19 replies to this topic

[Geddy]

Okay I am currently using an 8m connection and usually get top speeds. I am allowed to download as much as I want and never get throttled with my ISP. On the odd occasion something has gone tits up I have had it sorted ASAP because their customer service is excellent.

Right question is since my current ISP is not cheap would it be worth moving to Sky's Unlimited BB? They claim to be 100% unlimited as no caps or throttling (is this really true?) Also I would get up to 20m instead of 8m. Also it would be about £20 a month cheaper.

Should I switch? (I would only consider doing the switch if it is true 100% unlimited.) Also to take into consideration is that Sky's customer service is not exactly shite hot.

[holdthecherries]

I used Sky Broadband in my last house and had no issues with it at all. We were with Virgin before that, which was a nightmare in the evenings, when everyone was home.

We had a 8meg connection, but probably got 6meg at best. As for 100% connection, I cant remember any problems with it.

We now use BE, which is also very good, but only available in certain parts of the country.

[Andy2003]

It doesn't matter what service provider you use, they all have a fair usage scheme. NO broadband is truly unlimited but sky is the dogs nuts.... I was with sky for a few years and me and the missus do a lot of online gaming, Never any problems.. I decided to change to virgin cause i cancelled sky tv( unfotunately you can't have there broadband without it) and Virgin are S H E E T!!!! i'm truly gutted as im tied in for a year with crap broadband.

Anywayz, sky broadband unlimited is brilliant, i downloaded loads of stuff with them, and gaming. never had any warnings or anything... Never even had it capped when i'd had a heavy month...

Hope this answers your query..

[ady]

Right here I go lol.....

I used Cable and I had a great download speed but my upload was something like 1%....NTL (at the time was OK, the Engineer was 150% and came here on his luchbreak to even run a cable direct from the box down the pavement through my letterbox into my PC) and there was no solution.

Because I upload a bit I needed a good ratio.....i'm 3 miles from the exchange and BT gave me (upto 8mb) which ran at an average 2mb..........Sky via the BT line gives me upto 8mb that runs at 5mb and a 10% upload speed????............hmmmm its the same line BT!

Sky in my opinion gives a really good service, yeah the Free One is capped I know...but as an ISP via a Copper line they do the business, I pay the £5 thingie Geddy and have never been prompted to 'cool it'

BT I had breaks..........2 years of Sky no problems at all, again the same line so i'm mythed!

[Geddy]

It doesn't matter what service provider you use, they all have a fair usage scheme. NO broadband is truly unlimited

Mine is at the moment, that is why I am reluctant to move. Mine is 100% totally unlimited, no caps no throttles. SKY is claiming to be 100% so are they or not?

Anywayz, sky broadband unlimited is brilliant, i downloaded loads of stuff with them, and gaming. never had any warnings or anything... Never even had it capped when i'd had a heavy month...

Define 'loads' and 'heavy month.' What download figures are we talking here? I have once done 300 gig in a month but that would be unlikely again.

[fuzion]

I do a fair bit of downloading. Maybe 20g a week. I have noticed after about 2gb of downloading at 1300kb speed I am getting capped down to about 300kb with Virgin Media, this cap lasts for a few hours then resets. Don't think I'll bother shopping around, pretty happy with the service and tied in with TV and phone, also haven't had any major problems.

J

[todd1970]

I had the guy from Sky round at my door actually this afternoon and he was giving me some price comparisons..if you come back to us we will give ye a free Sky+ box..up to 20mb speeds..no throttling no capping etc..for a helluva lot cheaper than VM.

I said thats the thing that pisses me right off about VM they throttle ye for fk all basically..speed in the evenings can drop from 10mb to 2mb and with 4 pcs sharing a connection its pish.

Waiting on him coming back to discuss it with me and the missus..defo thinking of switching.

[samson81]

i use virgin media 50 meg net and have used them for years now had sky and when it went wrong they wanted a £60 call out fee

virgin media only cap you between the hours of 4pm and 10pm if you download over 2gigs and it lasts for 4 hours or after 11pm

there unlimited is unlimited i download about 2 terrabyte a month (2000 gigs) and have never had any issues with sky if i did over 200 a month i got a letter from them so..

overall

virgin media if you pay the price you get the service..

sky are great but they also have a cap at certain times the same as bt but you get what you pay for..

$am

[Geddy]

But how can Sky cap you or throttle you when they clearly claim 'no caps or speed reductions, totally 100% unlimited?'

I just want to know some figures from existing Sky customers on how much they have downloaded before I ask for the MAC code...

[Steveir]

I'm on 10mb with Sky (was 8mb). When it was 8mb I was getting 7mb download speed. I've just been sent an email telling me about the 10mb and that my monthly allowance is down from 40gb to 10gb.

Price wise and service wise Sky are good (dependant if their proper connections are in your area otherwise its £17.99 a month on their Connect service). I'm in the area but my parents who live 5 miles away aren't.

20mb has unlimited downloads for an extra fiver a month. I'm going to see how I go (main d/ling I do is MAME, and these days the roms for each release take 1-2gb). I don't mind paying fiver more...

They use Gmail for email though which can be annoying if you access your emails on a phone and computer unless you use IMAP

[Andy2003]

Okay guy's, i never have downloaded 300 gig in one month before!! Jeez thats alot...

i downloaded films mostly, and spent a between 2 to 3 hours on xbox live an evening on a heavy month but don't know what that would of chewed up memory wise....

basically on sky unlimited i never had my broadband capped but i swear they used to have a tiny astrix pointing to small print saying subject to fair usage? can't remember now...

if your lucky enough to live in a cabled area i suppose virgin would be cool..

unfortunately where i live in eastbourne my max broadband is only about 4.5 mbs? but virgin is only giving me about 3 mbs!

if your with sky and had no problems don't move.... ?

[Andy2003]

Okay just checked sky's website and there is no limit on there unlimited braodband. it is truly unlimited and no nasty things said in the small print!!

[todd1970]

Having discussed all options with the rep from Sky this evening..yes he can offer basically the same TV and phone service for a shitload cheaper than VM.

However i dont watch that much TV so its more the BB i was interested in learning more about..and although it says 20meg its 'up to 20 meg' (small print).

I had a workmate that was with Sky BB and was paying for the 16meg service it was at the time..and was lucky to be getting 6..7 at a push.

So i think untill BT/Sky whoever they are improve thier capabilties of handling hi-speed BB i think ill stay with VM for the moment.

[Jaks]

I moved to sky in July and have not had any problems so far, we have 4 pc's and a ps3 using the net every night - mostly online gaming and utube and streaming tv. In the 3 months we have been with them we have never had any slow downs and warning letters so I guess they really are unlimimited.

The package we have is :
Nearly the full sky tv pack (no sports)
Line rental
Free evening and weekend calls
Up to 20 meg Broadband unlimimited (we get around 11 - 12 meg)

We are paying just over £50 a month for the lot on sky. We used to be with Pipex homecall for line rental, calls & broadband (up to 8 meg 40 gig allowance), so Pipex and sky (tv package only) used cost around £80 a month. We are now saving around £30 a month by switching to sky. Even if we choose the full pack tv pack we would still be making some savings.

[>_>]

Sky is terrible.. Their routers are unreliable and are always crashing. I went through 8 routers in a year while i was with them. Ive now moved to virgin (fibre) and i have always had the full 50Mbit. I downloaded over 1TB last month and virgin couldnt care less.

[stanmarsh14]

Sky is terrible.. Their routers are unreliable and are always crashing. I went through 8 routers in a year while i was with them.

That is my main bitch about SKY.... the shit routers, that you have to use, as the adsl user / pass is hard encoded into them, and even if you was able to find your user / pass (Can be done on their v1 Netgear units), but not yet on the v2 netgear, or Sagem's), you would be in breach of their TOS, if you use a router, other than the one supplied by SKY.

SKY staff are also NOT PERMITTED to give out the user / pass, for some odd reason too.

However, connection wise @ my sisters (On the 16 MB package), it's very reliable, and sodding quick too, and when you conciser the cost, cheep also.

[Matty.N]

geddy

do you know what a torrent is?:undecided:

i dont

all i know is that sky dont like em

[angelus118]

Well I am well and truly pissed off to the back teeth. I used to live in thanet 6 months ago and was on BT broadband up to 8Meg unlimited usage allowance. I got 7.5 download which was great. On newsgroup downloads I usually got up to 10MB(dont know why). Anyway I have since moved and have had sky put in with their up to 10meg unlimited usage. Well I get 2.5meg!!!! WTF!!! Have spoken to them and other isp's and its the old copper causing the problem. Everyone in this area gets that speed. So safe to say downloading a 360 "backup" takes 7hrs -8hrs. Life just aint the same anymore...I cant take it....help please somebody hellllllppppp!

[Andy2003]

Actually i must admit with sky i went through a couple of routers so have to agree on that one, but they did replace them with no cost.

If you have just had sky (or any provider) installed, for the first 2 weeks the speed is always changing as to configure your phone line for the most stable speed. Then it's cool after that. or not depend on how lucky some people are.... It's that year contract that pisses me off.... You've got to wait a whole year before you can move!!! Mollocks i say..!!

also xbox live seems to be struggling big time at the moment in britain, i think that microsoft not to long ago changed some british servers somewhere and is not having much luck with them.... Britain is pants for online capabilities at the moment any way....

doesn't it seem aswell with every xbox live updatge it gets worse!!!!

I might move to japan..... Job Done!!

1 tb a sec please!!

[Steveir]

Sky have been doing speed tests recently as well, something about their own network instead of BT or something.

Actually sky news had a story on earlier on saying we rank 25th in the world for broadband with the likes of Romania, Latvia and Bulgaria well ahead of us...they were blaming copper lines for that. Fibre is way forward, it'll cost £170 million and won't be complete to 2017