From Sky to BT.. Myth busted ...

KIPAX

KIPAX

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KIPAX Lancashire UK
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I have been with SKY for 22 years and was on basic broadband as thats all they could offer me.. I was getting 14mb download and less than 2mb upload

I tried all the other providors (virgin, plusnet blah blah) and they couldnt offer me any faster so I stuck with sky..I live on a street with about 10 houses and no other houses near... but not far from town center.... I went down to the bare minumum package and within a yr that went up £10 without a letter or any notification.... Getting minumum slow service and price going up.. I see other poeple paying less than me and getting more.. from sky!

So I phone the nice man at BT to see what tv and phone package i could get for less than already paying.. he suprisingly told me i could get fibre.. up to 78mb download with a guaranteed 65mb and 18 mb upload

I asked the obvious.. why cant anyone else offer me faster internet when your all using the same lines... he said they rent the lines from BT but in certain areas such as few houses (me) they dont rent the fibre so only BT have that option.. So its a myth that all providors have the same lines.. I was always led to believe they could all only offer simmilar speeds..

yesterday my BT was installed.. new phone number... NOW-TV line rental and broadband all for £20 a month less than SKY and my first speed check using www.speedtest.net got me 72mb downlaod.... from 14mb haha

PS the phone line and broadband cancell from sky was done automatically by bt...but i had to cancell the TV .. so I phoned sky... I got the runaround and eventually ended up with a guy whos obvious job was to stop people leaving.... he said i was the longest serving custome he had ever dealt with... yawn :) ho started telling me how thye want to keep loyal customers and how i should be eligable for many extras and discounts...... My instant response was... If i am such a loyal customer why didnt you do all these things before i wanted to leave... the only thing you did was keep putitng my bill up without telling me ;( he finally conceded that he couldnt offer me any faster broadband and thats the main reaosn i wa slaving.... he did genuinly sound gutted ...

Anyway.. all process fairly easy.... well happy wiht the internet... and myth busted broadband speed thingy..... i ma guesisn gothers thought the same as me as i know many did :)
 
I've just binned SKY TV, couldn't talk to anyone on a phone, as website and telephone number stated they were only taking calls from key workers and vulnerable people. Had to do it via Facebook Messenger!! and even that tried to put me off, asking me to select an option where non-key worker wasn't an option!. My Sky package instantly went down from £43.95 to an offer of £17 per month (but would want a lock in for 18 months), and today several days later I get an email offering me the same deal for £15 a month.

There 'normal' pricing is completely out of touch now. We are cgoing Freeview/Freeplay and will use a NOW TV package when we really want to watch something that is exclusive to SKY.
 
I too have just binned Sky broadband after having been with them for nearly five years.

Where I live, the broadband comes in on a piece of wet string and I struggle to get 6Mb down and 300k up.

I had an email from them a couple of months ago telling me that my bill was going up £2.00 per month. I thought that was fair enough as it had been the same £18.99 since I'd had it. However, it didn't go up £2.00 to £20.99 - it went up to £33.99 and they had just helped themselves to this out of my bank account for the last couple of months without telling me. :mad:

Needless to say I was livid, but just like David, I was unable to contact them, so I cancelled the DD and arranged a change to a different company - that brought them running and they almost begged me not to leave. They offered to put it back down to £20.99 if I signed an eighteen month contract so I told them to get stuffed. The new company is charging me £17.99 per month.
 
There is only one* broadband provider in the uk and that is BT. They own everything and provide everyone’s broadband. Full stop. All these third parties simply piggy back off BT, they are middlemen. Think your with Sky? Your not, your with BT but your paying Sky to liaise with BT on your behalf.

*yes, yes there is virgin media too who own their own infrastructure.
 
Brazo said:
There is only one* broadband provider in the uk and that is BT. They own everything and provide everyone’s broadband. Full stop. All these third parties simply piggy back off BT, they are middlemen. Think your with Sky? Your not, your with BT but your paying Sky to liaise with BT on your behalf.

*yes, yes there is virgin media too who own their own infrastructure.
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That's not entirely true, BT allow other providers to put their own equipment in the exchanges and there are now private circuit operators who may provide internet for an entire estate where BT astonishingly is not available.

It's certainly not as simple as saying BT do it all
 
Brazo said:
There is only one* broadband provider in the uk and that is BT. They own everything and provide everyone’s broadband. Full stop. All these third parties simply piggy back off BT, they are middlemen. Think your with Sky? Your not, your with BT but your paying Sky to liaise with BT on your behalf.

*yes, yes there is virgin media too who own their own infrastructure.
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Not true I'm afraid
Companies like Sky, Talk Talk and Vodafone have their own equipment in local exchanges that feed back to their own switch sites and internet access servers.
The common bits are the wires and fibre in the ground which are owned and operated by openreach. In the early days then it was like this in most cases but today most have they own points of presence in BT Exchanges

It is true that for things like fibre to the cabinet broadband then this is operated by openreach and other service providers can rent this form openreach and everyone gets the same service no matter who your SP is.
This is the same for Fibre to the premises but a lot of SP's have not taken to wholesaling the fibre yet meaning only BT offer it in a lot of parts
 
Dolo10 said:
This is the same for Fibre to the premises
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We've got some private circuit operators who provide FTTP outside of BT's infrastructure down here, they also synchronous upload for £5 a month extra. A work colleague of mine is getting 60Mbps up and down for half the cost of what I'm paying BT!
 
Brazo said:
There is only one* broadband provider in the uk and that is BT. They own everything and provide everyone’s broadband. Full stop. All these third parties simply piggy back off BT, they are middlemen. Think your with Sky? Your not, your with BT but your paying Sky to liaise with BT on your behalf.

*yes, yes there is virgin media too who own their own infrastructure.
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Have Sky sold their infrastructure then?

They had their own backhaul with their own DSLAM units in loads of exchanges, the only bit the "rented" was the copper from the site to the green box. I know this as it was Easynet's infrastructure, I worked for them for 8 years, leaving when Sky acquired them back in 2005.

A number of companies resell BT Broadband, my last company did. Some resell the complete package, and some have their own DSLAM's but also use BT's infrastructure to bring back to their own networks.

And what happens in Hull?
 
Yes thats very true, and I have even fitted a 1gig backhaul cct into a streetcab for a SP feeding a new housing estate
 
Jelster said:
Have Sky sold their infrastructure then?

They had their own backhaul with their own DSLAM units in loads of exchanges, the only bit the "rented" was the copper from the site to the green box. I know this as it was Easynet's infrastructure, I worked for them for 8 years, leaving when Sky acquired them back in 2005.

A number of companies resell BT Broadband, my last company did. Some resell the complete package, and some have their own DSLAM's but also use BT's infrastructure to bring back to their own networks.

And what happens in Hull?
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No they haven't, their equipment is still there and in some cases still labelled as easynet.

The broadband market is massively diverse now with companies like Hyperoptic targeting Multi dwelling tower blocks and others installing there own streetcabs etc.

He couldn't have been further from the truth by saying its all BT
 
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I've never had sky, I've never been interested in anything they had to offer.
BT only do FTTC not FTTP here, but I'm happy with 27 meg down & 8 meg up that's fast enough for me.

I pay £19.99 for the BB inc the line . + £8.00 for "Unlimited calls and text mobile both on an 18 month contract.
I will say that its a reduced rate due to a total cock up ( very long story) when I first joined.
That ends in October this year, It'll be interesting how high they try and put it up when its up for renewal though ;)

We do have Virgin / city fiber here also, up to 1Gb ( around £60 / month last time I looked)
guaranteed 900 Mb I'm not planning world domination,so I doubt that'll be much use to me.
 
I’ve been with virgin since it was ntl, still use a ntlworld email. Every year without fail I phone up and ask to be disconnected, this always ends up with them putting me through to the “Disconnection” department, code for retentions, always get my bill lowered or get add extras for free. Now a days the customers hold all the cards. I always get a better deal when my contract ends in line with an add campaign offering great saving for new customers.
 
Cobra said:
I've never had sky, I've never been interested in anything they had to offer.
BT only do FTTC not FTTP here, but I'm happy with 27 meg down & 8 meg up that's fast enough for me.

I pay £19.99 for the BB inc the line . + £8.00 for "Unlimited calls and text mobile both on an 18 month contract.
I will say that its a reduced rate due to a total cock up ( very long story) when I first joined.
That ends in October this year, It'll be interesting how high they try and put it up when its up for renewal though ;)

We do have Virgin / city fiber here also, up to 1Gb ( around £60 / month last time I looked)
guaranteed 900 Mb I'm not planning world domination,so I doubt that'll be much use to me.
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Finally got it then, I had a lot of dealings with your area when ADSL first appeared.
That situation continued with the introduction of FTTC, no easy solution and glad it was eventually sorted
 
I was with Sky for 16 years without any issues, then I was offered what I thought was a better deal from Virgin. They told me that, for the cheaper price,I'd get all the TV channels I was getting with Sky, they lied. No HD Sports and No Sky Movies not to mention no Sky Atlantic. As for the broadband, there were regular weekly outages which was a pain in the arse when you work from home. The price shot up as well. £60 when I signed up but bills were around £115 after 4 years.

Went back to Sky last year for £75 a month for everything. Virgin offered me a reduction to £93 a month to keep me. For TV, Sky Go is another level from Virgin and we've had only 1 broadband outage and that was down to a local power failure.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Finally got it then, I had a lot of dealings with your area when ADSL first appeared.
That situation continued with the introduction of FTTC, no easy solution and glad it was eventually sorted
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Talking to the BT engineers that were around and about for quite awhile, it seems the Romans laid the ADSL lines :D

Its been here a few years now, but I was the last estate to get it for some reason about 2 - 3 years ago IIRC.
And the guys laying city fiber were regularly cutting through the BT lines, around here, when BT repaired mine, it seems they managed to
cut through city fiber lines I'm sure it was an accident :D
 
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When I was with Virgin they installed separate, Fiber Optic line line into the house, which was fed from my local cable TV network.
Virgin was fine when it worked but you could get a download speed over 50mbps one minute, and if you checked it a few minutes later it was down to 15mbps or less.
The killer came when it kept breaking down and I was left with speeds slower than "dial up." The final time this happened it took them 19 days to fix it, despite numerous "we're working on it" excuses.
I'm now with BT and that comes down the normal phone line at a consistent 30 mbps.
Other than downloading movies in a few minutes (which I don't) I often wonder why people need these blistering download speeds.
Whenever I download a piece of software I find the speed is usually limited by the originating server, usually to less than 5mbps.
At the speed I have I can watch streamed HD TV and that's fine for me.
 
I think they all have their problems. I was Plusnet for quiet some time. Our street did not have FTTC until November 2018, even though the street next to use had it for quiet a few years.

We were on a different exchange what had not been updated.

The last year with FTTC I had drop outs every day, contacted Plusnet who were very helpful but the issues was with the openreach lines/cabinet. Any time the engineer was fixing someone's else, they would break my one

In the end moved to virgin and have been getting nearly 200mbps on the machine connect to the router all the time. Previous I was getting between 40-60 when I was paying for 75, with Plusnet.

I am sure Virgin will push up the price come renewal, so finger crossed I can get another deal, otherwise monthly bill goes up from 34 to 60 I believe, and this is just for BB and phone for weekend only.
 
I'm still with Sky, did make a deal with them months back to stay with for reduced cost [ Got them down to £25 p.m off the tv package plus BB + phone line I never use] so I am locked in for now ... I get on average 35-40 Mbps d/l and 10-13 up, which is to be fair, enough for my needs - but faster would always be welcomed. The problem over here in ireland is Eir have monopoly on phone lines, and you have to rent the line from them before you can even get Sky, and then Sky seem to have monopoly on BB because they have first dibs on those lines. I've tried a few others in the past but they were worse than Sky connection reliability wise. I think you have much more options UK though?
 
Cagey75 said:
I think you have much more options UK though?
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Just about every many and his dog offers BB these days.
Although AFAIK BT own all the cabling, well that is "Open Reach" is the BB side.
The problem arises when there is a problem the service provider blames BT and BT blames the provider.

Although as I noted above City fiber are laying or maybe have now laid a very fast network of fiber cables across the city.
 
Cobra said:
Just about every many and his dog offers BB these days.
Although AFAIK BT own all the cabling, well that is "Open Reach" is the BB side.
The problem arises when there is a problem the service provider blames BT and BT blames the provider.

Although as I noted above City fiber are laying or maybe have now laid a very fast network of fiber cables across the city.
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That's UK though, here in ireland we are much more limited in terms of choice. Trust me, if I could get more reliable, faster speeds for the same amount or even pay a little more, I'd be there. Sky are sadly about the most reliable over here atm
 
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I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve read this thread a few times but I’m now getting Facebook ads for Virgin broadband!

My internet isn’t fast. It’s gets us by. I’d like to get faster broadband but our only option is virgin as no other provider does fibre in our area. Access and number of providers differs greatly from area to area. Crazy really.
 
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rob-nikon said:
My internet isn’t fast. It’s gets us by. I’d like to get faster broadband but our only option is virgin as no other provider does fibre in our area. Access and number of providers differs greatly from area to area. Crazy really.
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I tell what is crazy, FTTC (Fibre broadband) not being available in the middle of cities...

Well it's not really, as it stops companies migrating from expensive direct fibre services which are around 10 times the price. Yes you get a better service contract, but FTTC is pretty reliable these days, so unless your business depends on it, FTTC will do. But BT wouldn't admit to this of course...
 
I've been with Virgin for at least 11 years. I think I started with 1Mb. :oops: :$ They have upgraded the speed over the years for no extra charge, and I am now at 100Mb. :) Their connections and speeds have been pretty much rock solid, and the few times there has been a connection loss, it has been fixed in a couple of hours. Everything has been pretty good, but the price has started creeping up the last year or two. It is no £42 per month for broadband and phone. :( I phoned them just before the 'outbreak' to see what they could do, I think it was £35. I said I would take a reduction in speed to get the cost lower, but they said that the deal I had with them would make the 50Mb + phone more expensive. :oops: :$:thinking: Not sure how that works out. So I was all set to move to the Post Office who say they can give me 14-19Mb and phone for £18 (and then £30 after a year). I was all set to move before they 'outbreak', but no way would anyone be sending out engineers over the last few months. This thread will give me the push to see if I can sort something out. :)

If Virgin had offered the £28 offer for 50Mb + Phone they are offering for new users, I would have stayed rather than go through the hassle. But when I phoned at the end of last year, the lady I spoke to said that there would be an offer for existing customers in a few months, which didn't happen. :mad:
 
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Where I am I there is no cable so no virgin, my contract is up with BT , I'm paying £50 a month for the fastest broadband I can get, phone line and BT TV but no movies or sports , is there a viable alternative , it does hack me off that a new user gets a good deal but existing users get shafted , I can't go back to sky, it was dreadful , if the kids were on the internet netflix was like watching a pirate VHS, i'd sooner suffer £50 a month that go back to that.

Does threatening to leave generate a better deal like it does with sky
 
Cagey75 said:
I think you have much more options UK though?
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Cagey75 said:
That's UK though,
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I was answering your question :D

wack61 said:
I can get, phone line and BT TV but no movies or sports
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Have you thought about now TV? there is lots of sky channels on there and they are / just have added more.
Its no problem watching wise at 27meg
Even on my crappy ( long story ) talk talk failing 2.5 meg that dropped below 1 meg at times I could still watch netflicks.

Of course the quality per se has now moved on massively and "we" expect cinema quality viewing from a standard TV.
 
It is tricky, if you get locked into a package with TV as I have. While the broadband is over 100M b/s (standard), the TV package we have suits us well. Looking at other TV packages I find them less attractive. We have Netflix and Amazon Prime as well. I have noticed that the Virgin price is creeping up. If it was not for the TV, I would go for another ISP to get the price down. When we previously had BT the performance was very poor (unreliable, low data rates). A while a go Virgin had a dispute with UKTV and we lost several channels which we were very keen to keep. I contacted Virgin and they immediately reduced my monthly bill by £5 and the next day the new contact with UKTV was sorted so all was well. They have not directly added the £5 again but there have been several general increases so I think they have clawed it back. It is very annoying that we still have to keep re-competing and cannot get a consistent deal with a single supplier just like the Energy and car insurance market.
 
Cobra said:
I was answering your question :D
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Ah yes, sorry, but it's true, you have many more options UK compared to here. It's not terrible considering what some experience, so long as I get 35-ish mbps it's enough for 4 of us here to all stream at once.
 
Cagey75 said:
so long as I get 35-ish mbps it's enough for 4 of us here to all stream at once.
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There are a lot of places in the UK still not getting anywhere close to that despite the claims of various companies.
Crazy!
 
Cobra said:
There are a lot of places in the UK still not getting anywhere close to that despite the claims of various companies.
Crazy!
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Same here, there's a lot of rural areas that can't get broadband at all. This despite the government's promise a few years back to roll out hundreds of new connection points. The idea being everyone could avail of some form of high speed net.
 
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Cobra said:
There are a lot of places in the UK still not getting anywhere close to that despite the claims of various companies.
Crazy!
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Most of them quote a % of the population, not the country. So people in villages out in the sticks "don't matter" as spending a fortune on infrastructure to get there means they will never get a return on the investment. It's hard to hear, but it's true.

When we did our original ADSL roll out at Easynet, we focused on areas that would give us an RoI within 5 months, so by month 6 it was making money, and as we did a minimum 12 month contract, we could see the value in it.
 
13.3 Mb/s ^, 3.8 V. Fast enough for us, especially since we don't watch that much telly anyway and would be watching the same streamed programmes if we needed to catch up on anything. Fastest I've seen on this line is 18.6 ^, 5.5 V.
 
Nod said:
13.3 Mb/s ^, 3.8 V. Fast enough for us, especially since we don't watch that much telly anyway and would be watching the same streamed programmes if we needed to catch up on anything. Fastest I've seen on this line is 18.6 ^, 5.5 V.
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Interestingly I lost service for about 20 minutes yesterday. I could normally get about 42mbps, not sure what they've done, but I recorded 67mbps afterwards. Maybe they were doing some upgrading work locally....
 
KIPAX said:
I have been with SKY for 22 years and was on basic broadband as thats all they could offer me.. I was getting 14mb download and less than 2mb upload
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So, Sky had probably unbundled your line (look up LLU) - which 20 years ago would be a good thing since they did ADSL2+ and BT were still mucking about with ADSL1. Side benefit to Sky it made it a bit more of a pain to move away... Cometh the hour, cometh VDSL - Sky don't invest in the LLU infra, but use Openreach's infrastructure... Keeping you on the LLU sweats their asset a bit longer.

Now you have a native line once more I suspect your choice of providers is now numbering in the dozens of not hundreds (although BT Broadband have probably put you on an 18/24 month contract)
 
hunnymonster said:
Now you have a native line once more I suspect your choice of providers is now numbering in the dozens of not hundreds (although BT Broadband have probably put you on an 18/24 month contract)
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Nope... jusct checked and no company can offer me anywhere near what BT can... none say I can get fibre
 
Jelster said:
I'd be very surprised, as many just resell the BT service (BT sell it wholesale to ISP's).
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well according to BT as i said above.. they told me other companies rent off them but because of the area I am in wiht only 10 houses they havent rented the fibre
 
Jelster said:
I'd be very surprised, as many just resell the BT service (BT sell it wholesale to ISP's).
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That.

I'd actually be surprised if it was legal. Given Openreach's dominant market position in delivering the last mile, my understanding is that they are legally obliged to offer access to other ISPs on exactly the same conditions they do to BT Retail Broadband.

Also wouldn't be the first time a BT employee "misspoke" to get a sale.
 
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