I've used Sky Boradband for a few years now and it sucks. At first I just put it down to the fact that I was living in the countryside and the signal was crap but now I live in a large town you'd expect it to be much better. We're not getting anywhere near the advertised speed and I couldn't believe it when they said on one of their adverts "Sky never slows you down at peak times, no matter how much you use", LIES! If my mum is downloading something on her laptop all of my online games suffer and some become totally unplayable. I think you're all familiar with my download speeds etc. So we're in the market for a new internet provider and naturally Virgin Media and BT immediately come to mind. Both BT and Virgin claim to be the best provider with the fastest service and both claim to be superior for gaming, however I've been reading some customer reviews for each provider and it's all negative. People complaining about constant loss of connection and terrible customer service, but they can't be worse than what I have now... can they?
Quality of connection varies from area to area. Customer service from Sky, Virgin and BT has been shit from my experience so I doubt there's much to be gained there. Obviously your connection be affected if it's being used by others on the same line. The speed and quality of the connection will help of course.
If youwant pure speed your only options are bt infinity (40 down/10 up) or VM (30/3, 50/5 or 100/10).
Well I have moved away from VM and my first 2 days have been a lot better. The network really is a mess in this area and when paying for 10Mbps I was lucky to get 2 at peak times. Moved to O2 LLU ADSL and my average speed is about 14Mbps which is a lot faster than what I ever got from VM. Its only costing me £10/month for up to 20Mbps broadband, line rental and evening and weekend calls for the first 6 months because I have been an O2 customer for a very long time. After that it is still only £22/month so can't complain and by that time I hope BT fibre will be available here so I can move to that.
BT are tomorrow increasing the speed of their Fibre services to 78Mbps down and 19Mbps UP. The fibre cabinet at the end of my road got knocked over in a car accident just after it was installed so my road is still not live when the rest of my area is. They have put the new one in but it still doesn't seem to be active which is annoying although I did see a BT chap working in it this week. Also saw something this week that said BT were going to open the fibre network to other ISP's soon so we should see Sky, BE, O2 etc offering it soon hopefully. At the moment Top UK speeds are. Virgin Media: 120Mbps Down - 12Mbps Up (all services on 10:1 ratio so if you take 60Mbps Down you get 6Mbps Up) BT Infinity: 78Mbps Down - 19Mbps Up (fibre to cabinet) Everyone else: ADSL2+ 24Mbps Down - 2.5 Mbps Up Things are slowly getting better after a long period of stagnation.
VDSL has gone live in my street, the checker is saying 70.5Mbps down and 20Mbps up on my line. Annoying thing is that I am tied in with O2 until November so I am going to have to wait another 6 months or so.
O2 are putting my phone/broadband prices up to £23/month (from £21.50) so I can choose to leave early if I want. I am having Sky TV installed on Monday (half price for 6 months, love my offers) and they now do a fibre service at £20/month for 40down/10up + £12.25 line rental (£32.25/month). So its less than £10 more than what I will be paying O2 for more than double the download speed and 6 times the upload speed. BT are offering me 76down/20up for around £40/month with line rental so that is quite a lot more but it would be nice to have those kind of speeds. I like to change providers all the time anyway as you always get the best deals doing this but with BE/O2 saying they will not be providing any kind of FTTC services this year I will be left to stagnate on ADSL2+ for the foreseeable future if I don't change. As I am still in contract I don't think it is as simple as giving Sky my phone number to cancel the contract, I think I would have to ring O2 and tell them I want to leave because of the price rise (I love this law) and ask them how I get Sky to take on my landline number. All in all it does seem like a pain in the arse... O and my mobile contract is up so have given Vodafone notice so will need to be dealing with that in the next 3 weeks to find a new contract. OR I could get ADSL2+ and all my phone calls free from Sky for 6 months on a deal and then switch to Sky Fibre as it is with the same company I could upgrade in contract. For reference I had a deal with O2 where my broadband + line rental + evening and weekend calls were £10/month which has now run out but when I took it after 6 months the cost was supposed to be £21.50/month. For anyone who doesn't realise in the UK if you are in a contract and your provider increases the prices you can opt out even for example if you are only 3 months into a 24 month contract.
I just ordered the 40M sky package, but as I am a sky customer already I am not getting the 80M 20U if you are a new customer you can get it. They confirmed this over the phone too! No updates on when this will roll out to the rest of us. I did place an order with BT for infinity the got worried about their excessive TM. Some are saying even streaming stuff is slowed down.
I've learned whether its BT, sky, or virgin they all go slow after the 28 day refund window has expired.
What times do you use them? Maybe it is the area that I live in but I have never experience any slowness from Sky. Granted their 20MB is slower than Bethere its never dropped below 15mb/s
Sky have no traffic management so are probably the best provider to go with now that BE/O2 are not doing any fibre this year.
My O2 broadband which is basically BE has stayed the same speed for the 6 months I have had it. VM oversubscribe their network and still let people sign up when they know they have overloaded UBRs. When a URB does get overloaded it usually takes VM at leats 6 months to expand capacity on it judging from their support forums. I have had issues with VM at 2 different properties and in both case their CS was dreadful which is why I no longer use them. I have Sky TV now and will be switching to Sky Fibre when my O2 contract runs out in October/November.
It's ok for you mr living in the big city so I have fibre optic broadband. The rest of us luddites have to make do with shit.
Your upload is really low, you should be getting up to 10Mbps, you might want to get onto Sky about that. EDIT: Ignore this I got it wrong, apparently Sky are only offering up to 2Mbps upload, why when they use the BT fibre which is rated at 10Mbps upload for BT customers? You can get 20Mbps up with the higher tier package with BT so it seems Sky are just not giving customers the whole capacity. EDIT EDIT: Apparently Sky are now offering an 80/20 service to customers who don't currently have Sky Broadband for £30/month but it isn't on the site, you have to call them to register. Might do that myself soon.