Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

And the behemoth just got a little bit bigger.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I'm amazed they're allowed! Let's hope it either doesn't make a difference or improves!

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

before I opened this I thought they bought O2 as a whole...

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

It makes sense though. Looks like their traditional TV market is drying up so by gaining this customer base they could use all sorts of offers to sell Sky tv into homes that don't have it

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I agree its all about numbers , this deal if approved will see the countries largest pay TV platform leapfrog VM into the second largest ISP in the UK. BT already has the largest BB subscriber base allowing it to upsell its Vision TV service and its forthcoming BT Sports channel.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

With VM being bought by LG and with BT and Sky spending money willy nilly one suspects its going to be a fiercely competitive market out there MM.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Streaming TV services appears to be the way forward for all the telcos. Sky's traditional satellite services can't really do that and broadband is becoming more important. Sky simply can't afford not to be a big player in this marketplace.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Challenge for VM at the moment is that their hands are tied to an extent as they can't leverage the benefit onf LG until the deal is signed.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Spookily I hung on for ages at BE in the expectation of a fibre product materialising. Eventually I grew tired of waiting, got Sky fibre and regrettably dumped BE.

So today I learn that things have gone in a circle and BE has now been assimilated by Sky.

Strange how things work out sometimes.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I hope that the competition chaps make them hive BE off as a separate entity to another buyer. Unlikely of course.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Yes indeed that is highly unlikely to happen.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Bit of a back lash from o2 customers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013...nica-broadband

Don't think this poster likes Sky much

"...and the poor sods on O2 who I have no doubt had no say in the matter will be subject to the wonderous insidious price creeping that is Sky, and will be bombarded with the Fabulous Fourskin or whatever they are calling the TV campaign to get people to sign up to their lame on lame television service this week - Sky Bereaved n Bitter."

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

We should try and get that person to join Cable Forum. It's that style of angry banter that brings a smile to my face :D

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

It did make me laugh I must admit, still think its a good deal for Sky though, yes some O2 customers will be cheesed off but the majority will accept whats happening

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

The Fabulous Fourskin from Sky - Bereaved n Bitter.
Wonder how long it'll take for that campaign to hit off :p

Interesting that O2 are leaving the Broadband market - I'm sure I read it was to do with giving them more resources to launch 4G?

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I think it was more to do with the dire state of the Spanish economy, Telefonica's enormous debt and having no fibre product.

Hemorrhaging customers like rats leaving the Titanic it would only seem sensible to sell the business before there were no customers/business left at all.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

....yep, and the fact they were just too small to compete against Sky, VM and BT in this country.

It won't be too many years now before there will be just 3 or 4 big media companies which own a terrestrial tv channel, a pay tv business, phone, broadband and mobile.

Next thing on the horizon is who will buy ITV?

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Be was getting nowhere with their fibre offerings and without it they would have been seriously uncompetitive. Good job now O2/Be customers will have access to Sky's FTTC service, which frankly, is one of the better ones.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Which is frankly an Openreach one. Which O2 had access to as did Be.

Mobile services are still under the controll of the parent company EE (EverythingEverywhere) as is T-Mobile.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

It's the core that's the problem, Be's network wasn't up to providing FTTC over Openreach GEA.

O2 might have had access to it but their customers couldn't buy any service from them, it was trials only.

No idea what you mean about mobile though... O2 certainly isn't a subsidiary of EE and Be didn't offer a mobile service.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I did think that, I thought it was orginally BT Mobile or One2One

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

O2 used to be Cellnet

T-Mobile used to be One2One

Or the existing companies absorbed/took over these original companies

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

BT Cellnet was sold off and renamed to O2, then bought by Telefonica

One2One was bought over by Deutsche Telekom and renamed T-Mobile. Which later merged 3G networks with 3 under MBNL and later still merged with France Telecom owned Orange to form EE.

Irony aside, I still don't get the connection...

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Which is not an Openreach one - Openreach do not provide the Internet Connection - Openreach provide the link to the equipment in the Exchange - Sky provide the Exchange equipment and Backhaul - and they also provide a better service than BT or Virgin.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Its debatable between BT and Sky, since BT have removed any throttling I would say the 2 are equal and although there are workarounds, you can easily change router with BT

Top and tail, both blow VM out of the water

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

MER authentication is a bit of a nuisance, however I like the SkyHub, I think it's silly not to make it Gig-E but it doesn't affect me personally - I don't move files around over my home network and 10/100 is fine for connecting my devices directly to the router via Ethernet.

I'd only personally look to change router if I had issues with NAT or flakey connections to devices over Wifi like I had with the Superhub which frankly should be renamed as there is nothing Super about it in reality - though on paper it sounds nice.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

I'm wondering about the BB speed issue

I recently moved ALL my services from VM to SKY after 10 good years as I was incandescent about how VM ignored Android users and only ran mobile TV services for Apple products

now I'm very happy with Sky Go on my Android smartphone - use it all the time

what I'm not happy about is 2 weeks forfore the change over date VM finally increased the speed to 20 Mb & it was very zippy & stable

now my Sky BB IS not so fast & frankly sluggish

is there any chance that the purchase of O2 & Be will mean Sky has more capacity and can improve their BB speeds ?

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

No.

Re: Sky to buy O2 & Be Phone/Broadband services
 

Not a chance - Sky's core network has plenty of capacity, and is improved daily by the way.

The problem with your Broadband is more than likely related to the wiring either in your property or to your property or both - which is an Openreach problem.

If you're not happy with it, call Sky, report it, see what they can do, they are genuinely very good at this sort of thing.