Sky Broadband Vs Virgin Broadband

screid

Hi,

I currently have a virgin phone line (£11 per month) which is just used to connect to my SKY+ box (£55 per month with multiroom). I want to have broadband to use for msn, emails and surfing. What are my options? If i have SKY do i have to change to BT? Waht are the costs know and hidden, basically what the easiest, cheapest and best for what i want?

Any help/advice gratefully received.

Thanks, Shaun

BaileyB

If you are already with Virgin i stay with them, unless you want to do alot of downloading as they do cap the speed during the day/evening.

If you got with Sky you will need a BT line (option 1)

duchy

I toyed with the idea of Sky but came to the decision that it wasn't worth switching from Virgin as I'd have to pay to install a BT line-plus Sky don't have catch up TV.
I do occassionally renegociate my Virgin package by saying I'm thinking of going over to Sky though-and it always works Last year I added a 2nd V box to my package and my bill reduced down by £25 a month-this year I added an extra phone line and my total package reduced by £2 so each time I got more but ended up paying less than before.

PaulK_3

If you don't have a BT line in use you may have to pay to get one connected, you will then also need to pay line rental. Speeds on ADSL will depend on how far from exchange you are, condition of line, condition of equipment at exchange and condidtion of equipment connected to the line etc.
If you drop the virgin line then the difference overall wii be good as Sky BB is cheaper than VM but the initial set up cost may negate that.

bockster

i'm just signing up with sky, and unbeknown to me, i can pay sky for the bt line rental. £10 pm. a little cheaper than bt.
not sure if this is widely known.

syko29793

Be carefull your not in contract with BT. If you switch you will be charged for terminating your contact (£70 or more) All new customers are put in a 12 month min contract so all cable customers who changed to BT since may 07 will be affected.

Marty999

We switched from Virgin TV/telephone/broadband to the equivalent Sky package. We did not have a problem with Virgin, but we couldn't miss out on Lost and 24 on Sky One! I never wanted a satellite dish on the front of our house but it actually blends in well and is not overly noticeable. And the Sky package works out slightly cheaper overall than Virgin so we are very pleased.

Yes you do have to switch to a BT line and this costs £124.99 but as we did this specifically to get Sky installed, Sky have refunded this in full by crediting our account, which we thought was excellent customer service.

No problems with Sky as yet, in fact the TV is better as all the menus change quicker and actually work - the red button and text etc. never did work on our Virgin box. One other advantage is that when I do need to ring Sky customer service, I can get through pretty much straight away and speak to a British person. With Virgin I used to wait 20 minutes or so to speak to someone, and invariably they were overseas and not easy to communicate with.

One final point to bear in mind is that it would be worth being 'introduced' to Sky. Our friends recommended us and we each got £50 M&S vouchers as a thankyou. I think they usually have a similar enticing offer available.

continualdiamond

It all depends how easy you want things to be. We have all 3 services with Virgin and pay £40 a mth for - Tv XL, broadband M, talk evenings/weekends, v box and v+ box. We were going to switch to sky as had a few problems with bills lately, but the cost of installing a BT line and the hassle of it all just made us decide to stay with what we've got and to give Virgin credit when things do go wrong, as much as it annoys me that a problem has happened, i do get discounts everytime i ring up.

Stubert

Mr_Kennedy wrote: »

If you are already with Virgin i stay with them, unless you want to do alot of downloading as they do cap the speed during the day/evening.

No, they don't.

Well it can largely depend on what area you live in. But generally they only monitor your account if you download over 3 gigs between 6pm and 12am.

samtheman_2

best option is £4.50 2 meg unlimited bb for 1 year with virgin - goes to £9 after 1 year - minimum disruption/fuss for you

sra

MOVING THREADS FOR BETTER RESPONSES

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL]