following about 6-7 weeks of rather poor broadband service from Sky I've been effectively forced in to considering my options for a new provider of the old tinterweb. For weeks I've been back and forth to sky with no real help from them in terms of a broadband engineer visiting my house, the issue has been fairly regular but because it's not shown on their software they've been very reluctant to take things any further, perhaps thinking I enjoy spending hours of my time on the phone to them, and i mean hours upon hours Anyway since I asked to be put through to cancellations it seems somebody has finally bothered to do something (a little late in my opinion) and they've booked an engineer in for Monday, however following that I got another call from a more senior Sky CRT Broadband member explaining that the engineer may not be able to offer much help as he's personally been aware of a likely REIN issue on my street since early November. Now I've read up about REIN, and almost understand what he means, but the fact I've been put through the meat grinder for weeks whilst all along they've suspected the issue has rather dented my view of their previous good level of service. As such I want to move to a new provider BT infinity currently have an offer on which ends tomorrow, it's £10/month and only a 12 months contract, for that they'll even put a brand new line in to the house foc to try and eliminate any possibility of the unconfirmed REIN issue. Obviously I'll get bt sports and the new hub 5 router which has had some great reviews and runs gigabit ethernet ports and ac wireless (sky's routers pale in comparison) I've been told if indeed my street is suffering from REIN then moving to fibre is a better bet as at least you reduce the amount of copper cabling, I guess that makes sense as copper can vibrate with frequency but light firing down an optics cable wouldn't be affected So now is crunch time, if I decide to go with bt, sky will probably want early termination fees as technically I'm contracted with them until end of March even though that's because they've re-contracted me over the 6 year's I've been with them Is BT Infinity any good? Or am I jumping from the fireplace in to the fire?
BT installation service is shocking but once you've got through that the actual super fast broadband service does what it's meant to do. I'd change. But be prepared for heartache whilst they put it in.
Cheers, frankly it can't be any worse than the last 7 weeks so if they can plumb it in with minimal hassle I'll be happy
@damodici there is one thing you need to confirm and that is you have fibre to the house. A lot of Infinity installations are fibre to a box near you and then copper to the house. This type of installation is NOT the best. As Sky use the BT telephone line, I suspect it is a BT problem with their infrastructure so you may gain nothing. Andy
Personally I rate BT well below Sky and would never use them again. It's unfortunate you have had to endure Sky's poor service but sometimes the grass is not always greener. I would be very reluctant to pay terminations fees into the bargain. At worst I would wait until my contract expired and review the situation then. I have always found Sky to be extremely helpful and it looks like they may be having problems with BT fixing the problem as they own the cabling, sadly their hands may be tied.
I moved from O2Broadband to BT once murdochs sky empire took over. BT install was perfect and the service has been 100% since. I have no complaints. Plus I get MotoGP. Bonus.
Many people don't realise that nearly all (if not all) land line telephone / broadband services run via the cabling and exchange (known as 'plant') which is all BT property (AKA Open Reach).......this means that every time there is a problem with the service there is split responsibilty between BT and whoever supplies the service........even if BT supply the service. So, what happens if there is an issue, each party blames each other and you get nowhere.........but it's a bit easier to sort if you are with BT.
This has been my experience, was with freeserve/wanadoo/orange/EE for years but as soon as EE took over I had connection/drop-out problems (I reckon they blew all their budget on Kevin Bacon's wages) I was constantly passed to and fro between EE (ISP) and BT (infrastructure) and never getting anywhere, each blaming the other. I changed to BT internet and eventually got the problem sorted and now have a stable service. Wish I could get fibre though... :Grumpy:
My experience with BT and a separate service provide is that if there was a job that BT had to do to enable me to use the service provided by a third-party, a terrifying blame storm occurred. Each blamed the other but - most importantly - it was BT's fault. They were the ones with the ability and the legal requirement to do their bit but they instead spent much of their energy on attempt to change my mind about who supplied my broadband. No thank you - if a firm proves itself to be corrupt and malfeasant, it does not get my custom.
Wife deals with all this shite. I think were with BT broadband whatever that means. All sport, bike racing, the lot. Its only two and a half grand a month. Bargain.... She tells me
Keep on at them...........I did and not only did they replace the underground cabling, I was also refunded 6 years worth of phone and broadband bills............about £3K, in fact.......
As an Openreach employee I have sympathy with everyone who is having problems with their broadband, be it a BT product or from another ISP. Yes, Openreach do own the network that most suppliers use ( unless you live in a city with cabled streets) and it does sometimes need upgrading. There is still a lot of aluminium cable in the ground which has a detrimental effect on broadband speeds, and it doesn't matter who you are with, any line conditions will affect your service. Infinity is a good product provided you are close to the cabinet that supplies you. I'm told that if you live 1.5km from the cabinet, then the service drops off quite considerably and is therefore not worth changing. If you have REIN issues in your street then I suspect you will not get the most from Infinity until the problem is cured. That doesn't mean you won't get a better service than you currently have, as the fibre to the cabinet will have a major effect on speeds as you've removed a lot of copper cable from the equation. Good luck and I hope this helps, Chris
Well I've bitten the bullet and just placed my order with BT Infinity fibre, free BT Sports (which is already active amazingly) and all for the princely sum of £10/month on a 12 month contract Spoke to a chap in billing department at Sky and his estimate if I left now was only £25-£30 as we've already paid up until mid January, my BT install isn't until end of January so realistically I'll owe them about a month, so likely less than a tenner. To be fair I think it's the best move, I've been with Sky for nearly 7 years at this address and I've given them everything (TV,telephone and broadband) without that much in the way of special offers coming my way. I don't expect anything, but when you've paid so much and seen all these new customer offers miles cheaper than what I paid it does annoy me somewhat knowing I've had a rough ride this last few weeks As I'm technically out of SKY TV contract I'm in more control having split my suppliers, perhaps they'll buck their ideas up and make me a decent TV offer to re-contract for 12 months especially as they know BT will be fighting for the business. If not then it's no issue, I guess it leaves me free to explore what deals are available. It sounds strange but hitting that 'place order button' was almost quite liberating Let's just hope come the last weekend of January I'm not logging in via my 4g phone moaning I have no tinterweb Now then, when's the next motogp testing on bt sports?
Sorry but it's owned by Openreach " a BT group business" Haven't read all the threads however if you have broadband over what's quoted as the BT network don't fall into the trap some "End users" that's the person who pays the c/p carrier provider, anyhow should you have an issue with your broadband and don't think it's getting resolved, moving to another carrier most likely will NOT clear the issue. Right now wait for the flack, I'm an openreach engineer an deal with broadband, it can sometime a be a quick fix, and sometimes a nightmare, quite often the c/p will not raise a unique broadband fault for openreach to deal with until they have raised what's called a CDTa fault which is constant decision to appoint, sorry for the jargon this is a field engineer visit so that we can determine that the line passes a pair quality test, once this had been done it's down to the c/p to raise a broadband boost task or sfi Hope this helps a bit
I'm still on the copper cables, over a mile from the exchange; but because I got BT to stick me on a dedicated pair (which probably isn't now) I get 6Mb -7Mb download (minimum) in a rural area..............but they just been through here with fibre optic.......... ..............but I don't want it.............
We emailed, openreach about a week ago to basically complain about the speed, and the coverage in the house from the hub. No response to date. I recall a discussion with openreach at the time and I honestly was sure I was talking to BT, but anyway, the lady on the line explained that no matter who I went with, they still needed to use the BT supply/lines.
