it indicates that you should get the maximum (standard ADSL) sync of 8128kbps on Max ADSL.