Virgin broadband with Sky+ TV

at_home

Folks

My internet through the telephone line is extremely slow due to the distance from the exchange. I have Sky Plus, with Sky Talk and the free Sky Broadband: the only issue with the latter is really outside of the control of Sky, but is very limiting.

I am tempted to switch to Virgin Broadband, but not prepared to pay for two phone lines. Additionally, the offerings from Virgin don't seem to match the package I have from Sky on price, so a complete bundle switch doesn't seem attractive.

Can the BT line, along with Sky Talk and broadband, be cancelled without prejudice to the continuation my Sky (and Sky+) service? I am sure if I asked the same of Sky they would say it is "essential for user experience and service", which is probably untrue.

Any other suggestions: I just want something above 5Mb/s download, currently it hovers around 1Mb/s.

Thanks in advance.

spike7451

at_home wrote: »

Folks

My internet through the telephone line is extremely slow due to the distance from the exchange. I have Sky Plus, with Sky Talk and the free Sky Broadband: the only issue with the latter is really outside of the control of Sky, but is very limiting.

I am tempted to switch to Virgin Broadband, but not prepared to pay for two phone lines. Additionally, the offerings from Virgin don't seem to match the package I have from Sky on price, so a complete bundle switch doesn't seem attractive.

Can the BT line, along with Sky Talk and broadband, be cancelled without prejudice to the continuation my Sky (and Sky+) service? I am sure if I asked the same of Sky they would say it is "essential for user experience and service", which is probably untrue.

Any other suggestions: I just want something above 5Mb/s download, currently it hovers around 1Mb/s.

Thanks in advance.

You can only have Virgin TV on a cable based service in which case Virgin broadband is NOT supplied over the phoneline.It comes over the same cable as the TV service & you need to be in a cabled area in order to get this.
If you are,a seperate cable would be laid from the VM street cabinet to your home.VM Service DO NOT connect into the BT telephone exchange.

Spike (ex NTL/VM Engineer)

at_home

Thanks Spike, but I don't think my question has been answered. I know Virgin Broadband is not supplied over the phone line in a cabled area (which I am within). Perhaps I need to re-word:

I can have an Virgin broadband installed, with a Virgin phone line, using fibre to the street cabinet. Up to 10Mb, not using ASDL and yes, not using BT infrastructure. I don't really want Virgin TV since Sky is fine for my needs and cheaper than equivelant offerings.

With Virgin Broadband, can I cancel my BT phone line without affecting my Sky TV contract (which suggests it is required for Interactive Services, the reality is I think they just want it connected so I can buy Box Office movies which I never do)

spike7451

Changing to VM shouldn't affect your Sky contract as long as you let them know well in advance,although the Sky talk wont work on cable.You only need to keep the phoneline connected to the Sky box for the first year,after that you can bin it UNLESS you have multiroom.The VM phoneline is perfectly ok for the interactive side,just not for BBand or Sky talk.(I worked for Sky after redundency from VM & have done installs with a cable phoneline & no dramas.)

ps,it's Fibre up to the street mux,NOT the street cabinet,the mux can be up to 1/2 mile away from your home & is 2 large street boxes next to each other,one for the phone & the other for tv/bband.

iniltous

I think you have 2 options, keep your sky tv and telephone, cancel Sky broadband and get cable broadband only, you dont have to take telephony with VM, but they would try and get you to take a telephony and broadband bundle, if you opt for VM telephone and broadband just tell Sky you want to be a TV only customer...however I dont think VM stand alone BB is particularly cheap, I think its around £25/month.
If you are a full LLU Sky telephone customer I dont know if you can have telephony without broadband, but if Sky are re-selling BT telephony or you pay BT line rental it shouldnt be a problem, if Sky say you have to have BB with the telephone, then as long as you are on the 'free' 2Mb/2Gb and dont use it, then you shouldnt pay anything other than the TV and Phone charges