Sky Digiboxes kill BT broadband exchanges - urban myth or true?

[Dareos]

Ok, seems to be some myths about what the phone line is actually used for with sky, and sky multiroom, i'll try and clear a couple of these up (i was sky CS for a while, outsourced)

1. you are contractually obliged to keep the box connected to the phone line for the first year, here are the reasons :-

The sky box makes a callback once a month (generally at the same time) and downloads all data of PPV etc, which is then charged to your bill, i have had some stories of people with boxes not connected (or faulty) and people getting 300 quid bill from all the films they have watched for the past 6 months etc.

The line is also used for sky active etc, but does not need to be connected except when its used for obvious reasons, remember a sky dish is one way, the box needs to send info to sky HQ somehow.

2 Sky Multiroom and Sky+, the boxes must be connected at all times or you will incurr the full charge of having each box (£40+ per box on full package), as has been mentioned earlier, there is no proof that these boxes are even in the same house otherwise. if the callbacks are made to sky from different numbers you will be charger, and if one isnt made, you will be charged (lots of problems wtih this one when folks were decorating etc). In the case of Sky +, Sky do reserve the right to remove any recording rights etc.


As for the original post, i can quite believe this, the amount of crappy boxes (and Sky have no idea which you have, its usually just whatever the independent has there, although they can tell through checking serial numbers it doesnt actually state on their system in any clear way which you have) that cause various faults with phone lines buzzing, ADSL going down etc.

It would be fairly easy to find the fault i would have thought though, all you have to do is cross reference the time the exchange goes down, with the callback log on sky's server, although if of course its Sky Active thats causing the issue, in which case it would be remarkably difficult as it could be anyone accessing it at any time. For a fault of this magnitude though, i would have thought the manufacturer of the box would be liable, for distributing a product that interferes with the correct running of a national network.


theres other reasons for the phone line being plugged in too, but Sky do not violate any privacy laws, and the contract you sign is really quite comprehensive and covers all the bases, I can't quite recall all the details mainly because it was a hellish time of my life in many respects and im doing my best to wipe it from my mind.

[Sinizter]

Wonder if any of my neighbours have some of these killer boxes ... because over the last 1 month, my DSL connection has gone from OK to quite bad.

[hlu333]

This is true been happening to me for the last 8 weeks

Had some bad stormy weather a couple of months ago and all the phonelines in our small country road stopped working. The line was restored a week later but with no digital capabilities .
BT were called to check again, apparently nothing was wrong! Both our neighbours also called BT out for the same reason. ISP was called who said they would report the fault to BT.
Now according to the last engineer here BT can only spend 2 hours trying to fix a line?? (don't know how true that is)

Anyway whilst his was happening my father-in-law said "Why is it everytime I pull into the road I lose Medium Wave reception?"

Move on a few weeks, I am quite upset using dial-up which works on a laptop as long as the power is not connected otherwise crackling noises from power pack !! (tried another power supply same problem)

Move to Saturday 22nd September......... I am Livid still not working BT can't find the problem.
I unplugged everything in the house and,
BROADBAND WORKS after a day of trial and error it seems the sky box is causing so much interference that nobody within 200metres of it can recieve MW and BT lines have too much noise on them to use digtally.

I am now awaiting sky + box tomorrow in hope that it all works!

My problem was from Thomson sky box DSI 4101 (think power supply went faulty during storm)

Hope this can help somebody as it drove me mad not online at home for so long

[abcdale]

this does happen ,although rarely.....and yes we do drive around the area with radio5..... the problem is caused by faulty electricial equip, could be a toaster or a sky box..... BT do not have the power to tell the the owner of the faulty equip that they must not use it ... but have in the past bought them a new toster or what ever and destroyed the offending item