Sky Fibre Unlimited - Any Pitfalls I Should be Aware of?

FTTC has become available in my area once more, so I would like to order it as soon as possible in case availability dries up again.

I am currently with Plusnet and they have treated me and other people I have signed up very poorly. They have offered me a piteous retentions deal. So I would ideally like to leave. Also their upload speed on the 40mb package is dire.

One of the main reasons I want to upgrade, is when I am upload videos to YouTube, the connection becomes unusable. They Plusnet claim that if the upload is saturated, it will affect the download speed. Which makes no sense to me. They also offer me no method of limiting the upload so that is isn't fully saturated, which might avoid this problem.

Anyway... I've been looking at new providers and am very underwhelmed with the choices.

Price is a factor for me unfortunately, otherwise Pulse8 might have been a nice choice. BT is too rich for my blood. Talktalk I couldn't bring myself to sign up with after their customer database was hacked.

Which seems to leave me with Sky. I am not at all keen on Sky as a company, but I appear to have very little other choice. They're offering 38mb down and 9.5 up for £27.40 a month inc. line rental. Which seems pretty decent for the money. It's also only a 12 month contract.

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? Are there services they are blocking, or is their service heavily filtered? Are there ports they are blocking I might need?

My internet usage is quite standard these days. Much web browsing, some downloading, a lot of gaming. I do some live streaming. My current connection isn't good enough for shareplay, which I would like to use.

I do like having a home Linux server which I can get to from other places using SSH. I don't currently have one at the moment, but have in the past and plan to again in the future. That's probably the most non-standard thing I might do with it.

I also wondered if anyone knew if Sky had plans to upgrade their lower packages to 50mb like BT? Plusnet told me they would be shortly, along with matching BT's upload speed. But it still doesn't really tempt me, I have little faith in anything they say.

I would be really grateful to hear people's thoughts, opinions and experiences. Any other ISP suggestions welcome.

Thank you for reading my post.

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Apr-16 15:20:19)

They Plusnet claim that if the upload is saturated, it will affect the download speed. Which makes no sense to me.

This is correct. When you download information it downloads in small packets and when the data is received it sends a packet back to the originating server to tell it that it's arrived (an ACK) - if the upstream is swamped then these packets will be delayed which will hamper the download. There are routers and software that you could use that could limit the upstream from a device but most people don't bother.

Sky should be capable of doing everything you want but remember you also have to move your phone line over to them so take account of the charges you will get for rental and usage - you may find other combinations that look expensive to start with could work out cheaper in the long run (people are moving their line rental to Pulse8 because their rental and call charges are low and then using other suppliers for their Internet - where other suppliers don't require the line to be with them).

BT do a lot of very good deals so if you catch them at the right time you may find the first year or so is actually very cheap - they will do retention deals as well coming to the end of contract.

There are lots of other ISPs out there such as IDNet, Zen, Xilo, etc but I am sure others will be able to give more up to date feedback on them.

Thank you very much for your reply. No one has been able to explain to me why that happens before, but that actually makes sense.

I had a look at using BT fibre and getting the line rental from Pulse 8, though I did not contact then. I couldn't find any information on their site about buying fibre without having line rental from them. I guess it's not something they want to advertise?

While I like the idea of this, I am not sure I have the energy in me these days to manage two separate contracts, especially if there were a fault. I used to do this all the time in the early days of ADSL, but it just doesn't appeal to me right now. I feel like my patience and current knowledge of broadband products and networking is dwindling I'll have to sort that out.

I've been looking more, both Vodafone and EE appear to be similar prices to Sky, barely anything in it. EE's router is on a par with Sky. Vodafone appears to supply a much better router. Has gigabit ethernet and ac wireless. I know nothing of them as a broadband provider. I know as a mobile phone company friends have had endless problems with customer service, which puts me off a bit.

However, the basic Sky router doesn't look like much fun at all and I've discovered it's against their T&C to use your own. I'd really rather not give up on having a gigabit internal network, I have already installed the cables around my house.

So I am trying to figure out if there is a way to get round that. Reading on the sky forum people suggest linking the two routers together and turning off wifi on the Sky router and DHCP on your own.

It just feels a bit icky to me. I expect 10/100 is enough for the internet, but would rather use DHCP on my own router (or not use DHCP at all! I like being able to assign devices their own static IP address, drove me mad on Plusnet I couldn't). I suppose if you were going to do something like that and were less fussed about wifi, you could just install a gigabit switch. I kind of wish the modem were still separate, it seems like problematic.

So I guess I am weighing up routers vs contract length now.

Vodafone is slightly more expensive, but has the better router and a 6 month longer contract.

Sky has a worse router, but is cheaper, with a nice short contract. If I bought my own router to use with Sky, the outlay for Vodafone and Sky would be about the same.

I suppose the advantage(?) of EE is now it's basically BT like Plusnet? I am curious about whether companies will follow BT and upgrade their 38mb fibre to 50mb,

So nothing decided yet, still pondering.

The normal BT broadband requires you to take BT line rental, so using Pulse8 for the line isn't on.

However it is said on these forums that BT do have an unadvertised product where you can have your line rental elsewhere, called Solus. Only available via phone order so I expect no deals. Good luck.

For me the only down side to sky is the router, I have the new Q hub too.
Have you googled "use own router sky fibre"?
I used an Openreach modem with an Asus ac87u running merlin firmware, I use to QOS on it to limit bandwidth, especially the upload, I know what your saying about outlay for router but you can use the router on other providers if/when you change suppliers. I depend so much on the internet today that I don't mind an outlay if it makes my everyday life easier lol

Thanks for the reply RobertoS. It sounds like it probably isn't for me, too much hassle. But I do appreciate the information. Thank you also for the good luck wishes I feel like I need them at this point!

I have just been looking at options for using your own router this minute gmangt4!

I stumbled across the Sky User forums in another thread about Sky from this site.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/asking-help/

So it sounds like there are more options that I initially thought. It's also good to hear that the only downside in your opinion is the router.

When you say you use the Openreach modem with your Asus router, I assume that the Openreach modem would not be supplied with Sky Fibre any more since it is self install?

Would you then use the Sky Router in it's place, or can you buy an Openreach modem? I apologise for the strange question, I have not had fibre myself before.

QOS sounds like something I need to read up on again, I only had the vaguest of memories about it.

I don't mind spending £60 - 70 of a router perhaps. But I just looked up your router and £150 is too steep for me at the moment. But perhaps something I could look into further down the line if it is really necessary and make do for now.

I have seen BT Solus available via Quidco cash back site, albeit less cash back than the normal BT broadband.

As mentioned, sky router really does suck. You would likely need to replace it and spend around £100 total for something decent.

Other ISPs supply better routers such as TalKTalk and virginmedia for similar prices.

Hi
I bought my openreach modem from a well known auction site as its no longer supplied, there is also instructions on skyuser forum of how to use the sky hub for the connection and place another router in its DMZ and have your own router doing all the heavy lifting, that way your not restricted to a router thats compatible with sky security. I think you might need a router with QOS for your set up but fibre has more upload bandwidth and you might get away with not needing QOS.
No need to spend big, TP-Link and Netgear also have routers that will work with Sky Fibre, aswell as routers with third party software on them, like DD-WRT, Tomato, etc, I just like the Asus QOS as its very easy to use and set up, some QOS on certain routers is more complicated and a Cisco Systems degree would be handy lol