Ex-VM to Sky customers

[dilli-theclaw]

Originally Posted by Qtx

. 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

You get used to it lol just look at the savings

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Qtx

<Snip>

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.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Am I not supposed to be blocked?
<snip>

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

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

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

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Qtx

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

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.

[muppetman11]

Originally Posted by Zee

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

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.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Qtx

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

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

[iateallthepies]

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.

[Mick Fisher]

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.

[AdamD]

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.

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by AdamD

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

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