I don't know whether my experience is unique (I doubt it) but all I can say is if I really had a choice, Sky wouldn't be my ISP.
Last November (2006) I decided that my 2mb ADSL link was inadequate and, faster being shunned by TalkTalk (I was a OneTel customer, part of their group, and they ... Read review
Last November (2006) I decided that my 2mb ADSL link was inadequate and, faster being shunned by TalkTalk (I was a OneTel customer, part of their group, and they wouldn't upgrade me), I went for the Sky Max Package.
Not difficult to sign up, the website said. Huh!
I checked the availability in my area and it was there, so I called them up as an existing Sky ... ...a MAC key so that Sky could take over the service provision of the voice and broadband. I called OneTel for the key and was told that I would get it a few days later. That was 30th November 2006.
Several days later, having already received my MAC key from OneTel and the Sky wireless ADSL modem router (which, incidentally, is hardcoded so you can’t change certain settings which, to a techie like me, is tantamount to treason!), ! received ... more
I don't know whether my experience is unique (I doubt it) but all I can say is if I really had a choice, Sky wouldn't be my ISP.
Last November (2006) I decided that my 2mb ADSL link was inadequate and, faster being shunned by TalkTalk (I was a OneTel customer, part of their group, and they wouldn't upgrade me), I went for the Sky Max Package.
Not difficult to sign up, the website said. Huh!
I checked the availability in my area and it was there, so I called them up as an existing Sky customer. I have the premium channels, so going for the Talk Unlimited would have been £5pm and the 16Mb broadband would have been £10pm respectively. Given that I was already paying £38 or more per month for lower speed access and a similar telephone plan with OneTel, it would have been an overall saving of around £12 each month for a faster service and better international call charges.
I was told that I would hear from the installations people in due course and that I should contact my current ISP and get a MAC key so that Sky could take over the service provision of the voice and broadband. I called OneTel for the key and was told that I would get it a few days later. That was 30th November 2006.
Several days later, having already received my MAC key from OneTel and the Sky wireless ADSL modem router (which, incidentally, is hardcoded so you can’t change certain settings which, to a techie like me, is tantamount to treason!), ! received a letter from Sky saying that there had been a technical difficulty with the order and they had been trying to contact me without success. This I found strange, because I am an IT manager of a global support team and as a consequence I am on constant on-call, so my mobile is always on and Sky had this number. Nevertheless, I call them to ascertain the problem.
Apparently, it was no biggie - the Talk Unlimited and Broadband services had to be on a BT landline and my rental was with OneTel. I called BT, arranged for them to take the line over and called Sky back to inform them that this would happen on 13th December. They said that they couldn't promise to have the broadband service up and running by Christmas, but they would try. There was no mention of the Talk Unlimited service at this time.
The new year came and went, but my Sky service didn't change. Early January I called for an update. They said that the order was progressing but there was still a technical issue. I had a feeling that I knew what the problem was with the broadband, so a week or so later I called again for an update, got the same answers and suggested that perhaps the problem was that the MAC key had expired (30 day life, apparently). Ah, yes, they said, that'll be it - get another one.
So I did. The nice people at OneTel were very helpful and I got the key a couple of days after requesting it, and duly supplied the key to the oafs at Sky. They said it would be a couple of days and all would be completed. Famous last words...
On February 5th I called up Sky again, having been shunted from pillar to post on several previous occasions and run up a stonking phone bill on their 0845 number (SAYNOTO0870.COM - look and give thanks!), and finally got to speak to someone with a reasonable level of IT expertise with whom I could converse at a peer-to-peer level (remember, I run a global IT service for a major international bank, so I know whereof I speak).
He said that my order should never have been taken in the first place as I was not a BT customer at the time, and that the plonkers in the sales department should have seen that at the time. He cancelled my order, and re-established the voice order for me. He was unable to re-do the broadband order as that had to go through a set process, so he suggested I call back the following week for a progress update.
I asked about the voice service and they said that there was no record of the order, other than it was cancelled because the telephone number wasn’t mine. It turned out that they had another number somewhere in Edinburgh (some 700 miles north of where I live) in my name and they neglected to tell me about that at the time. However, they assured me that it was now back on the system and would be ok in a short while.
In the meantime, my previously fixed monthly service from OneTel had been cancelled in anticipation of the Sky service, so my phone charges were now at the mercy of my kids (oh, gawd!).
Around a week later, I received a second (and totally redundant) ADSL wireless modem router from them, which I intend to keep as a doorstop, by the way.
I called every week from then, twice or three times each week, and every time I got the same answer: the order is still in cancellation and they can't do anything to re-order until it was cancelled. Fortunately, during this period I was still able to access the OneTel service, I was still on the internet.
Of course, come the 7th March, the MAC key again expired. Likewise, of course, the order still hadn't been cancelled. I wrote a stinker of a letter to Customer Services (as big an oxymoron as Barclays Bank - see my review of THEM for a real eye-opener), and received a reply on 27th March apologising profoundly and mentioning that the MAC key had expired causing the order to be rejected 25th March, and could I obtain another one?
So, OneTel gave me another key, and I gave that to Sky and finally my service was live 19th April 2007, a mere 20 weeks to the day after I requested it.
Is this the end of the story? Oh, no, dear reader…
The Talk Unlimited service, you will recall, was ordered way back in February, and I received notification on 9thy February that the full service (all calls, up to an hour apiece) would be included in the charges, including international calls to countries like France and the US, active from 21st February 2007. Great, I thought. I got a second letter on 22nd February confirming that the service had gone live the previous day. Even better, I thought.
So, when I received ANOTHER letter from Sky dated 9th March telling me that the service was fully operation on the 5th March (about 2 weeks later than the original date of 21st February) I was a bit concerned. I called Sky and they said that they had no idea why I received the third letter, but I should wait to see if there was a difference in the charges I was expecting on the first bill and call back then. On their 0845 number. Which is chargeable as it’s not included in their call plan. Ironic, n’est-ce pas?
Come the day when their bill flopped onto my doormat through the letterbox, and sure enough they had charged me for all the calls I had made before 5th March. I called them up YET AGAIN. An exchange of views later, where I was all but told I was orating through a hitherto excretory orifice, and I finally convinced the person down the end of the phone that I was holding three letters, one of which was entirely contradicting the other two. And, she, finally, agreed to take the charges off the bill.
Having now had the services in place for several weeks, the speed is better on broadband, and I’m getting download rates of up to 12Mb, and upload speeds up to 700Mb, which is what I expected given the distance my house is from the exchange, so the pain was eventually worth it.
…and yes, the spare router works nicely as a doorstop!
Advantages: Very fast download speeds, brilliant technical support. Disadvantages: Regular need to reboot router.
...service offered by BSkyB.
Sky currently offer an _ADSL_ broadband service which - in simple terms - means it comes down your telephone line.
Sky offer three different broadband packages with their own advantages and disadvantages.
==The Packages==
===Base===
The Base package is free to all Sky TV subscribers. The connection speed is quite slow, and there is a download limit of 2GB per month. As with all Sky Broadband packages, the router is ... ...subscribe?==
If you subscribe to Sky Broadband, you will be sent your router through the post. I subscribed before December 2007, and I received the following. The contents of the box may have changed since then, as they have updated their routers.
*1 Sky Router
*3 Broadband microfilters
*1 Yellow Ethernet cable
*1 Phone Cable (This connects your router to your phone)
*2 Router Feet (These allow your router to stand up)
*1 Sky Broadband Installation ...
Adders.P 13.04.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sky Broadband
Advantages: fast speeds, good service Disadvantages: connection drops sometimes
...the broadband service provided to Sky TV customers by BSkyB.
== Sky Broadband ==
Sky Broadband is an ADSL broadband provider, where the broadband is supplied via a landline. It is not be be confused with dial-up, as you can still use your telephone at the same time, and there will be no interferance, as your connection is split using an ADSL filter.
== Packages and prices==
There are currently 3 sky broadband packages
''' Sky Broadband Base'''
... ...*'''MONTHLY TOTAL''' £0
''' Sky Broadband Mid'''
*Sky Broadband Mid provides you with a connection of up to 8mb and has a 40GB monthly usage limit.
*The standard set up fee for new customers joining online is £30 and for existing customers taking broadband only!!!
*'''MONTHLY TOTAL''' £5
''' Sky Broadband Max'''
*Sky Broadband Max provides you with a connection of up to 16mb and has an unlimited monthly usage limit.( subject to Fair Usage Policy)
...
RyanC92 13.04.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sky Broadband
Advantages: Affordable, reliable, fast Disadvantages: Mine drops the connection every night at roughly the same time.
...so decided to switch to Sky Broadband. My old provider had been charging me for the 8MB service for 8 months but we were only getting the 2MB service which was £10 a month cheaper.
Well... Switching was simple, first we told Sky Broadband we were interested in joining them, the chap on the other end of the phone said we needed to get a MAC code from our current provider and when we got it, we were to phone back on a different number that he gave ... ...given by the Chap at Sky and read the code I was given, to another chap. This guy told me switchover usually takes around five days and I would receive my router in the post a day before I go live. He told me that on the day of the switchover we would be offline for about half an hour. He then told me the date would be the 17th. On the 16th, the router arrived, delivered by ParcelForce. On the 17th, my broadband went dead at around 15:30 (I know ...
Snorelax63 23.05.2007 (25.03.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sky Broadband
Advantages: cheap if your a sky tv subsriber Disadvantages: customer service/ email outages/web portal
...the various mailshots/adverts being a Sky tv subscriber you were hit with a deluge of promo offers from them, but decided yeah ok it is cheap £10.00 a month for their MAX service compared to Bt 's £26.99 for 8 MB but lets wait and see give it a few months to settle in.
On Feb the 1st after many fruitless hours on BT "help lines" i decided ok lets give it a bash..........
Ordered it online and after various letters giving me 5 differing go live ... ...of March, but no sky router had arrived, because of varying set up dates i was told...... but one was on it's way to me if i phoned back next day i would be able to get a consignment number to track delivery and enable me to get ensure someone was at home to accept delivery of this piece of equipment.
Duly phoned the next day and the next and the next only to be told by varying levels and departments that "oh Im sorry that hasn't been actioned I'll ...
midas1 15.04.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sky Broadband
Advantages: FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Disadvantages: Only free with SkyTalk - still cheap without though!
...here. Anyway, when Sky first informed me that they were starting to supply Broadband, I signed up immediately. I had been having major problems with TalkTalk (the most useless company I have ever encountered!) so when I heard that Sky (who had always proved to be a reliable and easily accessible company) were not only offering Broadband, but FREE Broadband, I got very excited indeed! Sky, or BskyB as the company is known, started offering Broadband ... ...and is only free to Sky Talk customers - which is fine by me as I was already with them and they are the cheapest phone provider anyway! Sky Talk is £10 a month for line rental, you get free evening and weekend calls included in this and other call are reasonable as well. Throw in the free broadband and is the cheapest by a long shot! Sky broadband works on three tariffs. Base, Mid or Max. Base - up to 2 Meg - Free (or £5) Mid - up to 8 Meg - £5 ...
laura2310 07.05.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sky Broadband
