Alternative to Sky?

[islasmum]

I'm considering changing my services from Sky to another company - I'm not very happy with either their broadband service, which is getting slower and slower, and they have cut off my services (fortunately not the broadband yet,) as a payment due on the 28th of the month hasn't been paid yet, due to the bank holiday. I've been with Virgin before, about 3 years ago, but left them because Sky offered us a good deal at the time. Now I'm wondering whether or not to: Go back to Virgin, or try BT (I already have a BT line coming into the house), or have seperate services for phone+broadband and TV pacage.
I'd like to hear other AB'ers views on the matter. Thank you very much.

[sith123]

ground

[cazzz1975]

the service you get from BT will be the same as the service from sky as far as your broadband is concerned, sky only rent the line from sky so basically you will be just changing the name of the provider whilst the service will stay the same.

I cannot get a decent broadband service from BT where I live so I opted for virgin, who have been fine

[MarkRae]

Go back to Virgin.

[islasmum]

Sorry? I'm not with you?

[Bobbisox]

I have had only one small glitch with Sky just over a week ago but other than that I find them fine, my broadband is quite fast too

[islasmum]

My previous answer was to Sith123. (Cross-typing)

One of the reasons for leaving Sky is because the TV signal appears to be fine if the weather is good, but not great if it's windy or rainiing, or both. As we live about 6 miles from Portsmouth, we tend to get the brunt of the weather.
I will investigate Virgin again. Thanks for your answers

[AlBags]

You just need a dish re-alignment!
Even 60cm mini dash should be fine .. even in snow in the South UK.

If you want to re-align and still improve, fit a new lnb too.

[Bobbisox]

this happened to us last Winter islasmum, it was due to a neighbours Laylandii trees going beserk :-(
stopped our signal

[islasmum]

Might just be that we have a tempremental dish, but to be honest, I've been thinking about changing for a little while, but them shutting off my services this a.m was the final straw.

[Bobbisox]

do you pay DD islasmum? I thought you had to with Sky
I am only asking as you said the payment was due on the 28th and it's a BH
weekend, that's a bit naughty of them I think

[islasmum]

Unfortunately I've missed the payment before, I don't have DD's, but I did talk to them on friday, and explained that it wouldn't be in until Tuesday. The operator said that she'd make a note on my file.

Anyway, I've had a look at the virgin "make your own bundle", which sounds quite good, and am probably going to spend the rest of the afternoon on comparison websites, (and make sure that I read all the "small print" with these offers!) Thanks for your help everyone.

[Buenchico]

Cazzz's answer is misleading.

While such things as the distance from your exchange place limitations upon your broadband service (which will be common to all providers using that exchange) different ISPs can still provide different speeds. That's because other ISPs don't 'rent lines'; they rent exchange capacity. Budget operators have 'contention ratios' of up to 50 to 1. (That's the maximum number of subscribers who they'll connect to a single point on the exchange). Better ISPs have contention ratios of around 20 to 1. ISPs which serve mainly businesses (such as Claranet, which I use) have a 7 to 1 ratio.

In some exchanges, where 'local loop unbundling' has been enabled, third party ISPs have their own equipment installed within BT exchanges (bypassing the need to rent capacity from BT).

To see if any third party ISP has installed their equipment into your local exchange, enter your phone number here:
http://www.samknows.c...dband/exchange_search
When the name of your exchange comes up, click on it and look under 'LLU Operator Presence'. If any companies are shown, they should be added to your list of possible providers. If not, google to find out the contention ratios of any ISPs which you might be considering.

Chris

[islasmum]

Thank you Chris - you always give good advice. I'll have a look at that later on. Thank you everyone who has posted.

[Bobbisox]

hope you get it sorted soon islasmum

[islasmum]

Thank you Bobbi, so do I!