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Re: [LUG] OT Sky Broadband

 

Ray Smith wrote:

> Apart from the setup fee which includes the wireless router (which you 
> get to keep) and as an existing customer wanting to get broadband added 
> you would pay £30 not £60 then you get up to 2mb connection speed.
> £5 gives you up to 8mb and 40GB download limit which I have never 
> exceeded despite downloading iso images and video streaming on iplayer etc.

That's if your exchange has Sky's kit in it.  If you're like me and out 
of luck it's £17 a month!!!

Still to be fair, Sky and some of the other providers are installing kit 
in lots of exchanges, I believe the Torquay exchange has the kit in it 
for a few providers but my local exchange (Shiphay I think) hasn't got 
it.  I think it's down to the amount of subscribers in the area and cost 
of the kit.  Sky aren't stupid, if there's enough demand they'll install 
the kit.


> Locked in ? Nearly every service locks you in for 12 months afaik.

Not all ISPs, although a fair few do have 12/18 month contracts.  I'm 
with Vivaciti (an Enta reseller) and I'm on a 30 day contract, have been 
since the start when I migrated in for free from AOL.

 From what I understand some of the other big ISPs (Eclipse, Zen, 
Plusnet) do also offer 30 day or 12 month contracts depending on what 
package you go for.


> for £27 I get all the mix channels, free evening & weekend calls 
> included as well as the broadband. Typicaly 5-6 meg downstream on average.

If I went down the Sky route I'd probably be paying £27 a month PLUS £17 
for broadband.  Don't forget no matter who you're with you generally 
have to pay £11 a month to BT for phone line rental (why they can't get 
rid of this £11 month charge I don't know!).

  > Had 2  problems in the last 18months with the service going off over a
> week (It would just go off for several hours over a period of 2 or 3 days)
> Both times BT admittes the problem was in the exchange and not Skys fault.

These things happen with any ISP.  I've had BT disconnect my line and 
reconnect it to someone else's line (I had their ADSL enabled line but 
couldn't login).  Probably a simple human error by a BT engineer.

> Overall I think it's a good service but disadvantages are no newsgroup 
> servers and no personal webspace.

Again a lot of providers don't provide Newsgroups access, or if they do 
it's fairly poor.  Enta don't provide newsgroup access at all although 
you're free to use another provider for this (I use Thundernews which 
unlimited is about £10 a month and yes, I have gone over my limits with 
this!).

I get free webspace and e-mail with Vivaciti, although I don't use it (I 
have an external web hosting account).  I'm probably going to switch 
over to it since it's free and gives me 250 odd meg of web space (plenty 
for me, I'm using about 5MB at the moment) and MySQL databases and 
unlimited domains (something my current provider don't do one the 
package I'm on).

I'd personally say, if you're happy with Sky TV and can get the free 
broadband (assuming you're on an Sky enabled exchange) then go for it. 
2Mbit free would be fine for most people, and at £5 for 8 meg, it 
doesn't exactly break the bank.

Rob


> 
> Ray
> 


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