Sky - terrible broadband speed

seans_elysees

Trying to help my in-laws. 

They stay on a small holding / rural location and have been with Sky forever. I haven’t seen the breakdown but I believe they pay approx. £100 a month sky package. They think the broadband element is £39. 

I’m really keen to see the breakdown of their billing to know what makes it up to £100 as they don’t have any sport or cinema add ons. I think they have a box in 2 rooms.  

Anyway … back to the broadband. It’s lucky to reach 4Mb download speeds. They don’t have option of fibre.  

I showed them they can get 28Mb on a 4G sim if they put a router in which seems a no brainer. 

In terms of the sky phone line , is this needed for the tv services, or could this be cancelled to save money on broadband+phone?

Flugelhorn

do they really want sky TV? could they go for freesat or freeview? if they did that then they won't need phone line 

seans_elysees

Flugelhorn said:

do they really want sky TV? could they go for freesat or freeview? if they did that then they won't need phone line 

 I did think about those options but I don’t have experience of either so wasn’t sure exactly how it worked. The most important thing is probably the user interface and tv guide menus being easy to use - and the ability to pause live content and/or record. 

They definitely need tv of some variety as they are pensioners who are home 99% of the time. 

Flugelhorn

we are pensioners and use freesat - house had a dish when we bought it, we got a freesat box from argos or somewhere for about £50  and just plugged it in - menus are fine - I suspect you can get recording systems etc (just checked - you can get a freesat box with 2TB recording )  but TBH I don't watch it that much and nothing I see is ever worth recording (though there are plenty of channels)  https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4377959?clickPR=plp:6:11 

We did try the freeview built into the TV but the aerial wasn't great and hence stuck with the freesat, am sure someone could have sorted the aerial and things would have been fine

PS just been on youtube there are quite a view videos of these boxes and how they work eg menus etc - 

PZ19

I think on the sky q box you should be able to see the breakdown of their bill on the account page.  £100 seems a lot they must be paying full price for signature and multi room.  The broadband could be in the 40s, which leaves 60 for the tv.  If they out of contract they definitely need to put a cancellation in.  Hopefully they can then renegotiate reasonable price if they want to keep certain aspects of Sky.  As mentioned elsewhere on this forum (page 705 of the Sky retentions thread) there is a package called TV Essentials which lets you keep the box for minimal fee so can continue to record the freeview programmes via the dish.  Sounds like that’s what they want for the TV.  The tv comes off the dish so they do not need broadband to watch the TV.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tv-essentials

la531983

If they are in a rural area maybe look into Starlink. Not exactly money saving but everyone I know with it raves about it.

400ixl

Sounds like they can only get ADSL where they live with no FTTC or FTTP available. You need to check what their exchange is capable of.

If they do not have a call package then they may save £1-2 a month if the exchange allows then to have have broadband without.

More importantly, it sounds like they are out of minimum term contract and rolling monthly. That is where the big savings could be, even dropping the broadband altogether if 4/5G gives them a better service.

iniltous

Sky broadband has PAYG telephone included, so unless they have a paid for calls plan they can reduce to PAYG there is no saving to be made there , you can’t drop the telephone completely, but there are other broadband/telephone providers available.

There is no need to take broadband and TV together, but without knowing the breakdown of costs, it’s pointless looking at alternative broadband suppliers until you do know , but if for example the broadband element were £50 , that probably could be reduced to £30 ish with renegotiation or switching supplier .

As far as TV , you need to know what they watch , if they are limited to 4Mb a streaming service may be pointless (Now TV for example) , so if stuck with satellite or terrestrial TV , if as most do , they watch mostly free to air stuff , Freesat or Freeview may be the way forward, dumping any subscription service……FWIW Sky seem to be pushing streaming as the way forward so satellite pricing may be worse to encourage customers away from satellite delivery, obviously this  isn’t great for those with poor broadband speeds