I must say these are very good deals. I'm most certainly be changing to Sky Broadband when it becomes available. Sadly i can only get the Connect option, so i need to see what Pipex can do for me first.

Also...



Even though i have a wireless router, its pretty good to get another one for free

Sky Broadband

Dang 16mb down Unlimited for £10! That's a pretty sweet deal.
That modem/router looks like a re-branded NetGear

I just wanna know what the fair usage paolicy is gonna be on the max one

I've already registered with Sky, I was told there network services base, mid and max would be available in the new year, but I can get connect till then. Will more than likely be jumping ship from BT, just too expensive.

Weird, there is NO reference to the fair usage policy, it just says there will be one

I can get 4.5mb unlimited, although p2p stuff is capped, but no download limit for £33.99 with my current ISP, or this, up to 8mb, with a 40gb cap, unlimited, £17 + £40 activation

Would love 16Mbit - But the exchange will only support 8Mbit.

But the question is, do they cap any port's ?

I hope not, but these days alot of ISPs are, like mine, Pipex which has really annoyed me. You will only be able to find out when it gets released and people have talked about it etc

You NEED Sky TV to have this package, so its gunna come down the dish by my guess, so shouldnt anyone be able 2 get the full 16mb ?

And how reliable is this going to be ? i mean there is some noise on cable broadband, satalite is notorious for data loss in bad weather, and i wonder how this will affect people on Sky HD, theres already going to be serious bandwidth coming down one dish ?

Need more Info how it works tbh.

The router is made by Netgear.

With the advent of Local Loop Unbundling they can use their own gear in the exchange and offer better speeds - I can't remember how! It definately doesn't use the dish though. It depends on distance from the exchange too I guess?

The speed could actually be 24 meg, but they're not promoting it as they can't guarantee it (so they said at the launch this week), so with the right conditions it could be more than 16 meg.

Satellite isn't actually always at fault as far as data loss goes - more Sky deciding to use dishes smaller than the recommended footprint for the satellites. My dish is 90cm and has never once lost Sky, where as the minidish on the roof drops it a few times a year.

A dish just reflects what ever is going on at the LNB, which just converts the signals down to a lower frequency and amplifies them. It's more the hardware that has to cope with it... You could have an Octo LNB, or even a whole 16 output system with a quattro LNB all doing HD and it would be fine.

It used IP Stream, and to get the 16MB speeds Sky need to have put the equipment in your local exchange. Currently around 28% have been enabled.

If you're a Sky customer they'll be writing to you with the specifics of when the service will be available to you.

I dont think its comming down through the dish, you need a BT line

Well i have Sky HD so im sure im fine

You need a BT line for SKY tv anyway

^^^ The irony Hello Dan

-Rich-

Now this really interests me, currently we are paying £24.99 just for 4Mb broadband with NTL, with Sky we could get 8Mb broadband and two TV packages for £20.

When it's all rolled out and you take Sky Broadband you can also elect to take Sky Talk which is being updated.

You can choose to dump BT altogether then and pay Sky your line rental soon, just like Talk Talk and HomeChoice I think.

When I first read the press articles and the giant billboards, I thought thats great, much, much better than my NTL deal.

But without reading too much about it, I belive too good to be true/too much too soon
.

Come on, £10 for 16MB broadband.

But time will tell.

Well if its just for sky users, then i think it will work, but if its open to everyone (which i dont think it is), i dont think the price will stay the same.

No you don't. You need a fixed and operational line to have Sky Multiroom or in the first 12 months of a non-multiroom contract.

Sky+ and Sky HD can also require you to have a phone line - check the contract.

But in any case you do NOT need a BT line.

One thing you guys are all missing here... It's "upto 16Mb". Meaning that it can be anywhere in between at peak times.

From another website:

Regarding Sky's fair use policy:

My email to sky

From: *email removed*
Sent: 20 July 2006 20:20
To: skydigital@sky.com
Subject: Sky Digital

Question: Hello. I am interested in getting Sky Max Broadband when it
becomes available in my area, but i was hoping you could give me some
details on the "fair use policy" and what exactly "unlimited" means. I
regularly test and distribute free Linux Distributions so a high(ish)
monthly bandwidth might occur from time to time.


Sky's email to me

Hi Christopher

Thank you for contacting us.

We've not published our Fair Use Policy (FUP), but should hopefully be doing
so shortly via our website. Fair usage is about making sure that our
customers who don't want to use as much can get fairer pricing based on
their needs. Usage allowance is made up of the total amount of bandwidth
you use, in GB, to upload content to the internet plus the bandwidth you use
to download content from the internet.

In order to establish what's available in your area and when, please feel
free to pre-register your interest via www.skybroadband.com

Hope this helps

Regards
Graeme

Plus it's DSL... I'll stick to my 10mbit soon to be 100mbit cable

I'm getting the Mac package with the 5 quid a month talk package.
16Mbps eh, I can only get 5.5 atm but what the hell. It's a damnsight cheaper than what I'm paying now!
Those complete mother ****ers wont let us get Max now apparently, the connect package is **** anyway so ARRGHH.

ALL ISPS ARE COMPLETE CRAP!

Ordered We can only get Connect. Should have it within 10 days.

Ordered mine last week, have the router and everything. Mine is going to be activated tomorrow so looking forward to it!

The odd thing though, they said i can only have the internet on my Mac OR PC. I said, my PC is wireless so my router will be sending the signal, and he said no it will only work on one of them. Is it just a dumb techy or is he right?

Im using my router anyway, the sky one will be a back up.

Edit: Was waiting on the phone for 3 hours if you include last night!

Ignore the guy, he was obviously smoking weed during the phone call.

As for the router, here is another catch.. you have to use THEIR router, not your own. Their routers have a special firmware, so the router can only work with their own service.

I dont like that idea, we will have to see when i get it then.

www.skyuser.co.uk is the place you want to go about SkyBroadband.

But what i said is true, you can't use you're own Router since they use a special Authetication technique.

It looks nice and cheap really! Cheaper than Plusnet, and a higher download limit

BLUEYONDER! NO CAPS ON ALL.

More likley if max is available next year.

Blueyonder will be up to 20mbps Gaurnteed! Cant beat them..

not even capped aswell...

Hopefully i should get my router tomorrow

well i still dont have my router and sky is connecting me today, which means i still cant use it without their router. thank god for the neighbours not protecting their router

Looks like people have had some sucess getting their broadband to work without Sky's modem: http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showflat.php?C...mp;o=0&vc=1

Constant cutting off, i download at 50kbps! i barely stay connected for more than 5mins!

Disable uPnP apparently there's a bug which can cause problems. Also what are your line stats? SNR?
Also change wireless to Auto 108Mbps mode

My connection is running quite well although it does slow in the evenings

hinz

Mine is running perfectly. Dependant on the website I'm downloading from I typically get 1.2MB/s download speeds which is pretty cool

Unfortunately I have problems transferring files between computers using their router although I'm not yet convinced that isn't a Windows Vista problem.

how do i get to all of this?

Still waiting on roll out to Glasgow. Gonna grab the max account when its available.Till then Im gonna stick to Nildram

Well in the south east (london) sky are mucking people around left, right and centre.

They were saying they'd do things, and then not, and after waiting 9 weeks for connection, i gave up. Others are still waiting.

Sky are ok, but dont expect anything from their customer service

Talked to a nice lady on the phone, moved to tier 2. hopefully going to get a call within 48hrs. Most likely going to cancel it

Wish I could get more than 512kbps .

It is because the line is terrible where we live, it was only about two years ago since we could first get broadband (that was an amazing day).

Ha same, 2 years ago i got broadband when i moved house

You should be able to get to this by going to the default router page 192.168.0.1 then click on uPnP and disable that and then go to wireless settings and change it to the Auto 108Mbps mode. Hopefully that should keep your connection on for a while. To get your line stats goto the router status page and click 'show statistics'

hinz

Maybe you might get less than your max speed during peak times due to contention but thats not what they mean by upto 16mbit


The reason they say upto is becuase its delivered by ADSL 2+ now adsl 2+ can in theory support downstream speeds of upto 24mbit/s however you need a VERY short very good line to get that

In order to get 16mbit u'd have to be fairly close to the exchange and be on a decent copper pair.

The further you are from your local exchange the longer the line and consquently the higher the losses will be.

The condition of the line also affects it, if you happen to be unlucky enough to be on a crappy cable pair then it will quite possibly limit the maxium speed you can get.


I don't know how skys adsl 2+ equipment works but if its anything like adsl Max the ADSL modem will negoate the speed with the DSLAM and go for the max speed it can reliably sustain.

Also the Sky BB box looks like a netgear router becuase it is, Sky routers are rebaged netgears running Skys custom firmware (although i have heard that its possible to reflash them with the stock Netgear firmware)

Does anyone have the email address for sky broadband?

Yep there customer service is the pits and myself and my wife have had first hand experience of this.

even if i did still have sky i certainly wouldnt get there broadband as they say you get what you pay for and yes it does look good on paper but i seriously doubt the connections will be anything like they say it will.

I think i will stick with my ultra stable nildram connection at least i know what i am getting for my money

Well first off, hello everyone, i am currently employed by Sky as a Tier 2 Techincal Support Agent, i may have dealt with one or more of your problems, after reading over the various posts or should i say Complaints

I would just like to remind people that Sky has started a new venture and along with every new venture comes problems, mainly minor teething problems, our tier 1 agents are scattered across 3 different areas across the UK and the Phillipines, they are given the best possible in house training I have experienced..

Each tier 1 agent uses a program designed by Sky software developers which is called Chordiant, its basically a troubleshooting program which takes the agent through various steps to try and help them help the customer.

This program is constantly being updated and in all honesty lacks vital and yet so simple steps which would help the agents overcome customer faults and problems ( We are encouraged to speak out and request more to be added to this)
Tier1 agents must follow the Chordiant system accordingly and are not allowed to offer support to customers if it is not stated in the Chordiant program, which i think is bad customer service, but also good, in a way.
i.e A customer cannot connect their laptop using a built in wireless adapter with the sky router, our agents MUST instruct the customer that this is not Skys problem and that they don't support any other hardware which is not sold by them, and that the customer must contact their Laptop manufacturer... the agents are trained to know how to fix this problem, why i don't know..

On the topic of Skys mail service on the skybroadband home page.. yes the page has been down for as long as i can remember, and yes 99% of skys customers cannot access their email service, sky is obviously full aware of this problem and don't see it is being a priority problem, wish they would though.

As Sky broadband customers know, you must have a BT installed Phone line in order to use the service..

BT are laughing their balls off, Sky is paying BT for use of their Exchanges and when one goes down or there is a fault, do BT Engineers rush to fix this in aid of Sky? No... they are probably taking longer than usual on purpose in hope that Customers who have left BT internet for Sky get fed up with no connection that they end up going back to BT anyway..

If a tier1 agent cannot help a customer and has exhausted all the steps in the Chordiant Program, it is either passed on to Tier2 for further tests or tier3 who are now NOT recieving incoming calls, basically tier3 agents are only an outbound service now, they have a list of over 3000 callbacks to make ( and from what i hear that is between 8 staff ) so if your waiting on a callback from tier 3 for a fault, expect at least one week.

Feel free to ask questions.

Waited nearly 2 weels for a call. none. emailed to cancel, got a reply saying it would take about 10days, still connected.

as i said there saxondale, tier 3 has maximum of 8 staff on at any one time, we used to transfer customer through directly, but the waiting time customers were experiencing was about 4 hours, and lets be honest, who is going to sit on the phone for 4 hours and wait for someone to answer? I wouldnt certainly not!

with only 8 staff ( More being trained ) and over 3000 callbacks to make it's impossible to put a date stamp on a callback for any customer, tier 1 agents are advised to tell customer it MAY take up to 5 days.. lol

Another huge flaw is tier three will open a customers 'ticket' to preview before calling them, and not have enough or not have the required information for them to establish the problem, and will deny the ticket and it will go back to tier one again, and that means the tier one agents just have to wait for the customer to phone back again, which they always do, and are always anrgy - obviously.

madness, but as i stated, its a new project for Sky, and all levels of this are constantly improving, my advice to anyway would be - Leave it for 6 months then make the switch to Sky.

Thanks,i really want them to cancel my account now, but its taking a long time for some reason. Also, no other company support their MAC codes, they use a different system dont they? well thats what i got told from a sky techy

As for waiting long on your cancellation, are you 100% that it is cancelled lol

And are you sure a tech told you the info on MAC code and not the Cancellation team, which is rubbish anyway!?

Perhaps it was the same tech who also told you that you can only have one laptop/desktop connected at one time lol