Sky Fibre Optic Broadband

[LosOjos]

Has anybody got it and if so, is it any good?

 

I'm getting quoted an estimated speed of 15Mb/s, which is a drastic improvement on my current top speed of 3Mb/s, but I'm curious to hear from others how reliable these figures are.

 

I know there are much, much quicker fibre optic connections out there but unfortunately Sky are the only ones so far to say they can offer it in my area!

 

Also, I wondered if anyone who does have Sky Fibre BB also has to pay line rental? I don't want/need my land line and obviously it's not necessary for fibre optic BB, but there's no option to get rid of it online so I'm going to call them and see if they'll do it - would effectively make my BB upgrade cost me no extra per month if they cancel the land line!

[Michael]

Sky Fibre is basically BT Infinity re-branded. Generally Sky are pretty good these days, but people around the country will no doubt have their say. FTTC is a good compromise for people who require more bandwidth and it's relatively cheap for BT to do.

[LosOjos]

Sky Fibre is basically BT Infinity re-branded. Generally Sky are pretty good these days, but people around the country will no doubt have their say. FTTC is a good compromise for people who require more bandwidth and it's relatively cheap for BT to do.

 

Is the Sky service FTTC then? That'll explain why they're telling me I need line rental still... although that worries me that I won't get near the 15Mb/s quoted - they quoted me 7Mb/s on my current connection and that peaks at around 3Mb/s

[foofighterjim]

Have been on it for over a year now, when I first had it I was getting 30Mbps up and 13Mbps down. It isn't quite as fast now in part due to other people taking it up and slowing down the exchange but I am still getting 18Mbps up and 9Mbps down. Much better than the 0.5Mbps I was getting through ADSL.

 

It is a BT infinity connection you even get a BT engineer installing it, Sky just take less money for the same service!

[LosOjos]

Have been on it for over a year now, when I first had it I was getting 30Mbps up and 13Mbps down. It isn't quite as fast now in part due to other people taking it up and slowing down the exchange but I am still getting 18Mbps up and 9Mbps down. Much better than the 0.5Mbps I was getting through ADSL.

 

It is a BT infinity connection you even get a BT engineer installing it, Sky just take less money for the same service!

 

You get faster upload than download speeds? Weird

 

Either way, sounds like it's the best offer I'm going to get where I live and as most people on my little estate are OAPs, hopefully there won't be many tying up the exchange...

 

Think I'm gonna give it a go if I can get them to agree to withdraw and refund the activation fee if the speed I get is carp.

[Garacesh]

I've had Sky Broadband in the past. It was terrible, constantly slow or dropping out. Their customer service was equally as terrible, however, this was a few years ago.

 

My friend currently has Sky Broadband (though, not fibre) and says their internet is still as poor as I described.

 

Would not recommend.

[synaesthesia]

I've just left Sky, found many stupid issues (including the last one which was blocking hundreds of innocent & good websites for the sake of their crap web filters). Service terrible, wanted me to pay 20 quid a month more for their FTTC offering when I could get better from Virgin. Lesser of 2 evils? Probably not, they're mostly as bad as eachother.

[Devontechie]

I have a feeling that @elsiegee40 changed to Sky Fibre.

 

@LosOjos Surely if Sky can offer fibre, BT will be able to offer it...

 

I have looked at the Sky Fibre prices and when I go change to Fibre, I won't be having Sky. They want £30 for up to 78mb plus line rental!

Edited January 15, 2014 by Devontechie

[LosOjos]

I've had Sky Broadband in the past. It was terrible, constantly slow or dropping out. Their customer service was equally as terrible, however, this was a few years ago.

 

My friend currently has Sky Broadband (though, not fibre) and says their internet is still as poor as I described.

 

Would not recommend.

 

I used to have a lot of trouble with dropped connections, until I bought a cheap TP-LINK router to replace Sky's own - been fine since! It is slow though.

 

I've just left Sky, found many stupid issues (including the last one which was blocking hundreds of innocent & good websites for the sake of their crap web filters). Service terrible, wanted me to pay 20 quid a month more for their FTTC offering when I could get better from Virgin. Lesser of 2 evils? Probably not, they're mostly as bad as eachother.

 

I'd much rather go with Virgin, prefer their TV packages too, but can't get it where I am it looks as though FTTC is the best I'm going to get and it's a damn site cheaper from Sky than BT so it may be my only realistic option. BT want £23pcm or an extra £15.50, whereas it'll only cost me an extra £12.50pcm to get it from sky and whilst BT claim I'll get up to 38Mb/s, I strongly suspect that's over estimating it unless they fit an actual fibre to my property.

 

I was hoping someone would have come up with a decent home 4G package by now as we do get excellent 4G reception where I am, but they're all overpriced and hugely limited at the moment (unless anyone knows of a good one I don't?)

Edited January 15, 2014 by LosOjos

[Oaktech]

We have it in our residential house and it's pretty rubbish. It's only running at 12mbps and 18 users and it's completely saturated.

[ZeroHour]

You do still have to pay line rental.

BT Openreach do the FTTC install although Sky have been trialling self install kit (dont do it, you get faster speeds from a real install)

Although BT Openreach supply the FTTC once it gets back to the exchange its then through Sky so it is a Sky connection as such.

If I were you I would move over to get the better speeds and I suspect you wont be far off that, my cab gets updated in the next few months and as soon as its done I will switch.

 

I recently moved (non virgin area) and looked at options for heavy use broadband and really you only have 2 choices, BT retail or Sky BB based on feedback. TalkTalk is better than it was but I would still avoid myself.

BT costs more than sky and has an 18 month lock in as well as traffic management which basically leaves Sky as the only real unlimited unmanaged net connection.

Edited January 15, 2014 by ZeroHour

[Tesla]

Bt do overestimate, you're right . we have BT too at home, it's about half of what they described to us.

[LosOjos]

BT costs more than sky and has an 18 month lock in as well as traffic management which basically leaves Sky as the only real unlimited unmanaged net connection.

 

It's interesting you say that as they (BT) claim they don't employ any traffic management at all, in fact they use it as a selling point!

[APMerry]

I've got Sky Fibre Optic and its worked well for me, get about 30mb download speed. It's the only ISP i've had fibre with so can't give you any comparison. Their customer service isnt great though, it was really hard to get any sort of deal and spent a long time on the phone. I hate to think what their technical support line is like, but the Engineers are alright when you get one. Edited January 15, 2014 by APMerry

[abillybob]

Girlfriend was on Sky all she had was issues and the support team where appalling! Really disappointed with them we cut all contracts including their television. She was on fibre optic and she was getting 1mbps maybe more than my ADSL broadband, ridiculous!

[ZeroHour]

It's interesting you say that as they (BT) claim they don't employ any traffic management at all, in fact they use it as a selling point!

 

Yeah they did recently but I dont trust them to stick to it. I would actually avoid BT based on experiences with other peoples connections tbh although the ability to access ANY bt customers wifi connection when out and about is useful. I just dont want anyone else using MY bandwidth...

[LosOjos]

Yeah they did recently but I dont trust them to stick to it. I would actually avoid BT based on experiences with other peoples connections tbh although the ability to access ANY bt customers wifi connection when out and about is useful. I just dont want anyone else using MY bandwidth...

 

that sounds like it's open to massive amounts of abuse!

 

OK, time to roll the dice and give Sky a call then. Hopefully I can get them to cut me some kind of deal as it would actually work out cheaper with BT once you take the 3 months half price plus cheaper activation fee in to account. Not that I have any intention of going to BT now but it's always nice to have your gun loaded when you make these calls

[ZeroHour]

that sounds like it's open to massive amounts of abuse!

 

OK, time to roll the dice and give Sky a call then. Hopefully I can get them to cut me some kind of deal as it would actually work out cheaper with BT once you take the 3 months half price plus cheaper activation fee in to account. Not that I have any intention of going to BT now but it's always nice to have your gun loaded when you make these calls

 

Yeah its a *feature* of the homehub. You used to be able to turn it off but no longer, every homehub broadcasts an extra ssid called BT Wifi (couple of variations of name) which you sign onto using your bt details and then you can use their net capped at around 500kb a sec. BT will sell access to ANYONE with a credit card and you get no % of it either so you could be watching netflix buffer with a 5mb (connected) connection losing 500kb of the bandwidth because BT is reselling your net to someone else.

I am sure BT log everything and they actively disable things like Googles HTTPS search as google will alert you to it to prevent abuse but when anyone can get a disposable credit card it will make the process slow.

 

Sky suffers from overloaded exchanges (my old one for example) but Virgin have a huge habit of doing the same thing but the actual connection ADSL/FTTC should be similar for any ISP. The speed difference usually comes from the exchange->net backhaul and how much money X isp spends on their bandwidth.

Edited January 15, 2014 by ZeroHour

[abillybob]

To resolve this issue could you not just enable MAC filtering? But I agree this is really bad if this is the case, would this also give access to your internal network?

Yeah its a *feature* of the homehub. You used to be able to turn it off but no longer, every homehub broadcasts an extra ssid called BT Wifi (couple of variations of name) which you sign onto using your bt details and then you can use their net capped at around 500kb a sec. BT will sell access to ANYONE with a credit card and you get no % of it either so you could be watching netflix buffer with a 5mb (connected) connection losing 500kb of the bandwidth because BT is reselling your net to someone else.

I am sure BT log everything and they actively disable things like Googles HTTPS search as google will alert you to it to prevent abuse but when anyone can get a disposable credit card it will make the process slow.

[ZeroHour]

To resolve this issue could you not just enable MAC filtering? But I agree this is really bad if this is the case, would this also give access to your internal network?

 

Its not an AP you configure. You cant turn it off but those logged on to it are isolated so they cant access your internal network. Basically its a guest network AP.

[mac_shinobi]

I've just left Sky, found many stupid issues (including the last one which was blocking hundreds of innocent & good websites for the sake of their crap web filters). Service terrible, wanted me to pay 20 quid a month more for their FTTC offering when I could get better from Virgin. Lesser of 2 evils? Probably not, they're mostly as bad as eachother.

 

Can you get FTTC from Sky then - thought BT Infinity wasn't available where as VM is down that area ?

[abillybob]

What about just getting another router such as the Asus N66U! Surely then this feature can't still be enabled! I think this is really bad can't quite get my head around it!!!

Its not an AP you configure. You cant turn it off but those logged on to it are isolated so they cant access your internal network. Basically its a guest network AP.

[ZeroHour]

Can you get FTTC from Sky then - thought BT Infinity wasn't available where as VM is down that area ?

 

I think thats what he was saying yes. If Sky can offer Fibre/FTTC, BT Retail will be able to offer it too.

 

Just to clarify for all Infinity is just a brand name for BT Retails FTTC offering, Sky offer Sky Fibre as their brand name for FTTC but both use exactly the same phone/wire/street cabinet. When your data gets to the exchange it then goes either via BT Retails backhaul or Sky Broadbands backhaul but up to that point both are identical and ran by a company called BT Openreach (part of BT but regulated which is why its seperate from BT Retail who sell broadband)

Virgin offer fibre but that is seperate from BT Openreach FTTC and having Virgin in the area wont affect the possibility of having BT Openreach FTTC, the 2 things are not linked.

[synaesthesia]

@mac_shinobi I'm buggering off to t'next town along in a fortnight! Can't wait to get out of this hole. Sky & BT offer their FTTC (infinity) but the price is just daft.

[ZeroHour]

What about just getting another router such as the Asus N66U! Surely then this feature can't still be enabled! I think this is really bad can't quite get my head around it!!!

 

Yeah you can replace the router fixing the issue I believe. Sky had/has a term preventing you using any other router then the one they provide but I dont think BT do.

The guest AP is secure in the sense your internal network cant be hacked from it, its just annoying to think you could lose bandwidth to *guests*