A service second to...... (Sky Broadband)

Member Name: chrisc92

Product:	Sky Broadband
Date:	19/06/09 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Basic connection speed free, and provides e-mail addresses

Disadvantages: Connection speed dependent on phone line. Poor technical help

Firstly I'd like to point out that I wanted to review sky in general but on my initial search I couldn't locate them on the dooyoo catalogue - probably not trying hard enough but never mind

We've been with Sky broadband for approximately 7 months as the flat we moved to last year had a BT landline (another story) and unfortunately Virgin don't install in flats! We subscribe to Sky+ and as part of that deal we get the basic package for nothing, but it is anticipated that Sky will start charging in the region of £3-£5 within the next year.

They do offer a range of packages, and as our connection speed is under 2Mbs we have thought about it, but due to the connection speed in our area the maximum speed we can achieve is less than 3, so not really worth it for us.

On moving to our house, we found bt and sky both came up with the well known clause that if you cancel you're liable to the remaining part of the contract charges, hence we will be with both of them until next year (2010).

Sky do provide a wireless router, manual and a set up disc, but if you're like us you don't need any of the software, and in fact most of it impeeds your pc's performance - particularly the McAfee antivirus provided. The router normally just gets sent out in the post, so for some setting up the internet can be quite daunting. As part of the service you also get 10 e-mail addresses (and storage space I think - I'm not totally sure on this as we all use hotmail), and a monthly usage allowance of 2Gb.

We do often have exceptional diffulties with the connection speed as we have 2 pcs and a laptop sharing - this does lead to problems such as freezing which we can't avoid.

I have used Virgin before and we have every intention of moving to them (for phone, tv and broadband) once the intial contracts run out. Still for a free service you can't complain too much. The government have recently suggested that everyone should have at least a 2Mbs connection, but realistically this is already too slow and will not be worth the extra cost they are intending to levy.

They offer a 24 hour technical helpline (08702), which takes ages to access (and cost money), on one occassion nearly 30 minutes, and they often pass you around the department as they there seems to be a lack of any real genuine IT professionals. The last experience we had was because the team dealing with the moving of our sky tv forgot to pass our information on to their broadband team - so they terminated our contract! (It resulted in us being passed through to the sales team to reconnect).

If you want to use sky broadband make sure your area supports a higher connection speed and don't forget that whatever speed they quote is normally the maximum for your area and rarely is ever achieved.

I'm not a great fan of sky but like everything else - the choice is yours. Good luck

Summary: A reasonable level of service, but is it worth it?