sky or virgin broadband

[dannyboyno7]

hi, yesterday i signed up to sky broadband, unlimited up to 20 mb. I am currently a virgin customer on up to 10 mb. Am i doing the right thing leaving virgin? will my 20 mb with sky be faster than virgins 10? or is virgins fibre optic still the best around? i download nzb's via newsgroups will i loose download speed with sky? Any opinions on this would be much appreciated. thanx in advance.
P.S if this post would serve better in a different sectioN, plEASE let me know. thanx again!

[chucklor]

Hi Dannyboy, I think that if you read the general opinion on this site is that virgin is far superior than sky for broadband, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I have just signed up for sky TV but would not personaly have their phone and BB, and when they say UP TO 20mb I don't think you will get anywhere near that speed ...chuck

[masur123]

I have been with virgin since they were NTL and will agree that their boradband service is 2nd to none in this country.

[welshf]

do a speed test with sky bb and i will be very surprised if you get 8mb i was going to change over due to n3 but sky bb can only offer me 3mb in my area. like masur123 said virgin bb are 2nd to none

[andy1weir]

i would stick with virgin for your bb mate, i have sky unlimited upto 20mb, but i only get 2mb at max, even at that it fluctuates all the time had to call them twice so far so have the speed dialled in correctly, and havent even had it a year yet

[chroma]

I live a quarter of a mile from my local exchange and i managed to top out at 5762kbps up and 214kbps down sync rate on SkyBB.
Never saw anything past 5meg and if it was busy you generaly got pinged a resync so it slowed it even further to around 3mb :/

Couldnt get off the service fast enough, but stupidly opted for a years contract!

Wouldnt touch sky again with a fifty foot pole.

Running tests from Be* i wound up at just over 17meg down, so i have no idea what the hell sky where playing at.
you also get tied in to "their router" meaning you cant hook up your own gear to the feed.
Have no control over your DSLAM so you cant edit noise profiles on the fly or change your protocol between ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL-RE/ADSL2+ like you can on some other services.

Customer service was also a complete joke, especialy if you knew exactly what you wanted to do, a simple profile switch to adjust for your SNR and they where completely lost.

[foras]

id stick with virgin sky seems slow sometimes

[johnboy1974]

stick with virgin and their free newsgroup servers with 5 days retention

[HoTTDubbER]

upload speed are going up in next few months also see here
Virgin Media : Press Office : Press Release

10mb download will have 1mb upload
20mb download will have 2mb upload
50mb download will have 5mb upload

you just cant beat that service and speeds

[keshee]

virgin media yes yes yes , change your bb supplier mate

[Canker_Canison]

A friend has sky BB, only because VM are not in the area. Sold on 8Mb speeds.... He's actually getting between 1-2Mb. Then 3pm comes round & he can't even get on-line.

He now relies on his Blackberry for e-mails & internet browsing.

[dannyboyno7]

Thanx everyone for your opinions, i think i new realy sky's wasnt as good as virgin but was just tryin to convince my self otherwise. Its the sky+ & hd sports i want realy now that my starview box is dead. But the pakage with tv broadband and phone realy suits us! I think i get 28 days from when it's installed to change my mind, so will see what speeds i get and then decide!

[damian1888]

aye and remeber that mr banson hates you to download anything torrents or bittorrent are heavly frowned on by him the need for speed again,st the need to download

[janobi]

I live a quarter of a mile from my local exchange and i managed to top out at 5762kbps up and 214kbps down sync rate on SkyBB.
Never saw anything past 5meg and if it was busy you generaly got pinged a resync so it slowed it even further to around 3mb :/

Couldnt get off the service fast enough, but stupidly opted for a years contract!

Wouldnt touch sky again with a fifty foot pole.

Running tests from Be* i wound up at just over 17meg down, so i have no idea what the hell sky where playing at.
you also get tied in to "their router" meaning you cant hook up your own gear to the feed.
Have no control over your DSLAM so you cant edit noise profiles on the fly or change your protocol between ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL-RE/ADSL2+ like you can on some other services.

Customer service was also a complete joke, especialy if you knew exactly what you wanted to do, a simple profile switch to adjust for your SNR and they where completely lost.

Ok, BE can offer different/higher speeds as they have adsl2 equipment in most exchanges. Therefore they can offer upto 24mb, although its still dependent on line length and quality. You will never get 24mb off any provider, majority of lines inside the exchanges can only get 22mb, so no way you going to get 24mb any where outside the exchange.

Sky BB support are not technical, and have no control over the network or what you have asked mate. They would need to log a ticket with BT Wholesale, who would then run a whoosh test and configure accordingly.

[thered]

Thanx everyone for your opinions, i think i new realy sky's wasnt as good as virgin but was just tryin to convince my self otherwise. Its the sky+ & hd sports i want realy now that my starview box is dead. But the pakage with tv broadband and phone realy suits us! I think i get 28 days from when it's installed to change my mind, so will see what speeds i get and then decide!

the main thing about speed on sky BB is how far you are away from the telephone exchange as its all from BT's network the further away they slower it will be

the up to is a maximum you may get the 20mb's per second at 3 in the morning if you live next door to the TE more than likely though you will struggle to get above 4mb's