Sky+ Broadband any good ?

[peanut]

Sky are offering 10Mb for £5.00 at the moment. I am tempted as Newnet are definitely throttling at the moment despite assurances they are not.

I get delays of up to 20 seconds at times and frequently have to reboot the modem router.

Anyone use Sky BB ?

 

[Garz]

My work colleague had it (lives with his folks still) and constantly had problems with them. Offers like these are cheap (talk talk fall into the same category) but often prove to be unreliable or poor service.

 

[beanzontoast]

We've been on it for about 2 years (our 4th ISP). It's generally ok - setup was straightforward, runs slower in the evenings IME but usable. Service interruptions (and I suppose that may not be down to Sky) seem to run at about 2 per year lasting 1-3 hours.

 

[peanut]

I guess you get what you pay for in the end.
I think I pay £14.00 for 3Gb per month with newnet. The service centre is excellent. local rate and English technicians who know their stuff. Never have to wait longer than 3-4 minutes.

Pity they are now throttling

 

[HLaB]

My mum used to work for sky so she had it trialled out on her it was pretty bad at first, always dropping connection but now its pretty fast and reliable.

 

[Downward]

Yeah we have had the free one for a few years now. We can only get 2mb max speed anyway and it does the trick.

 

[marinyork]

I had it for a while back in the day. I gather the service had changed a lot now though, so couldn't really say.

 

[rh100]

I have the £5 package, don't get the full speed but that may be down to line quality, but it's more than fast enough for regular internet use. It drops out now and then but not regular enough to bother trying to trace the problem, a reboot on the modem solves it. The modem that came with it was a sky branded netgear one, with some funny port labels on the back 'for future use' - I think there is only two useable ports plus wifi - but easily expanded with a switch etc.

 

[peanut]

thanks guys . Definitely a possibility then.

next problem I have is trying to get BB on the move with my laptop.

 

[rh100]

I have a Vodafone contract with unlimited broadband for £5 a month added to my mobile bill- hook up the mobile to the laptop to act as a modem via usb or bluetooth.

3G service gives a few hundred K (think early broadband speed), good enough for web browsing and email fairly quickly. If your phone has it and you're in an area that provides it, HSDPA is quicker (think entry level home broadband - when you have a good signal - but should be improving), it's fairly new so not all phones have it and it doesn't cost any more when it's on. When in rural areas it should default back to GPRS, which is equivalent to the old 56K dial up modems.

If that's all a bit complicated, most providers do the dedicated usb dongle or PCMCIA card, but have their own contract seperate to your phone, I think about £15 a month - but simple to use.

 

[domtyler]

I've been on the Sky free package for a few years and have never noticed a dropped line, I've never plugged in the free router though which is a godawful netgear DG834GT nevertobetouched pile of shite. Replace with something half decent like the Thompson Speedtouch and you will be in business.

That said I have recieved an email this week saying that they are to limit this to 2gb per month so have decided to move to Virgin asap which seems far more economical.

 

[aJohnson]

It sucks. I have it.

 

[peanut]

I have a Vodafone contract with unlimited broadband for £5 a month added to my mobile bill- hook up the mobile to the laptop to act as a modem via usb or bluetooth.

3G service gives a few hundred K (think early broadband speed), good enough for web browsing and email fairly quickly. If your phone has it and you're in an area that provides it, HSDPA is quicker (think entry level home broadband - when you have a good signal - but should be improving), it's fairly new so not all phones have it and it doesn't cost any more when it's on. When in rural areas it should default back to GPRS, which is equivalent to the old 56K dial up modems.

If that's all a bit complicated, most providers do the dedicated usb dongle or PCMCIA card, but have their own contract seperate to your phone, I think about £15 a month - but simple to use.

thanks RH
never thought of using my existing fone and contract. I have a Nokia 5800 on Vodafone which should be useable .
The fone picks up my home Wi-Fi but never thought of using it as a modem/router for a laptop. guess I'll need to read the manual

 

[Downward]

Just had a letter from Sky saying we have exceeded our 2gb per month usage.

I asked how do we know and is there a measuring tool and they say no.

I asked them to tell me how much I use per month and they say can't tell us.

So be warned if you go for Sky that they are on the lookout for people going over their useage but can't tell you how much !

It must be the video streaming that does it - How much does 1 hour of I player use ?
Who knows ??!

 

[Norm]

It is weird that they can't tell you how much you have used, nor do they allow you to monitor it yourself, but then that's thieving Sky for you.

An hour of iPlayer is something like 300mb but, depending on quality and how compressible the video is, it could be twice that.

With no other surfing, 2gb is less than 7 hours iPlayer per month.