Sky renewal

Broadband and TV coming up for renewal next month. We currently have the 145 service. Prices have risen almost a tenner a month already this year with the huge inflationary increase and end of contract price will add £20pm onto our costs.

New customers are being offered the 500 service and the same TV package for half the price! Problem is, it relies on the new customer taking Sky Stream. Our FTTP service is less reliable than our old FTTC service. We regularly had 60 day uptime on FTTC, lucky to get 20 days at the moment, with 24 hour uptime being the norm. ONT stays green, so I can only presume it is the router. Disconnections are not at regular times, sometimes overnight, sometimes mid day/ afternoon and sometimes evening. Most annoying as we have the voice part as well and my mobile also uses wifi calling, so it all goes t*ts! We have however had 3 routers which hasn't solved the issue and several Sky engineers.(and a BT one) I have showed them my TBB charts of the disconnections, but each time, shoulders are shrugged and i'm told that there is no fault. Having to rely on broadband for all TV worries me slightly as last year we had a several days outage. At least we could still watch the satellite TV.

Anything I can do to address this poor reliability or do I move providers and hope the experience is better?

Thanks

I was previously with Sky for ADSL, FTTC and FTTP and was very apprehensive about moving provider as I had little to no problems with them. I decided for a broadband cost reset by going with Plusnet and touch wood they have been just as good if not better and thats not even including the price saving. I would say by moving it will hopefully help you work out if the issue is with Sky or Openreach as Sky use their own backhaul so if the issue disappears then you know it was caused by Sky. I have also been considering switching to Sky Stream but I too am concerned about losing TV if my broadband goes down.

I really hope you get to the bottom of the issue.

Just note that Plusnet don't have a voice service, so you'll need to move that to a separate VOIP provider - which I'd strongly recommend anyway, as it then decouples you from the broadband provider and makes future switching much easier.

Or you could pay a bit more for one of the providers with a 1-month contract for a short period while you work out what the issues are. But you'll need a trustworthy router too.

I have been looking at BT. The 500 service is a few £'s more than Sky and EE TV has all the channels we watch on Sky for £15pm! 2 year contract though, with CPI increases

I think this is something I am going to have to learn about. Was looking at BT and they have a with phone and without phone price. Bumps it up quite a bit to keep the landline, so need to understand/ find options.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Just note that Plusnet don't have a voice service, so you'll need to move that to a separate VOIP provider - which I'd strongly recommend anyway, as it then decouples you from the broadband provider and makes future switching much easier.

Good point, I should have stated that in my post, as you say I moved my home phone to a separate VOIP provider to give me the best choice of broadband providers although I am at the point now that its become obsolete due to a recent family death.

In reply to a post by Discus:

I have been looking at BT. The 500 service is a few £'s more than Sky and EE TV has all the channels we watch on Sky for £15pm! 2 year contract though, with CPI increases

Do BT still do CPI increases as I thought I heard the wife say the other day that BT had reverted to a fixed yearly increase of £3 across all their broadband products.

I've gone CPI blind with all the offers i've looked at. you are correct, BB is £3.24pm increase March 31st every year. EE TV is £2pm.

Cancelled Sky TV today as they aren't budging on pricing. Will leave it a week until ordering the BB as there is a £50 card for BT as well.

Sorry Sky, your time is up (this time around!).

Sounds good, worth checking sites like TopCashback to see if they can give you a better deal.

i looked on Quidco earlier and discounted BT. Gone back and it's £90 on there