Sky broadband any good?

[css_jay99]

My 50mb contact with Plusnet ended a few months ago. I could just renew with them (at £28) but came across an offer from sky for 150mb at £43 (including sky package). They (via Openreach) will be installing a new line from the pole to the house for full fibre to achieve that speed. I don't really need the sky+ package but was told I could drop that within 31 days which will bring the price of broadband down to £21pm!

I'm ok with my 50mb but 150mb at an even cheaper price sounds like an absolute bargain apart from extra holes in my wall. Is sky broadband any good?. I am assuming that the line is maintained by Openreach while Sky just handles the billing side?

I'll be using my own Asus router.

[northernladuk]

Sky is partnered with O2 isn't it but yes it uses Openreach. I personally wouldn't go with Sky because I can't stand having to sift through all their TV options and packages. Never used Sky and don't intend to start. I'd rather go through a company providing broadband first and foremost where the Sky offering is loaded with everything else. Just feels far to complex so not for me.

All the reviews say the broadband itself is a good choice with little between BT and EE so need to do the calcs on what package you want and compare but I can't believe the difference between them is enough to go with a certain provider alone. That said are you sure about the costs if you drop the TV element? I thought that's where their bread and butter was and just broadband can be a little expensive, particularly when you include setup?

I think the market is so competitive that any of the broadband providers will be much of a sameness and it's the additions (or lack of) that would make the difference to certain people?

[mattster]

It's all Openreach with, I think, the exception of Virgin (which I can't get). So your actual broadband service is going to be the same regardless of who you go with, but you are going to get a different router, and customer service varies according to company etc. I actually find Sky one of the better companies to deal with as far as customer service goes, and BT the very worst. That said, I flip between BT and Sky every 2 years because they offer new customer deals that are far better than their existing customer deals. Annoying but it saves a fair bit of dosh.

[northernladuk]

I That said, I flip between BT and Sky every 2 years because they offer new customer deals that are far better than their existing customer deals. Annoying but it saves a fair bit of dosh.

I wish I could but I've put all my eggs in my BTinternet email baskey and they won't allow me to pay for just an email service so I'm pretty much screwed. I'm not really but the amount of work to transition over and don't know what to move to either so I'll stick with BT.

[Mordac]

It's all Openreach with, I think, the exception of Virgin (which I can't get). So your actual broadband service is going to be the same regardless of who you go with, but you are going to get a different router, and customer service varies according to company etc. I actually find Sky one of the better companies to deal with as far as customer service goes, and BT the very worst. That said, I flip between BT and Sky every 2 years because they offer new customer deals that are far better than their existing customer deals. Annoying but it saves a fair bit of dosh.

It isn't - if you live in a decent sized city or town, chances are you should be in a LLU area, which means you have direct access to Sky broadband (and other providers), rather than re-bundled Openreach services. A good place to check whether your exchange is Sky LLU enabled is here:

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/llu/sky

We recently switched to a Sky bundle which was about £50 a month cheaper than we were paying for separates, including Sky TV with Sky Sports and Sky Superfast Broadband, with the added bonus of an extra Sky Q mini box and Netflix thrown in, among other services.
Sky support is pretty good, not that most of us will need it, and certainly better than Virgin (which is terrible). If you want decent broadband and Sky Sports, it's pretty much a no-brainer.

[SueEllen]

It's all Openreach with, I think, the exception of Virgin (which I can't get). So your actual broadband service is going to be the same regardless of who you go with, but you are going to get a different router, and customer service varies according to company etc. I actually find Sky one of the better companies to deal with as far as customer service goes, and BT the very worst. That said, I flip between BT and Sky every 2 years because they offer new customer deals that are far better than their existing customer deals. Annoying but it saves a fair bit of dosh.

It isn't.

I'm currently in an area that is being dug up by another broadband operator so I can have their fibre rather than Virgin directly to my home.

[mattster]

It isn't - if you live in a decent sized city or town, chances are you should be in a LLU area, which means you have direct access to Sky broadband (and other providers), rather than re-bundled Openreach services. A good place to check whether your exchange is Sky LLU enabled is here:

Yeah, I guess, but still openreach to the local exchange though? So whether or not the actual service will be much better from a different provider I don't know. My issue is dodgy aluminium cables to the local box (We are FTTN), which apparently limits our speed a bit. Full fibre to the premise coming within two years so they say (rural West Sussex).

[vetran]

If it is ADSL (most variants and any that go on a BT line) From your house to the cabinet is probably Openreach. At most large exchanges many suppliers provide network connectivity this may vary in bandwidth and quality.

So yes if the cable from the exchange breaks the supplier has to nag Openreach to fix it, some suppliers are better than others at this. This may cause your router to not log in but BT / vendor should tell you why.

If your internet is unresponsive or your router fails to log in then its probably your internet provider.

[WTFH]

My issue is dodgy aluminium cables to the local box (We are FTTN), which apparently limits our speed a bit. ... (rural West Sussex).

Used to be aluminium cables from the cabinet to our house in very rural east Surrey. But when they upgraded the cabinet, we managed to get 72mB at home

[mattster]

Used to be aluminium cables from the cabinet to our house in very rural east Surrey.

Yeah they're a nightmare according to the guys who come out (very regularly) to work on them. Cheaper than copper to install at the time but go very brittle so very hard to fix one fault without causing at least one new one elsewhere. Of course they don't check every house off the box after fixing one fault, so a few years ago we were in an almost endless cycle of having one fault fixed and (at least) one more new one caused, with visits every day by the Openreach van for what seemed like months. All of the engineers I spoke to agreed that swapping out the aluminium would be the best and cheapest course of action in the long term, but OR are interested in near term costs and not long term savings. Hopefully FTTP will finally fix it.