Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Is there anyone here who in the last year have left Virgin Media and switched to Sky?

Just wanted some honest opinions from those who have had recent experience of both providers.

1) Do you regret switching to Sky? (Reasons for your answer?)
2) If you switched from VM cable broadband to Sky Fibre, any comments on how they compare?
3) If you switched to sky TV, have you had any picture/quality issues?
4) How do Sky support compare to VM support, in regards to time to fix issues/quality of support?

Anything else you want to share? Thanks in advance :Peaceman:

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

1) Nope no regrets at all , Sky's TV offering suits me better , love all the HD and I prefer their On Demand service both content wise and navigation , many times with VM we were unable to watch HD On Demand content between 7-10pm.
2) I went from a 30mb VM connection which was great at first but slowly got worse and worse , unfortunately my area was oversubscribed. I went over to ADSL and now only receive 9mb , it has been rock solid but obviuosly didn't match VM's headline speed.
3) I've had no picture issues with Sky , I've only ever lost picture in a thunderstorm and only for a few seconds.
4) I prefer Sky support , in my dealing they've been excellent that said VM's were pretty reliable but were inconsistent on pricing between different agents.

Obviously every individuals opinion will differ.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

1) No - I switched as I can't get VM here. I'd also got through 8 v+ boxes that just were crap.
2) N/A
3) I don't think so - but I'm not the best person to ask ;)
4) Ok - just the same as VM. But I don't use the standard support line now so I find it even better.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

It does seem crazy that adsl can be more stable than a fibre connection but most people I know who have left VM, it has been down to bad fibre broadband performance.

I don't exactly have any concerns about Sky per say but I often hear horror stories from those who switched to VM, I thought it was prudent to see if this held true for those who moved to sky.

Customer service/support is not very good in many areas these days but it would shock me if Sky took as long as VM to fix broadband issues. The only way to find that out is to ask recent customers.

Both Sky and VM seem to have issues with their mobile tv apps with Android. Sky's does not work on Jellybean 4.1+ and VM's....I don't think VM have even done one yet. I did consider not going for the Sky TV due to this and just get their fibre. You do get to keep the 2TB box if you cancel after 12 months though, so a almost free freesat option later. This and the fact I would get more channels and twice the broadband speed for literally the same price as im paying VM for their basic TV and broken BB, its a no brainer choice. Might even go for 80mb for the £5 more, although I dont really need it.

Still after hearing more opinions though :)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

1)No regrets here.

2)Awesome 40/10 connection here came from a half arsed VM 100/10, leaps and bounds ahead of my VM connection, (No buffering on youtube vids and pings of 0) no traffic shaping either, download any time of the day and not have to worry about getting a letter telling me i am overusing my (unlimited connection) web pages load instantly...

3)Still got the basic VM tv and phone line (Mrs wanted to keep it).
No sky tv.

4)UK support, no more speaking to an indian called Steve.....lol made me laugh as well. if there's a problem they tell you, (unlike VM who just tell you a pack of lies)..

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Looking forward to being able to download stuff when I want, instead of working around limits VM impose twice daily!

Didn't realise Sky had all UK support. That is a huge bonus :)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

VM isn't really fibre though. Its a hybrid *******ization to work around the limitations of CATV. Fibre is great, its the bits that come to your house that bugger everything up.

I've always wondered why, when VM were allowed to market it as fibre because part of their network was fibre, BT never started advertising their own ADSL products as fibre. Their exchanges have fibre links so it would be just as tenuous as Virgins current claims.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Prior to leaving VM my Tivio broke down.The techy in Swansea talked me through various solutions and when they failed,she sent me a technician.He arrived next day and after getting no joy,changed the box.The box was fine.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

As an aside I thought I'd point out the only reason I still have sky is a)I'm getting it free for six months after phoning to cancel

b)I only pay £6.06 a month for my TV Licence

After my freebie period I'm sticking with BT Vision which does me ok.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Absolutly not. I am 100% satisfied with my services and supplied hardware/firmware with the exception of the SR-101 BB Hub which I would describe as only adequate. In comparison I have never been satsfied with any of my VM supplied services, hardware/firmware especially the superhub.
VM BB = Stork, SkyFibre = Best Butter.
No buffering, no lag, low ping, no management on sky fibre
My sky tv experience is incalculably better, in every respect you can think of, than my VM catv was when I dumped it.
In my experience it has been much better but in the many years that I have enjoyed sky's services I have only had to use them to initially order the tv service then to upgrade to HD via the web chat and then to order skytalk and skyfibre. The services themselves have been utterly 100% reliable.
Nope I think you might have got my drift by now.:)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Works out cheap tv for you now then. I thought you had to be halfway in your grave with no sight or hearing for the TV licence to give you a lower rate. My condolences :eek:

Even though I am close to a main terrestrial transmitter, reception isn't that good. So figured the BT vision wouldn't be useful to me. I mostly have the TV as background noise so not massively concerned with what I get or don't get in the way of channels, just a good reception when I do choose to watch it. Figured I would cancel the Sky tv after a year and use it as a freesat with minimum costs as the box doesnt have to go back. Unless of course I can't live without their mobile app, which is something I will use a lot more while out and about.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Not crazy at all, more perfectly normal and to be expected. VM's service is not fibre to the home, and the primary difference is ADSL gives you a dedicated line to the provider's backbone whereas on VM you share one line with hundreds to thousands of other people.

Perfectly normal to expect a dedicated line to be more stable than one shared with ~500 other users

---------- Post added at 17:28 ---------- Previous post was at 17:26 ----------

I've argued that a few times before. I guess BT just isn't into false advertising as much as VM is ;)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Thanks for your experiences! Getting to be a pattern here :D

Seen a few comments about their new hub. The wireless side shouldn't affect me as the bandwidth intensive stuff will be hard wired and my wireless devices are mostly used within a short range. Just hope they don't have firmware issues in the same was as VM have had and still apparently have.

Not having to call support..... just seems strange after being with VM for a good few years lol.

---------- Post added at 17:44 ---------- Previous post was at 17:31 ----------

Its easy to assume based on the technology that fibre to the cabinet and then Catv/coal to the house would be more stable than old copper cable over a large distance with some tricks used to get the most out of it. More so if like most customers you don't understand the network behind the buzzwords and advertising.

So do 500 VM customers share the same fibre from the UBR/chasis or from the cabinet? I knew there could be up to 250 or so customers per line card connected to the UBR and each UBR can have x amount of line cards connected. So the line cards can be one potential bottleneck even before meeting up with the other customers. Or is that number actually higher and the 500 number you are talking about? Would be nice to finally know for sure how this works and at how many different points bottlenecks are likely to occur.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

The best thing to do, as always, is use your own router.

You can now get your sky username /password from the SR-101 via wireshark for use in a router running DD-WRT or you can just piggyback your own router in the SR-101's DMZ.
It all just works :shrug:

Quite boring when compared with the adventure of switching on a VM service.
Will it still be working or not: Will it need rebooting or not: How many TV channels are down today. Is email still working: ETC. Yeah! I miss all that stuff like I miss a hole in my head. :)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Have you not thought of getting Sky Fibre? or is it not available in your area?

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

You get used to it :) lol just look at the savings ;)

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Am I not supposed to be blocked?

Anyhow, anything from 1 to several dozen properties share one coax cable going to the street cabinet.

A few to several dozen of these are combined into one larger cable going to a fibre cabinet (sometimes going through other coax cabinets in between).

The fibre cabinet combines up to a few dozen of the coax lines from smaller cabinets into a fibre-optic link to the CMTS. Each of these "links" is essentially a separate service node.

Multiple service nodes can be run over one optical fibre (WDM) or they can each get a separate physical fibre.

The fibre nodes then connect into the CMTS (not neccessarily directly). Each node is served by one or more line cards.

So, you get a few dozen to a hundred customers sharing one cab. Several cabs, totalling maybe 500-1000 customers being one fibre "node". Several fibre nodes may be carried over one fibre-optic cable, totaling thousands more.

The numbers I've seen in the past show VM serving ~100-500 customers from one line card. The actual numbers vary greatly area, network layout, and the number of node splits VM feel like doing. Several line cards may serve one node or several nodes may be served by one line card. The line cards are not really the bottleneck, the size of the nodes are.

The equivalent infrastructure on BT is each customer gets a dedicated cable all the way to the fibre cabinet. The fibre cabinet has a minimum of one fibre per ~60 customers to the exchange.

On ADSL each customer gets a dedicated cable all the way to the exchange.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Yeah but it does show that you posted: This message is hidden because qasdfdsaq is on your ignore list.

Then it gives you a Link to view the post.....its irresistible! Removing you as it was getting hard work clicking to see all your posts :hugs:

Thanks for the info. Never seen it explained in such a broken down way before, really helpful and appreciated :tu:

Clear to see why VM's fibre can be so bad now.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

1) Switched to Sky due to moving to a non-cable area (despite what the VM leaflets say that we keep getting delivered...). No regrets.

2) N/A

3) Nope. The TV is excellent.

4) I left VM when it was still ntl, so don't know what it's like now. As for Sky, though... Very good support, when I've needed it.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Not available mate :)

I'll make the switch the minute it is , to be fair my Sky ADSL connection has been rock solid but unfortunately my line length only allows 9mb.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Having switched I can add my own answers based on what I have seen so far.

1) Don't regret switching (TV, broadband and support is all better than Virgin)
2) Chalk and cheese. The Sky line is rock solid stable with no jitter at all. I can play online games again too which the virgin line made impossible. Web sites load so much faster than on the VM connection. The connection doesn't get saturated and slow with a few things going on at once which is nice too.
3) Had no issues with the picture at all, even a few storms we had. I did worry if there would be artefact type blocks occasionally due to the signal, but that has never happened.
4) I had to call them up Sky support as I had noticed the caller ID was not showing on the phone. Support was English, friendly and dealt with the problem and resolved it quickly. Had a couple of questions and their online guys answered them via live chat pretty quickly too. So no complaints with support so far

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

I`ve been with Sky ADSL for a month, get 16mb. Had Virgin 100 meg service.

This beats it, no more reliability issues, Youtube working fine, No STM etc.

Well happy, waitin on fibre to come on line now.


Never ever go back to Virgin.

---------- Post added at 18:24 ---------- Previous post was at 18:18 ----------

[QUOTE=Mick Fisher;35504102]The best thing to do, as always, is use your own router.

You can now get your sky username /password from the SR-101 via wireshark for use in a router running DD-WRT or you can just piggyback your own router in the SR-101's DMZ. QUOTE]


I`m using the Billion 7800n with the 1.06g firmware, emulating the mer no problems.

Done away with the Sky router so just the one unit.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

So long as your dish is situated in a position to give a solid signal you will only get problems in the most dire weather such as heavy rain/thunderstorm when the thick black clouds can actually block the signal entirely, the same can happen during heavy snowfall.

I suffered bad line of sight problems due to trees. Every time I raised the dish all was fine until the damn things grew a bit and started interfering with the signal again.

I recently got a local contractor to mount the dish at roof height on the chimney stack. I've now got the best signal I have ever seen since I have been using Sky TV. :)

At my present age, by the time the trees grow high enough to interfere with the signal again, I won't be around to worry about it. :D

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

Switched to Sky just before Christmas, went from Virgin's 30mb package, to the Sky Fibre pro service.

I get about 6mb/sec on downloads and 2.1mb/sec on uploads.

1) Do you regret switching to Sky?
Not one bit.
I was mainly interested in upload speed and a service which isn't throttled
Sky's 20mb upload is superior to the crappy 3mb upload I was on (or in my case, I rarely got about 2mb with Virgin)

2) If you switched from VM cable broadband to Sky Fibre, any comments on how they compare?
Well, with Sky, they don't brag about no buffering videos, Virgin however do
Guess which one seems to be plagued with video buffering videos? Virgin, of course :P

3) If you switched to sky TV, have you had any picture/quality issues?
Don't have TV

4) How do Sky support compare to VM support, in regards to time to fix issues/quality of support?
Haven't had to call sky for support, unless you count upgrading from Fibre to Fibre pro, in which case, it was effortless.
Virgin has had latency/lag issues for months in Worthing and that's the main reason I left, because everytime you called (and indeed, others called), they said there were no issues, yet the forum had LOADS of posts and proof (broadband monitor graphs etc) about the problems

Started around October time I think, by the time I left in December, it still wasn't fixed.

Re: Ex-VM to Sky customers
 

You must mean "I get about 6MB/sec on downloads and 2.1MB/sec on uploads."

:)