BT Infinity or Sky Fibre? Experienced either/both?

JustAnotherSaver

I'm looking at getting fibre broadband for our house. I'm on approx. 6.7-6.9 Mbps connection at my mums so anything will be an upgrade.

I've seen plenty sites detailing the usual - the speeds offered, the download limits etc etc. On that note, Sky wins (i was planning on going with Sky as they also have the best phone deal for me & i'd be getting their TV in the near future too).

But what about behind the scenes? Fibre reliability? Any throttling.traffic managing? Hardware quality (the hub/router)? The WiFi range the hub offers.

All the stuff that the usual sites don't tell you that you actually need to know.

I'm trying to weigh up which one i should go for. On paper it is Sky but there's always more to it than the stats churned out.

pen1

I've had both- Sky, then BT.

My primary reasons for leaving Sky Fibre were related to tv options rather than the fibre performance.

Namely, giving Sky control of my phone line effectively gave them control of my pay-tv provider- they would know that I wasn't in a Virgin Media area and that I couldn't take Talk Talk TV or BT TV if the phone was with Sky- so, I decided to unravel the "bundle", so that I wasn't reliant on Sky for tv. Loyalty doesn't pay, in my view!

The differences in fibre performance have been marginal, in my experience. Both have been reliable with little downtime, router issues, or noticeable differences in wifi performance. My experience has been that there was a marginal loss of speed with Sky compared to BT.

For me, BT Sport swings things in favour of BT, but as you can see, not much of my decision-making was to do with any significant differences in fibre performance between BT & Sky.

Pincher

BT is doing a Black Friday Sale right now, looks very tasty.


Up to 38Mbps Unlimited fibre, £10 + Line Rental for 12 months, 12 months contract. £100 Sainsburys vouchers.


I don't know if you can get Quidco cashback as well.
Careful with the Sainburys voucher, you need to claim for it after activation, using the order number, so keep all the e-mails, and preferably do screen shots during the application.

There are little extras like BT Wi-Fi access (away from home), and calls from a BT app which is cheap-ish calls if you can get Wi-Fi on the move.

pinkteapot

Before you go ahead, can the router be plugged into your phone master socket?

If not - if you plan to plug it into an extension point - you may want to upgrade your internal phone wiring first. Poor quality old phone wires will seriously damage the speed you get.

Sky introduced a new hub which removes the need for Openreach to come and install your fibre. You just plug the hub into a phone socket. But it does need to be the master socket, and it costs something like £90 for Openreach to come and move your master socket.

We decided to get Virgin instead of Sky, as our 25 year house as 25 year old internal phone wiring and the master socket is immediately behind the front door (unhelpful). Virgin had an offer on for free installation so we had the router installed exactly where we wanted it with no cost.

If you go with Sky, just be aware of the above. I'm not sure how BT handle installations - if they still send an Openreach engineer to every new customer then you should be fine as they can sort out your wiring as necessary.

Pincher

Fibre uses a VDSL filter, instead of the old ADSL filter.
The new Master socket has the VDSL filter built-in, so extension sockets don't get the broadband signal. This means no more ADSL dongles. It's tidier.


Good opportunity to arrange things how you want it.


With streaming TV so prevalent, a lot of people would put the Master socket near the main TV.

pinkteapot

Pincher wrote: »

Fibre uses a VDSL filter, instead of the old ADSL filter.
The new Master socket has the VDSL filter built-in, so extension sockets don't get the broadband signal. This means no more ADSL dongles. It's tidier.

Which is why, with most ISPs, an engineer installs your fibre (by replacing your master socket I assume).

However, Sky, in order to save the cost of sending out Openreach engineers, have designed a new hub with the filter built in, so it can be plugged into an old master socket. The default now is self-install, where you plug the hub into your existing phone point yourself. Which is fine if your master socket is where you want to put your router.

Just something to be aware of with Sky, and the reason we switched away from them when upgrading from regular bb to fibre.

Pincher

pinkteapot wrote: »

However, Sky, in order to save the cost of sending out Openreach engineers, have designed a new hub with the filter built in, so it can be plugged into an old master socket. The default now is self-install, where you plug the hub into your existing phone point yourself. Which is fine if your master socket is where you want to put your router.

But what if you already have a new Master socket?


The Sky modem probably comes with the phone plug, for plugging into an extension socket. On the new Master socket, the phone socket does not have the broadband signal, so you need another cable to plug into the broadband socket.


Confusion galore.

JustAnotherSaver

Confusion indeed.

These SMART TVs - eventually we will get one for the living room when the L.R. Gets fixed. Do these connect via wired or wifi connection?

The master socket is currently in the far corner of the L.R. Which is where I don't want it. I want it in the next room - the hall. Directly above this is a box room which I'll use as a PC room & I want this to be a wired connection, not wireless & I want to keep the cat5e cable inside the house (so up the corner & through ceiling/floor).

Our current master socket was busted by the cowboy builders we had & the wires have been snapped (some of them). One suggestion was to cut this completely & say that's how it was when we got the house & they'd then have to install a new master socket ..... In the hall.

I've read various issues with sky as far as fibre goes. For me they're cheaper but for the install & first contract duration, for 'easiness' I may end up going BT.

JustAnotherSaver

The 20GB cap package would be no good to me. I'd need the unlimited. I'm sure I've asked this but I'm on my mobile at work with limited data usage, so - do BT traffic manage you at peak times in any way? Or what you get at 2am is what you'll get at 2pm, 8pm & all round the clock?

Bri1

Got SKY fibre a few months ago after waiting forever for the FTC box to be active, I'm on a long line standard broadband got to 3 -4 meg at best, SKY fibre now around 32meg, openreach came out & fitted a new spilt master socket bypassing internal wiring with direct router connection into the line & also fixed a minor line fault, I'm on £10 a month for 18 months fibre unlimited, so far the service has been stable & trouble free, not the blistering speeds that are advertised but way better download times, but strangely web pages don't really seem any faster but that's probably the websites lack of capacity for the traffic

adeysim

I can only talk about BT, but I'd strongly advise steering clear. I've recently "upgraded" to infinity and it is running at 0.5 meg: 1/6 of the speed of previous broadband and the customer service is far beyond atrocious. I've had six engineer visits arranged: twice they failed to fix the problem, twice their failed to turn up and twice they turned up without bothering to tell me they intended to (and blamed me for not being there!). Had the problem "escalated" to their executive level complaints team for 6 weeks and they've done little or nothing and I won't see anything done this side of Christmas.

Maybe Sky won't be better, but unless you hear similarly bad stories or know that BT's hardware will work straight away, avoid the pain and go for someone else.