got bt at the moment

thinking of changing to sky

got a good offer for broadband/calls/line rental/tv package

 

is it worth changing ?

I would say only change if you are getting Sky cable. My basic philosophy for broadband is to use the company that provides the wiring. If you have BT wire then use BT, that way, when it breaks, you don't get trapped between your supplier (with their call centre in India) and BT (with their call centre in India), both pointing the finger at the other.

I have just changed from BT to Sky. I am now paying half the price of what Bt were charging and getting a quicker broadband now as well. Plus the router looks a lot better than the home hub from Bt.

see i was on bt changed to sky and now my broadband speed is shite, ive spoken to sky so many times and all i get is BS excuses, your too far away from the exchange etc, so how comes with BT i was hitting more then double your speed?????

 

soon as my contract is out im back with BT

I am with BT and live about 200m from the exchange and my speed is terrible so considering Sky.My area is not cabled or I would go with the fiber optic route.

Just moved house and bought the whole shebang through sky including line rental with the HD box and got it for £58 a month.

 

They're supposed to be installing the TV on saturday but say in their email and paperwork that i have to have a working telephone line that dials out and receives calls (!) then the phoneline won't be installed for 3-4 weeks and another 2-3 after we finally get broadband.

 

I don't get the logic personally and now i'm awaiting an email back to tell me what they're going to do about it.

 

From what i understand you can get away without a phoneline to activate it IF you pay them an additional £25 or £35 on the day. That's when my phone has a dial tone and a number attached so it's obviously connected to the exchange and they've organised it in that particular order so i don't see why they have to make me wait so long for a working line.

 

Not too happy so far and still no work back from them 3 hours after emailing them :(

Neither! BT are an absolute rip off for a limp wristed connection and crappy homehub garbage and Sky broadband kept outing for me all the time. I switched to BE broadband about 3 years ago and never had any problems. At my old house Sky could only manage 2mb then when i moved to BE I had nearer 6mb. Its far cheaper too. Proper broadband!

Funny you posted this thread lol just called sky to change from bt and they're coming on monday. im sick of bt the speed is horrible, the price is more than double of what i will pay with sky for a higher speed and unlimited .

 

Not sure how sky broadband is but never had any problems with the tv so i hope the internets the same lol

The experience (in terms of speed) will depend on where you live and whether your exchange has been upgraded. There are plenty of BT and Sky exchanges that are NOT upgraded and therefore their claims will not stand up and you will be gutted. The use of "up to" should be outlawed.

 

Unfortunately this information is not available to the public or even the operator/sales person who deals with you so the best bet is to ask neighbours.

 

If you are fortunate enough to be in a cabled area, it is the BEST in terms of performance; period. Virgin customer services is however appalling so if things go wrong, you could end up regretting your decision.

 

Personally I'm with O2 for broadband (superb service and speed in my area with FREE and LOCAL customer support) and BT for the line itself. For sheer reliability and service, you cannot beat a line from BT. Everyone else will just mess you around (from very, very bitter experience).

BT are indeed very expensive and about twice as expensive as the rest for unlimited broadband.

 

How anyone can survive on 3Gb per month I have no idea...I use that in a day!

 

Funny you posted this thread lol just called sky to change from bt and they're coming on monday. im sick of bt the speed is horrible, the price is more than double of what i will pay with sky for a higher speed and unlimited .

 

Not sure how sky broadband is but never had any problems with the tv so i hope the internets the same lol

I had 50mb Virgin Broadband and i was really happy with them, the speed was nearly always 46meg when tested and fantastically quick.

 

Towards christmas we found it was getting dog slow, going from 0.6meg to 6meg and rang them. After 6 attempts (on the last call when i threatened to leave them) they said they'd changed something in the network and it wouldn't be fixed till the end of january.

 

So we said we're not paying for 50meg broadband and got it taken down to 10 meg and a couple of months refunded back to us. As Sir Charles said, great performance but when it goes wrong the customer support is shocking.

 

Unfortunately we don't have cable in Measham at the new house so it's back to dodgy old adsl (or dial up as i call it!)

Actually yes O2 would also be an excellent option because there are the very same people as BE broadband (BE supply o2) and they are both fantastic

This site was pretty good when I was looking who to change too. shows what people in your area are getting and who they are with.

 

Linky

No point in switching for better speed as it's the same Kit in the exchange, like electric and Gas the supplier is ultimately the same, just a matter of who manages your account and sends you the bill! unless you go for cable connection i'd only swap based on cost and length of contract!

I changed from BT to Talk Talk about 6 months ago. Much cheaper, and my Broadband is much faster.

We have always stuck with BT since trying NTL a few years ago! I run our business from offices at home and I have always found BT bomb proof as far as service reliability. They are not the cheapest and in my opinion once you are set up the service works consistantly well every day.

 

Could do with more Broadband speed, but that's down the the capacity of the digital exchange in our village.

 

Personally, I would stick with BT.

VIRGIN....i mean the broadband. i never had any problems with them and always reliable, well my house is close to the exchange maybe thats why. bt and sky are bloody jokes, im not gna explain the long story about what happened with my mate regarding sky, but we recorded the fone call to them n im gna upload it to youtube soon n post the link here. they are rip off merchants and thieves.

got a lot of different views there

no real problem with the speed

just the download and cost really

sky and talk talk and BE all seem to be cheaper than bt and with unlimited download.

i only get 20 gb download per month with bt, if i want unlimited i would have to pay extra.

i was with sky when i bought my house went with them for about a year and a half but the speed wasnt great have not long got bt broadband after spending months using a dongle for internet and the bt speed is double what i was getting with sky however that could just be that the exchange has been improved since i was with sky

its not all about exchange upgrades, but also about backhaul.

the exchange upgrade is to change the dslam to allow faster connections from the home. up to 2mb adsl, or over 2mb adsl2+. for example.

but backhaul is more important...

 

all telephone line based broadband providers will go through the same bt infrastructure.

 

but your data connection is handed off into a data pipe that is connected to your provider at the exchange dslam. this data pipe is the backhaul.

the physical part of this backhaul could be 100Mb, but your speed depends on how much bandwidth your provider has purchased for the backhaul from your exchange onto their network.

 

its a virtual pipe, so they only buy as much as they think they need to support the number of customers they have from that exchange.

 

if they over subscribe this pipe, then your speed goes down, as you have higher contention ratio. contention ratio never went away, it is just not advertised very much anymore.... mainly because backhaul prices have gone down over the years.

 

when a new provider comes into your area, they buy for example, 10 Mb of backhaul.

 

the first few customers that are signed up are happy as larry, loads of spare bandwidth.

the next 20 or 30 customers sharing that 10Mb pushes the service down.

 

the provider will have some tipover point where they think they should upgrade that backhaul or risk losing customers....

 

also, on top of that, many providers also push all of their traffic through url filters, as well as traffic shapers.

 

traffic shapers allow them to cap your virtual bandwidth at busy times of the day, so that all 30 customers get some guaranteed bandwidth, say 250k, so if everyone is flat out using it, it is slow, but the service never stops completely for you

 

if those 30 are using at different times, then you will get more share of the 10Mb

 

 

Sky started out great in my area, so a lot of my friends swapped over, and now they complain that it is slow at peak hours

 

my BT connection is always fine, because BT will always have a bigger and easier upgrade of that virtual data pipe than any of the other providers

 

but if the physical backhaul connection from your exchange is only 10Mb, then it doesnt matter who your provider is....you are screwed until BT upgrade.

 

in some cases, providers have put their own dslams into exchanges where they expect to get a lot of connections, in which case, they can have their own physical backhaul and things will be much better for their customers