SKY Woes...... UPDATE!

MagicCats

I've recently moved house and my broadband is slow. The line was reconnected by a BT engineer and tested without fault. I'm only getting between 600kbps and 1.4mbps; SKY estimated between 2 and 5mbps.

I've gone through the 10 day settling in period where they claim to test your line and increase the speed. However I've never seen any indication of this happening (you can check through the My SKY portal)

I'm considering the following:

A) Ringing SKY to escalate the case as I've already complained. If I can get the speed up a bit I'd be happy....ish....

Ring SKY and order their 'fibre' product but try and get the £50 instal fee waived due to the current problems.

C) Switch to BT Infinity.

Cost wise it's £32.60 with BT per month, and £32.25 with SKY. You do get some incentives with BT - £25 gift voucher and the broadband discounted to £9 for three months. You can also discount the line rental to £10.50 if you pay a year up front. Installation is £25 so half the cost of SKY.

SKY has no download cap, but BT is 40gb. This shouldn't pose too much of a problem as I don't download much. I mainly surf and watch TV or You Tube - hence the need for a faster connection.

Looking for some opinions on this please guys

penrhyn

First off are you on Sky Unlimited broadband or the awful Sky Connect Broadband?

Is your router plugged directly into the master phone socket and do you have filters on all other telephones points you have in use?

Please post your router line statistics.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/tutorials/how_to_use_the_skyuser_router_stats_tool.html

or http://192.168.0.1/sky_router_status.html

User admin, password sky, and scroll down to find show statistics, should look like this:
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream Connection Speed 8190 kbps 767 kbps Line Attenuation 44.5 dB 26.3 dB Noise Margin 5.9 dB 15.1 dB

visidigi

MagicCats wrote: »

SKY has no download cap, but BT is 40gb. This shouldn't pose too much of a problem as I don't download much. I mainly surf and watch TV or You Tube - hence the need for a faster connection.

Looking for some opinions on this please guys

You do not want a capped service if watching TV and YouTube is common activity.

Make sure you're unlimited, as there's significant bandwidth use on those two activities.

MagicCats

penrhyn wrote: »

First off are you on Sky Unlimited broadband or the awful Sky Connect Broadband?

Is your router plugged directly into the master phone socket and do you have filters on all other telephones points you have in use?

Please post your router line statistics.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/tutorials/how_to_use_the_skyuser_router_stats_tool.html

or http://192.168.0.1/sky_router_status.html

User admin, password sky, and scroll down to find show statistics, should look like this:
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream Connection Speed 8190 kbps 767 kbps Line Attenuation 44.5 dB 26.3 dB Noise Margin 5.9 dB 15.1 dB

Hi there,

I'm on Unlimited Broadband. I have two telephone points on the same wall (master and hard wired 2nd point) There is minimal difference when using the test socket, for example 1592kbps v 1552kbps. I've tried three different micro filters, and there's only the one socket in use at any time.



ROUTER STATISTICS


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1443 kbps 560 kbps
Line Attenuation 73.0 db 43.5 db
Noise Margin 6.0 db 7.2 db
Poll Interval:! (secs)

brewerdave

Those attenuation figures are sky high ! Are you a long,long way from your exchange? In the past an attenuation of 73db would have meant no b/band supply from BT!! If not you have a line fault somewhere!

penrhyn

I'm surprised that it works at all with a 73db line, I guess you are a very long way from the exchange. Using ADSL 2 broadband checker it estimates
"0.5mb to 1mb"

Could you try the test socket again?

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/adsl2_checker.php

spike7451

Put your phone number in the link below,the results will tell you what speeds your line can get.

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

MagicCats

brewerdave wrote: »

Those attenuation figures are sky high ! Are you a long,long way from your exchange? In the past an attenuation of 73db would have meant no b/band supply from BT!! If not you have a line fault somewhere!

I think I'm a little away from the exchange yes.

penrhyn wrote: »

I'm surprised that it works at all with a 73db line, I guess you are a very long way from the exchange. Using ADSL 2 broadband checker it estimates
"0.5mb to 1mb"

Could you try the test socket again?

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/adsl2_checker.php

Oh dear.... I can't access the test socket right now as the decorator is in. I'll do that later and post up the results.

spike7451 wrote: »

Put your phone number in the link below,the results will tell you what speeds your line can get.

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

Unfortunately it doesn't recognise my line as it was disconnected from BT for a while. The previous owner had cable.

I'm a little miffed as SKY shouldn't be quoting what they cannot reasonably deliver.

penrhyn

Are you paying BT for your line rental and calls or Sky?
If you are with Sky the BT Line checker wont work.

I have found that Sky tend to be fairly conservative with their speed estimates, not in your case unless there is something wrong with the line, have you neighbours with broadband who you can compare notes with.
Maybe Virgin would be a better option. Are BT rolling out FTTC near you?

cootuk

uswitch have a speed checker where you can also see other local user speeds

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/#speedTest

Go into the Broadband Street stats and enter your postcode to see what other local users get...you can almost trace main phone lines from the exchange.

MagicCats

penrhyn wrote: »

Are you paying BT for your line rental and calls or Sky?
If you are with Sky the BT Line checker wont work.

I have found that Sky tend to be fairly conservative with their speed estimates, not in your case unless there is something wrong with the line, have you neighbours with broadband who you can compare notes with.
Maybe Virgin would be a better option. Are BT rolling out FTTC near you?

I'm with SKY for line rental etc. According to BT I can install Infinity, but forgive me, what's FTTC?