# Best broadband and phone deal



## FM001 (Jan 9, 2011)

Presently with Sky for my phone and broadband and tv, no problems with tv or phone but the broadband is next to useless and is constantly losing connection, despite repeated calls to rectify this problem it still remains and my patients have finally ran out!  Any recommendations who to switch too, has to be unlimited broadband and would like to have a phone package included.  Thanks.


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## Steff (Jan 9, 2011)

I wish i could switch but im stuck with sky now since we moved in june and i know what you mean toby about internet connection dropping its bloody annoying we also get the blue screen alot on the tv.I cant reccommend virgin media enough there very good just a shame we cant have the net were we moved to or we would never of left them..fibre optic is amazing as well. We used to get internet for ?25 phone was free evening and weekend calls and tv was ?45 but we had sky sports ESPN etc etc.Best think to do is ring a virgin media rep and get them to give you the best packages that would suit you Toby. Good luck


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## FM001 (Jan 9, 2011)

I'll do that thanks Steffie!


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## Northerner (Jan 9, 2011)

I've had Virgin recommended too. Their BB is supposed to be the most reliable and actually closest to living up to the advertised speeds. My supplier laughingly promotes my connection as 'up to 24 meg' - more like 1.5 meg on a very good day!  I would change but I'm not sure how long I'll be living here so can't commit to a long contract.


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## Steff (Jan 9, 2011)

Northerner said:


> I've had Virgin recommended too. Their BB is supposed to be the most reliable and actually closest to living up to the advertised speeds. My supplier laughingly promotes my connection as 'up to 24 meg' - more like 1.5 meg on a very good day!  I would change but I'm not sure how long I'll be living here so can't commit to a long contract.



I know its a joke we are supposed to be on 20meg lucky if it even hits 10.Ive rang sky more times in the last 6 month then i ever did virgin and i was with them 10 years..


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## Dizzydi (Jan 9, 2011)

I'm with O2, been with them for 12 months. Not sure of the full monthly price, but if someone in your family has a O2 mobile account, you can get it for ?7.50 a month. I have a company mobile and am still able to get ?7.5 even though work pay the mobile bill. Customer services is good as well. UK based.


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## martindt1606 (Jan 9, 2011)

We have virgin for broadband, landline, TV, and mobile phones.  Started with them when they were Blueyonder and needed cable TV as have very poor reception as live near an RAF base.  Now use virgin for the home phone, TV, and broadband.  As part of the TV package we get Sky Movies and Sport.  In addition as virgin media customers we now have 4 very good mobile phone contracts with unlimited texts, calls, downloads, blackberry functions at a low tarriff.  When we have had issues the on call support have been good and engineers always turn up on time.  One added benefit if you call support its a fixed cost of 10p not an 09... number, and if its taking a while to fix they will stop the call and call you.


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## redrevis (Jan 9, 2011)

We went for Sky Broadband, phone line and calls package when we moved into our new flat. Have to say, best broadband and service we've ever had. Price is the best we could fine. Unlimited broadband, with no traffic management* unlike Virgin. Speed is better than they predicted when enquiring, was told we'd get about 6mb down 1mb up, we've actually got 9mb down and 1mb up, no connection problems at all, hasn't gone down yet. The router isn't one of these cheap nasty ones some broadband suppliers give you, it's actually half decent.
Highly recommended from me 
Before them we were with O2 which we were happy with, but O2 couldn't offer us anything near what Sky have provided us with for our new flat.

* They use BT lines, so if someone is an extremely heavy user BT will actually traffic manage them


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## Steff (Jan 9, 2011)

redrevis said:


> We went for Sky Broadband, phone line and calls package when we moved into our new flat. Have to say, best broadband and service we've ever had. Price is the best we could fine. Unlimited broadband, with no traffic management* unlike Virgin. Speed is better than they predicted when enquiring, was told we'd get about 6mb down 1mb up, we've actually got 9mb down and 1mb up, no connection problems at all, hasn't gone down yet. The router isn't one of these cheap nasty ones some broadband suppliers give you, it's actually half decent.
> Highly recommended from me
> Before them we were with O2 which we were happy with, but O2 couldn't offer us anything near what Sky have provided us with for our new flat.
> 
> * They use BT lines, so if someone is an extremely heavy user BT will actually traffic manage them




Dear me I must move to your area then.the net is terribly slow at times and its so annoying


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## Robster65 (Jan 9, 2011)

Our broadband is actually carried here on the back of a mule. There's a stream of them along the lane with about 128kb each. If we're lucky, we can get about 1.5Mb with BT. No real alternatives.

Only had experience of plusnet, who were ok service-wise but did tend to have outages.

Rob


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## Vicsetter (Jan 9, 2011)

I'm with Plusnet - (who were taken over by BT) mainly because they do a rolling 30 day contract.  I get between 5-6Meg download speed which seems pretty good for the Highlands, it does vary according to your distance to the telephone exchange (for telephone line broadband , not optical).  My son in the middle of Ipswich gets 2Meg if he's lucky.

Not had problems with Plusnet re-outages, so suspect it is probably a local BT problem.


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## FM001 (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanks everyone for the replies!  Just spoke to Sky this morning and they are going to send a new router to see if this resolves the problem with disconnecting time and time again, should this not be the case then I will more than likely give Virgin a try.  Thanks.


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## Steff (Jan 10, 2011)

fingers crossed it does the job toby.


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## muddlethru (Jan 10, 2011)

I was with Virgin for six years butwent over to Sky purely for financial reasons. I have saved ?25 a month. I do pay ?5 for anytime phone calls which I can chat for up to an hour this includes overseas calls as well. I put the phone down after 55mins to be on the safe side and then redial and carry on chatting. I'm happy with my bb speed and no probs with the tv. If I had to change I would chat to Virgin and see what deal they would offer, but happy with Sky so far.


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## Steff (Jan 10, 2011)

only issue with sky i have is the blue screen on most of the HD channels it just does my head in period!


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## Steff (Jan 15, 2011)

Toby did you recieve the router and has it improved things? X


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## FM001 (Jan 15, 2011)

Steffie said:


> Toby did you recieve the router and has it improved things? X





I did indeed Steffie, came on Thursday and have to say what a difference!  Not once have I lost connection and it seems to be a a lot faster, the previous router was white as where this one is black and much smaller and nicer to the eye.   To be honest Sky is the best priced package and as I have the tv and phone with them I only pay ?10 a month for unlimited broadband, just a shame it took them this long to work out it was a router problem.


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## Steff (Jan 15, 2011)

toby said:


> I did indeed Steffie, came on Thursday and have to say what a difference!  Not once have I lost connection and it seems to be a a lot faster, the previous router was white as where this one is black and much smaller and nicer to the eye.   To be honest Sky is the best priced package and as I have the tv and phone with them I only pay ?10 a month for unlimited broadband, just a shame it took them this long to work out it was a router problem.



Glad its sorted yeah we have the little mini black one its real nice, we are still having bother with the blue screen saying no satalite signal being recieved nine times out of ten its the HD channels but o/h reasurres me the HDMI lead is in correctly.


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## FM001 (Jan 15, 2011)

Never had a blue screen before Steffie, what does Sky say the problem is?


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## Steff (Jan 15, 2011)

toby said:


> Never had a blue screen before Steffie, what does Sky say the problem is?



They dont lol, i had to unscrew the back of this wire out last time behind the box  and keep it hanging out for 1 minute that never improved nothing and tbh ive not been aRs3d to ring them back x


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## FM001 (Jan 15, 2011)

Steffie said:


> They dont lol, i had to unscrew the back of this wire out last time behind the box  and keep it hanging out for 1 minute that never improved nothing and tbh ive not been aRs3d to ring them back x



I would ring them back and get it sorted Steffie, after all we pay enough each month.


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## Steff (Jan 15, 2011)

toby said:


> I would ring them back and get it sorted Steffie, after all we pay enough each month.



I know your right im just terrible on the phone with things like that... i will do it.


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## lucy123 (Jan 15, 2011)

Hi Steffie - don't laugh and I don't know if this will help, but whenever we lose signal, volume or anything, we now switch everything off at the wall and it works - once it has all started up again - might be worth a try if not done so already.


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## FM001 (Jan 15, 2011)

lucy123 said:


> Hi Steffie - don't laugh and I don't know if this will help, but whenever we lose signal, volume or anything, we now switch everything off at the wall and it works - once it has all started up again - might be worth a try if not done so already.





Yes I was told this also lucy, and when you switch the power back on you must wait 2 minutes before pressing the stand-by button back on.


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## Steff (Jan 15, 2011)

Tryer all that, other half has done some mootching around online and sky are currently aware of the issue that we are having, but apparently its something to do with the positioning of the dish so we deffo need to ring them as we are not qualified to go moving around the dish outside...its so annoying either you have no satelite connection at all on channels or the channels you do have, have interference on them...

p.s it gets annoying when you pay them so much money these days yet you can never quiet have a problem free time if it aint the tele its the fone or the net grrr.....


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## HelenP (Jan 15, 2011)

Haha - that made me laugh.  Is that the 21st century equivalent of giving the top of the telly a thump? 

xx


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## Steff (Jan 18, 2011)

Well i can at last say we have brilliant pictures no interference and no blue screen our dish needed moving it had fallen forward,,, he said the bracket that the dish was on was quite old and had worn, but we have amazing signal strenght now so i could not be happier, my sons lilttle portable can now be relived of its duties xx


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## StephenM (Jan 18, 2011)

I feel that I am living in the dark ages - but happy with it! Phone is with BT and TV uses Freeview. I do not have internet at home but borrowed a Vodafone USB modem for today. Neighbour who came round for a coffee said it seemed faster than his Virgin broadband! He's coming back i half an hour and we will go out for a few beers.


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## FM001 (Feb 7, 2011)

Pleased to report that 3 weeks down the road and not once have I lost my Internet connection, is your picture still fine Steffie?


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## novorapidboi26 (Feb 7, 2011)

Virgin for me, I just cant see how anything else can beat it, especially for broadband, I am on a 20MB package, at peak time you wont get this as they cap it off so everyone gets their fair share, outwith peak I always get between 17-20MB, glass fibre is the only way to go...........


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## Monica (Feb 7, 2011)

StephenM said:


> I feel that I am living in the dark ages - but happy with it! Phone is with BT and TV uses Freeview. I do not have internet at home but borrowed a Vodafone USB modem for today. Neighbour who came round for a coffee said it seemed faster than his Virgin broadband! He's coming back i half an hour and we will go out for a few beers.



You're not the only one Stephen. We have Kingston Communications for our phone and broadband, NO CHOICE. We cannot change to BT or any other phone companies. If we want broadband, we have to go with them too. But there are no phone + internet packages, it's all separate. You can use a different IP, if you go for dial-up only. We only have Freewiew TV. There's no point having a SKY/Virgin media box, if we can't have telephone and broadband included. We pay ?17 for up to 24mbs speed (we actually get about 8) and 20GB usage, any usage over that we have to pay extra. The next price for 30 GB is ?20. On top of that we have to pay for our phone line ?10/month, so that totals ?27/month just for phone and internet!!!!! Not happy, but short of moving out of the Kingston Communication area, there's nothing we can do about it.


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## novorapidboi26 (Feb 7, 2011)

Monica said:


> You're not the only one Stephen. We have Kingston Communications for our phone and broadband, NO CHOICE. We cannot change to BT or any other phone companies. If we want broadband, we have to go with them too. But there are no phone + internet packages, it's all separate. You can use a different IP, if you go for dial-up only. We only have Freewiew TV. There's no point having a SKY/Virgin media box, if we can't have telephone and broadband included. We pay ?17 for up to 24mbs speed (we actually get about 8) and 20GB usage, any usage over that we have to pay extra. The next price for 30 GB is ?20. On top of that we have to pay for our phone line ?10/month, so that totals ?27/month just for phone and internet!!!!! Not happy, but short of moving out of the Kingston Communication area, there's nothing we can do about it.



that aint a fair deal, if you had a bt line you could get broadband from countless providers......


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## Steff (Feb 7, 2011)

yeah had them out and since he moved the dish and replaced the old bracketts all good Toby


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## Monica (Feb 9, 2011)

novorapidboi26 said:


> that aint a fair deal, if you had a bt line you could get broadband from countless providers......



Yes, I knooow. But apparently Karoo has the fastest speed of all IPs. Not that this makes up for the fact that we don't have freedom of choice.


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## Mark T (Feb 9, 2011)

We just moved from BT to Sky.  I would of gone to Virgin but they don't have fibre laid down my road 

Sky seems fairly good, last I checked they had us on a 7 Mbs IP profile after a couple of days.  But then according to the line checker, we are only somewhere between 1.3 and 2.3 km from the exchange (further away you are, more the speed will drop).


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## HelenP (Feb 9, 2011)

I've been thinking of changing to Sky for a while now, and last weekend I settled down with a leaflet, reading all the smallprint, and was very disappointed that with the ?20per month deal that they keep advertising, (unlimited calls *evenings and weekends only*, *Sky TV *with Sky+ as standard**, and 20mb broadband *up to*) there's is a "monthly usage cap of 2gb".  My son, who knows more about these things than I do, informs me that's NOWHERE near enough for this family - apart from me pootling about on the internet, one son downloads movies and the other music and games.  You can get up to 40gb, but it's another ?17, as I read it.  I'm really disappointed.  

I also noticed in the small print it says "Sky+ functionality requires a Sky+ subscription.  So why give it as standard, if you have to pay for it?  

Therefore, with the extra for more monthly gb, and the extra to use Sky+, it's not ?20 per month at all, is it!  

xx


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## Steff (Feb 9, 2011)

Yeah you gotta really be careful not to fall into the trap of being bamboozled, luckily for us we got sky+ and HD and everything as they were doing it for free, we then got internet and sky talk and we get a fivva off for that.... i found for sky it was the tv packages that make your bill add up.. and of course the extra like sports or ESPN... we just recently cancelled our ESPN as it has gone up a wopping ?3 to ?12 just for one extra channel, so all in all every month our bill is about ?80.


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## FM001 (Feb 10, 2011)

Steffie said:


> yeah had them out and since he moved the dish and replaced the old bracketts all good Toby





Something as simple as that, nice to hear all is well.


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## Steff (Feb 10, 2011)

toby said:


> Something as simple as that, nice to hear all is well.



yeah the guy said as well snow had made some brick work around the dish wet and that could of effected it too.


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## HelenP (Feb 10, 2011)

Steffie said:


> every month our bill is about ?80.



80 quid a month??   Lordy, there's no way I could afford that.  I'm paying well over the top for my internet at the moment (although I have to be honest, I've always been happy with it) so thought I'd go for Sky cos as it's advertised, I can get internet, phone AND TV for just a few extra ??s per month.  But the small print shows that's not gonna happen.

*Big sigh.....................

xx


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## Steff (Feb 10, 2011)

HelenP said:


> 80 quid a month??   Lordy, there's no way I could afford that.  I'm paying well over the top for my internet at the moment (although I have to be honest, I've always been happy with it) so thought I'd go for Sky cos as it's advertised, I can get internet, phone AND TV for just a few extra ??s per month.  But the small print shows that's not gonna happen.
> 
> *Big sigh.....................
> 
> xx



we often were in 3 figures when we had virgin, so ?80 is small fry now lol


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## HelenP (Feb 10, 2011)

Steffie said:


> we often were in 3 figures when we had virgin, so ?80 is small fry now lol



Wowsers!!  So much for this ?20 a month B.S. then !!

Like yer new siggie Steff, it made me giggle! 

xx


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