Thinking of moving to Sky Broadband. Advice?

**Damien** · 17-03-2009, 19:35

So. I am on Sky TV as off last month as Virgin TV was just poor. However now I am having trouble with Virgin as they refuse to downgrade my phone line. Costing me an extra Â£26 a month!

Now, Sky looks good here! Up to 16mb for Â£10! and the phone line looks cheap. Don't use it much so it's free + phone rental.

So questions:

How good is Sky Broadband? Fast? Reliable?
My Line rental is with Virgin, Can I move it right to Sky? Online thing seems to be telling me I need it with BT
Could I use Vonage with Sky?

Cheers

Peter_ · 17-03-2009, 19:40

Are you with Cable or National for your broadband.

**Damien** · 17-03-2009, 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moldova

Are you with Cable or National for your broadband.

Cable

Peter_ · 17-03-2009, 19:45

Well your phone line is not with BT then and you may need to get a BT line installed.

Paul · 18-03-2009, 06:17

You cannot use a carrier opt out on the sky talk system, speeds will depend on how far you are from exchange, condition of line etc. If you call up sky and talk to them about it they have to give you a proper speed estimate now so you will know roughly what to expect in "ideal world" conditions.
We have 16Mb here and it's stable 99% of the time and to date we have only ever called Sky once about the ADSL and that was right at the beggining.
If you go with Sky talk line rental they can sort the installation out for you but you cannot order against the line till it's been active 10 days so that it's on the BT database properly.

Pierre · 18-03-2009, 09:43

I had Sky BB and was very happy, I was originally on Virgin ADSL and swapped to SKY and although they were both over the same wires the Sky service was better.

Another bonus is if you take out a Sky credit card, you earn money off your Sky bill. I use my card for work expenses which I pay off every month and regularly get £20 per month off my Sky bill.

southwell · 18-03-2009, 10:01

If you don't have a BT line then if you phone Sky they might foot the bill to install it. I phoned up the other week and the offer was available to new customers but apparently will be available to existing too.
The only other thing to check is the distance to your exchange:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

Get the postcode, then use multimap to find out your distance. This will only be road distance, not line so it's not 100%.

I was on Sky BB at my old house, 1.6km from the exchange and got 15mb. The modem did switch off every now and again but on the whole it was excellent.

Peter_ · 18-03-2009, 10:30

Damien is sorted according to another thread.

**Damien** · 18-03-2009, 13:52

Indeed I am. Thanks Everyone

Matth · 18-03-2009, 23:03

Just to tidy up, I'd guess you could use Vonage with any telco, even those with a rocksolid tie-up and no prefix or preselection escape, as it goes via broadband, taking the telco out of the equation. Only thing that may not be possible is transferring the number to Vonage.

Welshchris · 19-03-2009, 02:20

My sister switched from Virgin 10mb to Sky upto 16mb and shes very happy indeed. gets around 9-12mb most of the time.

zoombini · 30-03-2009, 16:00

Sky prices will be increasing by £5 if you do not have the phone packages (even the free one will be fine).

you also need to be a Sky TV subscriber to have the broadband.

As usual, the CS are in Asia

and hard to understand.