How unreliable is your SKY broadband?
Discussion
We switched form BT to SKY full fibre 500 about a month ago. Switched as we needed to renegotiate our tv with SKY and got talked into it by the sales guy to be honest!
Since then though we’ve had pretty much endless issues with either the broadband or the new tv (but that’s another matter).
Initially the bloke who installed it - who was a contractor for Kelly or someone left and we only had 100mbps which he assured me was because SKY had sent the wrong Ethernet cable. He ordered a higher grade one which was due a few days later which was annoying but fine. He managed to cut the SKY cable which left us with no tv for a fortnight but that’s another story.
However when I got home the next day the broadband wasn’t working. Various tests and they said we need an engineer to fix it, so I had to take a half day off to facilitate and we were without broadband for a week.
The guy who fixed it (from SKY) was good, knew his stuff and said the connection outside ‘fell apart’ when he opened it so he made the connection properly and we were good and getting the 500mbps we’d ordered.
All good! But then we’ve just come back from a week’s holiday and there’s a red light on the ONT box which won’t clear. So they need to send another engineer this Friday - another half day’s holiday used and another week without broadband.
No idea when it failed last week but so far it’s been not working more time than it’s been working since installation. Guess I’m looking for some form of reassurance this isn’t normal with SKY broadband?! We had the old BT installation for 10 years here and other than an occasional flashing light where it dropped connection for 20 seconds never had any issues.
Have we made a terrible mistake?!
Since then though we’ve had pretty much endless issues with either the broadband or the new tv (but that’s another matter).
Initially the bloke who installed it - who was a contractor for Kelly or someone left and we only had 100mbps which he assured me was because SKY had sent the wrong Ethernet cable. He ordered a higher grade one which was due a few days later which was annoying but fine. He managed to cut the SKY cable which left us with no tv for a fortnight but that’s another story.
However when I got home the next day the broadband wasn’t working. Various tests and they said we need an engineer to fix it, so I had to take a half day off to facilitate and we were without broadband for a week.
The guy who fixed it (from SKY) was good, knew his stuff and said the connection outside ‘fell apart’ when he opened it so he made the connection properly and we were good and getting the 500mbps we’d ordered.
All good! But then we’ve just come back from a week’s holiday and there’s a red light on the ONT box which won’t clear. So they need to send another engineer this Friday - another half day’s holiday used and another week without broadband.
No idea when it failed last week but so far it’s been not working more time than it’s been working since installation. Guess I’m looking for some form of reassurance this isn’t normal with SKY broadband?! We had the old BT installation for 10 years here and other than an occasional flashing light where it dropped connection for 20 seconds never had any issues.
Have we made a terrible mistake?!
I had similar with vdsl with sky, the actual dsl connection was great, low attenuation , almost no errors or retrys but daily outages lasting around 7 or 8 minutes, during which the router would retain dsl sync but no throughput. 7 routers later and umpteen engineer visitsover 2 years i gave up and went to bt, zero problems after that. I kept prompting them that a piece of their kit back at the exchange was probably crashing and that 7 or 8 minutes was the reboot time as 2 of my neighbours on sky experienced the exact same at the same time but when we went to other providers it was fine.
Now we are all on youfibre, gig up, gig down, reliable as hell, static ip address, 25 quid a month. Delighted.
Youfibre customer service is good on the one occasion where roadworks damaged a cable.
Bt customer service was surprisingly good for me, but i have seen many of my customers tearing their hair out with them
Sky were awful. Kept marking the problem as fixed when i told them it was still happening every day, sometimes a few times a day. Honestly dont give those
s your money they dont deserve a penny.
Now we are all on youfibre, gig up, gig down, reliable as hell, static ip address, 25 quid a month. Delighted.
Youfibre customer service is good on the one occasion where roadworks damaged a cable.
Bt customer service was surprisingly good for me, but i have seen many of my customers tearing their hair out with them
Sky were awful. Kept marking the problem as fixed when i told them it was still happening every day, sometimes a few times a day. Honestly dont give those
s your money they dont deserve a penny.Edited by OldGermanHeaps on Saturday 24th May 11:35
Davie said:
Sky use the Openreach network.
The limited speed initially is highly unlikely to be a cable, ie the ethernet between ONT and router as even Cat 5E can cope with up to 1Gb so unless it was genuinely faulty....?
...
Sky use the openreach network for the last mile, but in the exchanges sky have their own switches and routing equipment that can cause issues that openreach cant fix and dont affect other providers who use openreach.The limited speed initially is highly unlikely to be a cable, ie the ethernet between ONT and router as even Cat 5E can cope with up to 1Gb so unless it was genuinely faulty....?
...
The 100mb initial speed might be either down to using a patch cable that only has 4 cores, which i have seen certain piesces of equipment be supplied with, or a patch lead with damage on the blue or brown pairs.
The subsequent failure does sound like a bad splice.
Clicked on the link because I have Now Broadband (same as Sky right?) that has started dropping internet a few times a day, but I feel like your looking at this in a level of detail beyond my comprehension!
On a similar note, what are you doing that requires 500mbps! I think out advertised rate is 64mbps and that copes with 3x devices streaming simultaneously. Is that kind of speed for gaming and youtube influencers only?
On a similar note, what are you doing that requires 500mbps! I think out advertised rate is 64mbps and that copes with 3x devices streaming simultaneously. Is that kind of speed for gaming and youtube influencers only?
It is a fair point that it’s not SKY who installed the fibre cables to the house so I may be being unfair but I’m also slightly jaded by the fact the tv they also installed doesn’t work very well!
My suspicion is it’s something the first bloke did wrong. Thinking back he struggled to get a red light off when installing it but reckoned it was sorted. He was up and down the pole with me having to give a thumbs up/thumbs down if it went off.
We had the second bloke out to repair his splice so I thought that would’ve sorted it but the second one didn’t go up the pole, so maybe he messed up in there too…
My suspicion is it’s something the first bloke did wrong. Thinking back he struggled to get a red light off when installing it but reckoned it was sorted. He was up and down the pole with me having to give a thumbs up/thumbs down if it went off.
We had the second bloke out to repair his splice so I thought that would’ve sorted it but the second one didn’t go up the pole, so maybe he messed up in there too…
jimmy156 said:
On a similar note, what are you doing that requires 500mbps! I think out advertised rate is 64mbps and that copes with 3x devices streaming simultaneously. Is that kind of speed for gaming and youtube influencers only?
I doubt it’s only aimed at those people? I know nothing about that stuff so I just applied my usual aim for the middle option if there’s not much difference in cost Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff