Sky broadband questions

Neville_Hillyer

I am thinking of signing up for Sky's almost totally free broadband and line rental for a year. I already have my voucher code but I have these two questions:

1 - Am I correct in thinking that Sky prohibits use of 18185 but 0808 1 703 703 still works satisfactorily?

2 - I see that I am required to pay for delivery of Sky's router but will they prevent me using my own Router?

A.Penny.Saved

Yes, SKY does prevent the use of 18185 type override providers but the 0808 freephone number is supposed to work okay even though it is more expensive and a bit of a hassle.

You can use your own router on Sky which can make an enormous difference to the connection speed. I must add that I got moved from Be Broadband [BB] to Sky so they setup the old Be Router that I was using at the time which was firmware limited by the ISP to prevent adjustments to the SNR margin. I do have my own router(s) but the one that I was using with BB got fried by a lightning storm and an identical router that I had I could not get working for some reason so I had to use a 585 Speedtouch which was supplied by BB which I dislike.

After connection I only got 5.4-5.5Mb/s, down from around 7 Mbit at BB and the upload fell to below 800 Kbit/s from 1.3 Mbit.

I have recently got the identical router to the one that got fried working with Sky, which was easier than I thought it would be and my connection speed is now 7.42Mbit/s down 864Kbit/s up with a large SN margin on the upload which I am still not happy with because my line should be capable of a lot more. 8.0dB of SN margin on the upload is far too high and wasteful. The download connection speed is now higher than it ever was at BB, stable for 20 days. If only I can sort out the upload then I would be much more pleased with it.

Currently on a rolling contract with Sky as I never signed anything and I am paying far too much for broadband @£15 ATM.

If only SKY did not prevent the override providers they would be fairly good for what I need.

I am now considering the SKY deal and have been considering the SSE deal as well but there are a lot of unknowns with SSE, including whether override providers work, connection speed, using my own router etc etc. Which is a big list of etc.

Neville_Hillyer

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Some posts elsewhere say Sky will not give you your username and password and that you have to discover these with eg wireshark but it appears that you did not encounter this issue.

You may find that the cheapest deals are not available to continuing customers. In the past I found that TalkTalk were happy to treat me as a new customer after an 11 month lapse but I think I recall reading that Sky require 12 months plus.

teddysmum

Neville_Hillyer wrote: »

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Some posts elsewhere say Sky will not give you your username and password and that you have to discover these with eg wireshark but it appears that you did not encounter this issue.

You may find that the cheapest deals are not available to continuing customers. In the past I found that TalkTalk were happy to treat me as a new customer after an 11 month lapse but I think I recall reading that Sky require 12 months plus.

After my free broadband and tv offer ended (bonus for transferring from O2), I haggled free line rental with broadband at full price (ie £10 because of £5 discount for having the phone line, but £7.50 when I took tv again) without leaving.