News - Sky to become second largest UK ISP as it snaps up O2 and BE

[keithwalton]

To those thinking of jumping ship to fttc providor be aware that you need a visit by an open reach installer to get it going and there 'managed install' people are useless / pressured into doing as many jobs as they can a day successful or otherwise.
I have now had 4 "engineers" visit in the last two weeks and still don't have a working connection!
Btw the £38 cashback isn't that great of a deal, as I got more months half price (9 I think) when I went to them direct

[Defiant]

There goes the best broadband provider

I hope my original bethere email address is kept!

[Apex]

To be fair, I have found Sky's customer service to be fine, I was annoyed they made me take half a day off work to set up my broadband (engineers visit) only to remotely activate it the day before but cant be helped. The english call centers were pleasant to deal with thogh

Virgin media on the other hand was beyond useless. Utterly dire...lieing, miss leading, patronizing...you name it they were useless at it!

However... Virgin had a far far faaar better product with TIVO & the fibre optic then Sky. I find the Sky box confusing, unintuitive (sp) and far too many menus to click through compared to Virgins. it is also lacking the third tuner TiVo had which was great. Thumbs up & down feature was brilliant and their menus whilst a bit slow at times (split second lag) were nicely laid out.


edit; My views above are based off 3 years with Virgin Media, before moving house and having to take Sky. 2 months with Sky so far, and my parents/grandparents both having sky for years.

I concur. Virgin customer service has been about as useless as any I've ever had. While on the cable, I could forgive them because the product itself was very good and pretty reliable (customer service was mostly re: minor issues and billing). However, I made the mistake of taking their national service when I moved. You seem to get exactly the same dire customer service, only with aoverpriced, mediocre product (with none of the bells and whistles that allowed you to overlook the CS before) that leaves you NEEDING that missing customer service. To rub salt in, I keep getting flyers through the door trying to sell me their cable + tv package... which you can't get in this area.


EDIT- If I can't get 'proper' cable internet here, does anyone have any strong opinions (either way) re: BT/BT Infinity re: the product AND the customer service? If it does half of what it says on the tin, it'd be a major improvement on what I have now, and I'd be tempted...

Zen / Andrews & Arnold are the only two really decent players left now.

[flearider]

how sad been with be* for over 7 yrs .. did sky once never again ..
only other would be the dreaded bt ...don't mind paying if i get true unlimited ..
i'm gonna go cry now .. best wishes to all the be* staff your some of the best out there ...

[OilSheikh]

Damn!

Sky already monopolizes TV and now broadband !

I am with O2 on their old Premium package and pay £20.50 fpr 20Mbps broadband+evening & weekend calls+line rental

With SKY, I will be forced to upgrade to their expensive fibre and lose my ability to call in evenings and have to pay £34.50pm!

[3dcandy]

What makes you think they'll force you to upgrade to fibre?

[kalniel]

Or that they're monopolizing anything?

[HalloweenJack]

was with 02 on the premium package - finally left to sky fibre after we ran into useablilty limits - 3 teens + pc`s , phones + tablets n steaming , xboxs , was lack of bandiwtdh on4mb adsl


anyway back to the post - its telefonica in trouble not 02.... telefonica have run ouf of money ; which is why 02 and Be hadnt got FTTC anwyehere yet and why they got sold.

although i must say - my cirrent 40mbit / 10mbit FTTC from sky is rock solid (with adsl as back up lol) - it is as advertised - totally unlimited , and at £29 a month for fibre + line rental + anytine calls , its cheaper thab adsl on 02 and far cheaper than the same package on BT

[OilSheikh]

What makes you think they'll force you to upgrade to fibre?

If you go to sign up fro broadband on Sky's page, the regular broadband is no longer available. They only provide fibre. Well, at least for my house, thats the way

[HalloweenJack]

sky fibre unlimited is £34,50 or £39.50 inc anytimes calls and no caps.

for BT is £36.60 for the first 3 month , then £43.60 for trh remaining 15 months (unlike sky with 12 month contract) and a £32 charge

[anselhelm]

I sense that a lot of users will be moving from O2/BE to other ISPs soon, many of them to BT ironically for BT Infinity

[mikeo]

Good Customer Service and some reasonably priced packages (new packages just starting to filter through) from Xilo/ Uno broadband. Plus their Customer reps frequent Thinkbroadband WEB site. Good ISP if you fancy partial LLU (IE,. BB only), gets you away from BT's hateful DLM! The only two tickets that I've had to raise in the last 2 years have been answered within 5 minutes and both then sorted within a day.

[Flibb]

sky fibre unlimited is £34,50 or £39.50 inc anytimes calls and no caps.

for BT is £36.60 for the first 3 month , then £43.60 for trh remaining 15 months (unlike sky with 12 month contract) and a £32 charge

Plusnet are £30 a month for unlimited fibre, line rental (pay 12 months up front), evening and weekend calls. 18 month contract, but three months half price.

You can knock a bit off the BT price by paying the line rental up front.

One thing that BT and Sky offer is free wifi access when your out and about, pity Plusnet does not offer this.

[SilviuG]

My experience with Virgin:
- Virgin Mobile: called them to ask them the APN name to use my Blackberry as a modem (tethering). They said is impossible, and when I insisted it works, they mentioned they asked the manager and it is not possible. 5 minutes later I just searched the internet for APN settings and the Blackberry worked as a modem perfectly.
- Moved house, got downgraded from cable to ADSL. Their Virgin Netgear router is incredibly unreliable, and they refuse to do anything about it, although there are threads on their forums describing the exact same issues and symptoms I have. I get disconnected from the router constantly (so not just from the internet). The internet itself is slow and unreliable too.

Conclusion: well that is easy, because they got you in a one year contract, you are at their discretion!

[3dcandy]

If you go to sign up fro broadband on Sky's page, the regular broadband is no longer available. They only provide fibre. Well, at least for my house, thats the way

Perhaps they haven't installed Sky equipment in your exchange, but now they'll own the current equipment so it's not a worry is it?

[Ulti]

It's a shame to receive this email today from them as O2 have provided us with the best internet experience I've had. Back in the days with Virgin, their tech support was mostly rubbish and they would throttle my family's internet almost every evening to very poor speeds.

Since I've moved to O2, their tech support is brilliant, free and open 24/7 contrary to Virgin which was a premium number and they took a while to answer too. I've called O2 several times passed midnight and the tech support that answered each time was brilliant and resolved my issue, whereas googling didn't (it was the other way with Virgin!).

Also even without an O2 contract, it's still a very reasonable price IMO as it's £17.50 (used to be on a £15 contract with O2 then moved to Giffgaff's £10 goodybags so I end up paying the same price in total really) for unlimited downloads, brilliant 24/7 tech support and unthrottled internet.

Very late edit: D'oh just realised this is Sky taking over O2 and BE, not Virgin. I hope Sky are better than Virgin!