Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign

[douglasross]

I went with VM about three years ago because BT broadband was absolutely useless as I live at the end of a line from the exchange and have found VM absolutely wonderful in that my BB is quick and efficient and my landline gives me much better clarity in that the first time I used the phone I had to turn the volume right down.

[bywater]

Sky are right the word con implies deceit and the most dishonest company I've ever had to deal with is Virgin. I recently had to leave Virgin due to poor service Ok the line speed was fine upload very poor Virgin said they didn't support upload speed which in this day and age is a complete joke. My adsl upload speed is 4x faster than Virgin. Also while the speeds on Virgin are showing good in speed tests, due to high latency and packet loss at peak times caused by congestion on the network renders the download speeds meaningless as even with a good download speed everything just crawls to a halt even webpages and that was on my 20Mb connection. Lots of people in most major cities are having the same problems for months on end with very long fix dates with Virgin. just take a look at Virgins own support site for confirmation.

When I signed up to my new supplier they where very honest about what speed my line could take no twelve month lock in. Yes there is traffic management of 250Gb per month which they where up front about but none of this nonsense of slowing your connection for hours on end if you dare to down load a couple of videos from iplayer over a short period. All in all I'd rather stick with my 6Mb adsl line than the super duper all dancing allegedly mega speeds from Virgin it's been rock solid up and down since I had it over a month ago and no packet loss high latency and call centres that are not routed half way round the globe to rude staff who cut you off having been kept waiting on the phone for over 30 mins. Virgin can keep its super fast broadband thanks but no thanks. Who's coning who ? I'll never go back to cable again.

[broadbandking]

My speeds are always fine, apart from a few outages my internet is rock solid, I think the campign is true as ADSL companies advertise upto as do Virgin but due to the technology Virgin uses they can give the headline speed more that what ADSL companies can.

People with no knowledge of how ADSL works will see wow upto 24Mb and when they get it they get around 2mb due to been too fair from the exchange, Companies these days are not honest so fair play to Virgin who can give customer what they promise, I understand people have issues but I doubt they out way the people that have a perfect connection.

[Chrysalis]

I hope VM win on this. As this campaign is correct in my opinion.

I am going to give 2 scenarios.

Scenario 1 - current situation for me, up to 24mbit adsl connection that runs at 5mbit and upto 30mbit cable connection that runs at 30mbit. On paper the cable connection is only 25% faster, in practice its 600% faster.
Scenario 2- my old situation same adsl connection, VM congested 20mbit service with varying speeds. So cable speeds varied between maybe 1mbit and up to 20mbit. Typically speeds were still above 5mbit tho and I could usually get 15mbit or more in morning. On paper the adsl connection faster, in practice the cable connection was still usually faster but at extreme peak would be slower.

In the real extreme situation when I was on my legacy cable docsis port, VM ran unfit for purpose and in that situation I would consider that also a broadband con. But looking at it overall that kind of extreme performance drop only affects a tiny % of VM customers, so whilst unacceptable its nowhere near the severity of what the adsl isp's are doing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12617994
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12618350

According to the BBC on up to 16/24mbit services.

69% less than 8mbit.
28% 8-16mbit.
3% above 16mbit.

This is what VM have had to compete against, isp's that deliberatly missell their product to compete. Meaning VM's 10mbit service is still superior to what 69% of people get on 16/24mbit adsl2+.

Dont know what others thoughts are, but this campaign is one of some good things VM are doing. Although its come way too late as BT is starting FTTC rollout now which doesnt suffer from the same issues to the same extenct.

---------- Post added at 17:58 ---------- Previous post was at 17:31 ----------

sorry didnt see this thread, thanks for moving my post.

[carlwaring]

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who finds this story absolutely hilarious

Absolutely nowhere in the campaign does VM directly criticise any, specific, broadband provider. In fact, the campaign is aimed at any and all ISPs.

Yet Murdoch assumes they must be talking about him. Arrogant much?

I'm pretty sure it will get thrown out of court, assuming it even gets that far!

[DABhand]

I dunno VM is basically attacking Sky for saying their conn is up to 20mb, funnily enough so does VM >.<

As said by a few Sky peeps will give an estimate I believe on how much you could feasibly get when they see how far you are from the nearest exchange, and they give you a limit per month that is not too excessive, 250gb leaves plenty of room even for those who naughtily download things.

But for VM, its totally random.... They will play the contention card nearly constantly these days... so now their up to 50mb for example with contention happening can be anything at all even a couple of meg, then the traffic management, then the p2p/usenet throttling, then the hidden amount for downloading per month and mostly the poor support, poor technical issues being dealt with (some taking months), poor hardware (superhub), oversubscription and just general poor performance are starting to look like a fairytale.

Overall they have no right to stand there and call another ISP a con when they themselves are the biggest cons out of all ISP's. Im sure some staff of VM will deny this, albeit loyalty or not, but lets be honest whats happened to myself and some others and the lies some come out with on that phone... it's pot calling kettle black time. IMHO.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by DABhand

... VM is basically attacking Sky..

Erm... no. Broadband in general; as I already said.

Originally Posted by DABhand

I dunno...

How right you are. You obviously do not know.

The rest of your post is, of course, irrelevant to the point of the thread.

[DABhand]

Ok I am going to be calm and respond to you nicely.

1. I was not responding to yourself Carl, was giving my view on the topic at hand. Not everything is about what you posted.

2. Yes they are attacking broadband in general but not their own, but broadband provided by other providers, thusly they are attacking Sky, and also at the same time attacking BT, etc.

3. Of course it is relevant they claim the other providers are conning people by not declaring correct speeds, which of course they wrongfully do also, up to 50mb doesn't mean a lot and is open to massive scrutiny, the fact over the last year they have developed ways of clawing at bandwith means they will come to a point where they will have to say "up to 50mb only during non-traffic managed timeframes", so while they attack other ISP's they are the biggest culprit.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by DABhand

1. I was not responding to yourself Carl, was giving my view on the topic at hand. Not everything is about what you posted.

Okay, but you are still wrong. They were not specifically attacking any ISP.

...but broadband provided by other providers, thusly they are attacking Sky, and also at the same time attacking BT, etc.

Correct. Well done. Now that you get it, what do you think of Sky's position?

3. Of course it is relevant they claim the other providers are conning people by not declaring correct speeds, which of course they wrongfully do also, up to 50mb doesn't mean a lot and is open to massive scrutiny,

Well their main point was, of course, that ADSL ISPs claim "up to 20mb" when there is clearly no chance of most people getting anywhere near that speed.

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/03/02...ertised-speed/

This is unlike VM's cable service where, although of course no speed is guaranteed, but you are far more likely to get the headline speed.

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/03/02...ertised-speed/

This is unlike VM's cable service where, although of course no speed is guaranteed, but you are far more likely to get the headline speed.

I am not going to the ofcom link Carl as you know what I will say, that the data is not of the entire country only select regions.

Far more likely yes... outside of non-traffic managed timeframes yes... unless it is congested with oversubscribing which some areas have then its very hard to get the headline speed.

As for Sky's position, they are in every right to request the ad be removed, because Sky tells potential customers about the limits of the connections they are going to lease. And they will be honest and tell you. That is not a con, that is being truthful. VM on the other hand are not in that regard, too much overuse of "up to" doesn't make it so.

VM know they will be forced to remove the ad, but in true business like style they know it will take a bit of time to get it removed by which time their corporate sabotage has done it's job. And even more students sign up to overpopulate UBR's :P

[Chrysalis]

to be honest even in a congested area it still is nothing like as bad as the adsl situation.

Even in jan this year when my port was very badly overloaded at dusk hours I was able to get over 70-80% of my advertised speed. Whilst on adsl if you on a long line forget it, you wont 'ever' get high speeds.

So the facts are every cable customer syncs at advertised speed (or higher). A majority of cable customers achieve close to those speeds even during peak, the ones who dont still can get close to full speeds during the quitest hours. I am not saying thats an acceptable service if in that situation but its worth pointing out its a very different situation to what the adsl providers are doing. On adsl2+ services only 3% get close to advertised speed, thats a horrific figure.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by DABhand

I am not going to the ofcom link Carl as you know what I will say, that the data is not of the entire country only select regions.

I assume you can prove this with hard facts? I look forward to reading them.

You think the industry regulator, will have just accepted any old figures that they were given; from a bloke in a dirty over-coat down a London back-alley, I assume? )

No; probably not!

They will have been checked and verified so, I'm sorry, but unless you know and can prove otherwise, they are as accurate as they can be.

As for Sky's position, they are in every right to request the ad be removed...

Their complaint that the campaign is specifically aimed at them. It is not. So any complaint on those grounds should fail.

[DABhand]

Carl we have had this discussion before, and I proved to you the last time you tried to use ofcom research links that they were not valid.

Ofcom does research in specific areas that is fact, as they will tell you in each research project which areas they tried. So not every piece of the UK is tested about 25% is, that is not definitive proof of anything, just proves which areas they tested is doing well or not.

Can you prove they did all of the UK? I bet you can't Carl, you couldn't do so months ago and I don't expect you to do so now.


Some elements of the ad has suggestive wording to point to Sky, some words used point to BT and so on, and of course on a whole the ad points to all. Now using your words again Prove to me it doesn't do what I suggested.

[denphone]

Well thats typical Sky trying to use bully boy tactics when they do not get their own way.

[carlwaring]

Can you prove they did all of the UK? I bet you can't Carl, you couldn't do so months ago and I don't expect you to do so now.

Okay, but can you prove that they only chose the best areas and not completely random areas? No. You can't.

Some elements of the ad has suggestive wording to point to Sky, some words used point to BT and so on...

Well the ads gone now so you can't prove that either. Lucky for you because you can now say anything you like. But I know it didn't.

...and of course on a whole the ad points to all.

Well done.

Originally Posted by denphone

Well thats typical Sky trying to use bully boy tactics when they do not get their own way.

Glad someone else gets it.