Sky

[b0redom]

Hi All,
I'm currently paying £23.50 to BT every month and about £16 to BeThere. Whilst the Internet service is OK, I've just realised if I pay an extra £20/month to Sky, I could get all that AND Sky + HD with all the kids channels and movies.

Anyone have any experience good or bad with Sky? I'm working from home at the moment, so I HAVE to have rock stable Internet.

Regards...

b0redom

[circuitmonkey]

I'm on SKY connect (there connection for non LLU exchanges)
The actually internet connection has been very stable (if not a bit sluggish in the evenings) but nice and fast in the day.
The only criticism is the crappy Dlink ADSL box that they bundled with it, it's kept on dropping the connection, with the downstream noise margin going a bit crazy. They have since changed it, but during the time they took to respond to my call I setup my old Netgear router and everything is working well enough for me to not want to take the chance on the replacement Dlink.

[b0redom]

Meh, not bothered about whatever they ship out. I'll be using my Draytek Vigor 2820Vn so as long as the connection is fine.....

[Rob_B]

Never had any memorable trouble with them when I was on the LLU package, only moved as they lowered their caps, did get an extra meg or two by moving to O2 LLU though (?)

[Saracen]

Meh, not bothered about whatever they ship out. I'll be using my Draytek Vigor 2820Vn so as long as the connection is fine.....

Unless it's changed, the user details are on the router and behind a password-locked system that you don't have access to. So to use your Draytek, you'd either have to connect the Draytek to their supplied router and treat their device as a modem, or you'd have to hack the router (which can be done) to get the connection data to configure the Draytek.

And if you do that, you break the terms and conditions, open yourself to issues if you have technical problems and potentially to all sorts of problems if they conclude your non-issued router damaged their network, not least of which would be a possible immediate contract cancellation. Of course, it might have changed.


EDIT - When I signed up for Sky, the sales rep told me to just eBay their supplied router if I wanted to use my own (which I did want to do). The contract says otherwise. When I asked Sky officially about that piece of advice from their sales rep, they had a kinniption fit at the idea.

[b0redom]

So are you still with Sky, and how difficult was it to get the user/password details? :-)

[jim]

If you can get on LLU, then I would go for it. If it's just connect, I wouldn't bother.

[Rob_B]

Just google for it, go on a site, run a script et voila

[b0redom]

I'm already on LLU with BeThere, so I guess the speed will be much of a muchess compared with Sky. Just wondering whether SkyHD movies are worth the extra 240/year.

[Blitzen]

When i lived in London, the SKY connection (LLU) was fine.
When i lived in South Wales, it was very good.
Now i am in Cambridgeshire it was awful so I went to O2 then BE

[gss03]

On Sky myself here in Edinburgh.
No real issues with it. On Sky unlimited and get about 6.5meg (not sure if I am on LLU or not) - no outages of service in the last 2+ years. Only gripe is that I have to use the rebranded netgear DG934. It works, don't get me wrong, but it has sky firmware on it so it's config is limited. I could hack out the UN/PW (I have it noted somewhere), but I just can't be bothered, plus it'd be breaking my Terms of Service.

[Spud1]

So are you still with Sky, and how difficult was it to get the user/password details? :-)

They will give you the details if you ring up and ask. Had to do it when I first had line problems so I could try a different router (issues turned out to be with the BT line however).

I've had numerous problems recently - BUT and I can't stress this enough - it's all down to BT (well, openreach) messing about and breaking various cables..not doing what they promised.

When my line has been working sky has been rock solid - good connection that never drops, no issues with speed/bandwidth, no throttling..couldn't be happier with it.

I've experienced their support team now quite extensively, and once you get past the unskilled yobs on 1st line support, and can speak to their CST team..they are really good - very clued up and know exactly what needs to be done to solve most problems. they have been quick to book engineers with openreach every time I have had an issue - can't really blame sky when an openreach engineer cuts the wrong cable/wires somethign up backwards/doesn't bother to jumper the cables properly etc.

Their support is on an 0844 number, however when you get through they will offer to call you back straight away (to reduce call costs to zero) and will refund you any money spent trying to get through to them if there is a genuine issue with your line.

They have also been great w/r to adjusting speeds on your line - if you are not happy with your speed they will adjust your profile usually without question - up or down as you want, given the usual warnings about line stability..so you don't have to rely on their dynamic system, if you want it uncapping to 24 mb they will do it for you..

If only BT would fix my phone line eh =) Can't recommend sky enough though for the money - £5 a month for unlimited internet? (with a sky package) can't go wrong. Just make sure you are LLU'd and not on their connect service - thats a totally different service and it's dire!

[mark19632]

I have had sky for a few years now and seem to have lucked out on the internet connection. I get 8mb of the 8mb them promise me and they are not monitoring our useage so I took out the phone package for £10 and thus get free internet.

I think we are a special case as we are a bit out of town and the road has a little substation that I belive is used as an extention to the telephone exchange as we are almost 2 miles away and we defiantly should not be getting a connection that good.

[dangel]

I get 20mbit 24/7 - i can't complain!

I'm using the supplied sagem router for the first twoo weeks but i've already extracted the username/password

Draytek 2800VG to go back on!

[General Frags]

Never had a problem with Sky so far, fast downloads and no disconnects (only at 2 or 3 at night though).

[edavies87]

I have Sky LLU no issues at all. Using my own router extracting the username was easy