Broadband for parents - views on SKY?

[climbingkid]

Hi

Would welcome views and opinions on SKY's free broadband offer. Parents are going online for the first time (scary stuff!) and as they already have SKY tv package, have applied for broadband.

There activation date has come and gone, and SKY have yet to deliver the router. Thier comment was that it really doesn't matter as the activations are never carried out ontime by BT anyway?!

Anyone else on Sky? Any good? I cannot say I am inspired so far.....

CC

[didgit]

I think Sky broadband is good although with the high demand for broadband with their package offer they may not always deliver service on time, I haven't had any problem myself and getting good speed with them

[clown]

CC

Have you got a router/ USB modem you can lend them? BT activations are always on time if not early. My experience of helping friends out shows this. Free routers and kit from car phone warehouse, virgin, sky etc. is often weeks or months coming.

If your router/ USB modem synchs up then call for your acount name and password and demand compensation for you having to buy your own kit.

[vaughan]

my friend has sky broadband, he's impressed but it's not as cheap as they make out.. as far as i'm aware you still have to pay BT for the line rental. so add another £11+ onto the price you see on tv.

i'm with talk talk at mo and i can honestly say they are the best cheap ISP i have come across (i've used homecall, virgin & tesco)

but the talk talk package is great.. i get 8mb broadband, free national calls anytime of day & also free international calls to over 28 countries anytime of day (yes i do make a lot of international calls) & the BT line rental is included in the price (you actually pay talk talk your line rental & it's cheaper than BT) all that for £21 a month. i pay for sky seperately, the price works out around the same when you add the line renatal to the sky package. except you get more for your money with talk talk.


as for activation dates, yes BT is 99% of the time always early at activating your line, so if your activation date has passed then i would be confident enough to say that your line is now adsl enabled. you could call BT customer services and ask them to confirm if your line is adsl activated or not. but i would suggest doing as clown says and borrowing someones adsl router or usb modem to test with, if your line is activated, the router will tell you it has connected even if you haven't logged onto the network..

[climbingkid]

Clown

We spoke earlier I beleive...?

CC

Have you got a router/ USB modem you can lend them? BT activations are always on time if not early. My experience of helping friends out shows this. Free routers and kit from car phone warehouse, virgin, sky etc. is often weeks or months coming.

Great idea - I have an old router I'll plug it in and see if it syncs. Thing is, if they have been less than honest about the router arriving, who says the activation date they gave is correct? SO do BT supply teh SKY broadband connections then?

CC

[climbingkid]

Thanks everyone - great advice, can't beleive I got so many replies so quickly, very helpful bunch on here.

I was worried that a "free" service would be terrible, but its good to hear that once its up and running it will probably be ok.

Thanks again all.

Mike

[clown]

Clown

SO do BT supply teh SKY broadband connections then?

CC

Yes they do.

If you get the Sky service running and you dont have any problems you are laughing. Hit a problem though and I've heard the Sky customer service are the highest qualifed around. Unfortunately the qualification referred to is being rude and fobbing off those paying your wages.

I have to say though I do not have any Sky but the horror stories I hear are enough to scare me away.

Broadband is very reliable though so hopefully all will be stress free for your parents.

[clown]

Clown

We spoke earlier I beleive...?

CC

On the newbies thread I think. Hello again: )

[fuddam]

their customer service is EVIL. I had massive problems with it when i joined - one dept not knowing what the other was doing etc. Took a lotta calls, on the 0800 number (which they've now deactivated) but got it sorted. Since then, has been good. Faster than my plusnet. Had odd twinge on the email side, but otherwise fine.
according to the contract, you HAVE to use their router/modem, so they won't supply you with user name and password.
luckily, help is at hand!!!

>>>>
To get your real login info for your broadband just enter this into your web browser:
http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=pi...%2Fnetgear.cfg
then wait a while and then type in:
http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg
it should bring up a save file prompt. Save it somewhere. Then open it with wordpad or something and hey presto there is your login info. Each new subject field is seperated by pppoa.
so you shopuld end up with:
pppoa_username: (yourMACaddressOff Sky's router)@skydsl
pppoa_password: 1234567aa1
pppoa_idle=0
pppoa_ipaddr=
enjoy, and get yourself another router, at least one better than the crappy netgear router that has constant connection drops and needs constant re-booting!
<<<

this info obtained from http://www.skyuser.co.uk/ - unofficial forum, but all info you require is dere

[StoX]

I heard that "Rupert Murdoch is evil" so you shouldn't go with Sky.

But I generally don't ever really hear that many praises for ISP's

[climbingkid]

Personally I wouldn't have Sky anything - having had 11 Sky+ boxes in 14 months. You would have thought the company would be horrified, but they really couldn't see why I was so cross!

That was it for me and Sky - clearly too big and think they can do what they like

CC

[scottxxx]

I've had Sky broadband a week now and its been fine, apart from their email servers weren't what they said - I think I found three different addresses for their pop3 server on their website and only one works consistantly.

Its been like a yoyo today though having been (relatively) stable although slow for the past week. I tried those router addresses and mine just takes you back to the main router page, and says file not found when you try and save the config file.

On the Sky+ boxes, I'd put money on those boxes being Amstrad. Ours randomly refuses to record or deletes your stuff randomly, and the fast forward on pausing sometimes crashes taking you bang up to date. The trouble with Sky is they're big and there is nobody else for TV, unless you can do without. Plus they refuse to admit to having huge firmware problems on their boxes, which they clearly do.

[climbingkid]

On the Sky+ boxes, I'd put money on those boxes being Amstrad. Ours randomly refuses to record or deletes your stuff randomly, and the fast forward on pausing sometimes crashes taking you bang up to date. The trouble with Sky is they're big and there is nobody else for TV, unless you can do without. Plus they refuse to admit to having huge firmware problems on their boxes, which they clearly do.

Exactly right, this is exactly what we had, I just wasn;t willing to pay all that money for Sky+, and come home to all my programmes lost - not the service I was promised or sold.

Your right, they refuse to admit to any problems - a common reply was "well no one else is having problems" - am I really that unlucky? 11 boxes? Whatever. Then the week I cancelled, they were on Watchdog - clearly I wasn;t the only one!

Too big - no one can take them on. They have a monopoly and no one can compete, Branson tried and I think lost the battle. The only thing that will bring Sky down a peg will be internet TV and thats coming, although slowly.

CC