Replacing Sky Router

lindabea

Hello everyone, bit of advise please. Need to replace my old Sky sagem router. Sky want £90 for their SR102 Hub, do I have to buy their own router or can I use another router like a netgear. Alternatively, I saw on ebay, that I can buy the SR101 or even the SR102 for much less than Sky are asking. If I buy one from ebay, do I use my existing sky id/pw or do I use the one that comes with the new hub. Very confused - I need some advise please to consider my options

Mike86d

lindabea wrote: »

Hello everyone, bit of advise please. Need to replace my old Sky sagem router. Sky want £90 for their SR102 Hub, do I have to buy their own router or can I use another router like a netgear. Alternatively, I saw on ebay, that I can buy the SR101 or even the SR102 for much less than Sky are asking. If I buy one from ebay, do I use my existing sky id/pw or do I use the one that comes with the new hub. Very confused - I need some advise please to consider my options

Just blag sky they will give you the router for free. Go on about how long you have been a customer and the cheek of charging you for a new router has made you consider switching to virgin who have offered you a much better deal. They will then put you through to retentions who will give you the router for free just to keep you as a customer. I did it with sky complaining about how slow my net speed was and threatened to switch and they knocked £9.50 a month off my bill. If you dont try, you dont get

colin79666

I'm fairly sure Sky are just about the only ADSL ISP that forces you to use their router (they lock out other routers from their network).
As above, argue with them to get something better or move altogether to a different ISP.

duchy

They don't want £90 -it's £69 plus £6.95 p&p which wasn't £90 when I went to school.
That said if you go through to cancellations (open til 8pm) and explain you are looking to move as you can't afford a new router they will probably offer a free router with a 12 month recontract.

Chino

colin79666 wrote: »

I'm fairly sure Sky are just about the only ADSL ISP that forces you to use their router (they lock out other routers from their network).

I'm not aware that Sky does lock-out other routers from its network, at least not for its ADSL service. From Sky's Broadband Terms & Conditions – UK:

"(j) If you wish to use a modem or any other equipment that we have not supplied to you in order to access ADSL Sky Broadband we cannot guarantee that Sky Broadband will work with these. You must not use a modem or any other equipment that we have not supplied to you in order to access Sky Fibre Broadband."

Former Be and O2 subscribers who migrated to Sky's ADSL service have been able to use their existing routers on Sky's network by entering a common username and password. I don't know if these credentials work for existing Sky subscribers but, if not, it seems that there are techniques that allow existing Sky subscribers to extract the username and password from their Sky-supplied ADSL box for use on their own box.

duchy

They are locked but it isn't hard to get past -a simple google search usually gives the info.

GunJack

you can use another one, but these days sky use MER on ADSL, so you'll need to spoof the MAC address of your existing router into the new one you buy..unless they've changed again recently...

lindabea

Thank you for all your kind replies. It sounds too complicated for me to get 3rd party router. That being the case, can someone please address the other part of my original question - if I buy a new hub from ebay do I use my current id/password do I have to use the one that comes with the new hub. Is it as simple as swapping the two.

hieveryone

I blagged a new one from Sky, phoned about something completely different and 'happened to mention' my router. Internet being slow, Smart TV couldn't find signal etc etc. New one sent out free of charge Express Post - result

lindabea

hieveryone wrote: »

I blagged a new one from Sky, phoned about something completely different and 'happened to mention' my router. Internet being slow, Smart TV couldn't find signal etc etc. New one sent out free of charge Express Post - result

I have tried to get a free one - I even offered to pay a small amount towards it, but they won't budge. When I tell them I'd go to another provider, they just said to me 'it's my perogative' . Baically, they're calling my bluff, and quite frankly, I'm generally happy with the service (been with them for 6 years) and never had any problems. I don't want to give them notice to cancel and possibly end up with an inferior service.

jbainbridge

I think you'll be fine with one of the new types off ebay. It's likely it will just work - at the very worst you'll need to change the id/password but I'm sure sky could talk you through that. Obviously the wireless password will change too.