Sky BB Questions

[Central]

I am currently with Be unlimited but due to hours being cut at work i am looking to move over to Sky Broadband and take the £10 per month package.

Currently no progress has been made as I am awaiting a response from Be unlimited before I make my decision.

Currently on Be my stats are

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 2,355 / 19,773
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 13.0 / 17.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 19.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 5.0

This is costing me £42 a month but they want £30 to put me down to the lower package but I have told them to waiver this or i want my MAC code.



What are the pings like on Sky for gaming?
What sort of speeds should I expect?
Is Email free on Sky? ( I have to pay £2 on Be Unlimited)
Can I get switched over to fastpath if needed?
Do Sky have a member centre for users?
Has Sky got any better since I last visited in August 06 as I was going to join then?
Is the Migration period painless or should I expect downtime?

Cheers

I am sure more questions will come to mind later on

[Druchii]

Use Gmail for email? It's free.

[Paul K]

I thought Be unlimited ruled?

[Central]

Originally Posted by Paul

I thought Be unlimited ruled?

If you read my post you will see my hours are been cut so i need to cut back on some luxuries

[Paul K]

Ah so it doesn't "rule" unless you can afford an expensive package? Anyway you know the general rules with ADSL based products, speeds etc are all controlled by things that may affect you and no one else, you've been lucky with Be but you may find that on the Sky service your speeds are nothing like as good. Until it's installed you really won't know what you will get. There is a log in area on Sky but I don't think it does anything special for the Sky BB users.

You get a free @sky.com email address which you can view by logging into www.skybroadband.com.

Activation was on time for me, and the day after activation Sky sent a SMS to my house phone saying that everything went smoothly and that you can use your broadband, they also said "ENJOY".

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Be*

What are the pings like on Sky for gaming?

My average pings at the moment, using FastPath, are 40ms. Not exactly great. Although I'm sure it will vary for others.

Originally Posted by Be*

What sort of speeds should I expect?

You attenuation is great, so based on that you should get the full 16Mbps...but your noise margin will affect it too.

Also depends on if your line quality causes Sky to put you on G.DMT/Interleave & cap your speed.

Originally Posted by Be*

Is Email free on Sky? ( I have to pay £2 on Be Unlimited)

Yes, it is. Although I find the Sky portal & webmail to be utter crap, as do others from what I've read.

Just use Gmail or something...much better.

Originally Posted by Be*

Can I get switched over to fastpath if needed?

Yes, if your line is not too noisy & you manage to get through to Tier 3 support after first jumping through hoops with Tier 1 & 2.

Originally Posted by Be*

Do Sky have a member centre for users?

Yes, but it isn't very good.

Originally Posted by Be*

Has Sky got any better since I last visited in August 06 as I was going to join then?

Dunno. I've only had it since the start of Feb. Been fine for me (bar noise problems I'd have had with any ADSL provider).

Originally Posted by Be*

Is the Migration period painless or should I expect downtime?

Mine was painless, however it was from a normal resold BTW provider to Sky's LLU.

You'd be moving from one LLU provider to another, so I don't know how painless that is...