Broadband supplier: I am on Virgin , is Sky better?

[Mr Moofo]

My contract is coming to an end and with a great surprise it has gone up to 63 GBP for just BB and phone.

It looks like I can get TV and BB for Virgin for 40 GBP - and it they won't do that deal, I will leave
Is Sky ( who are offering same speed and TV for 39.00 GBP) a better option. I was with Sky and remeber trying to leave them was like trying to leave the Mafia.
I could also get BT or Zen - anyone have any experience ?

[KungFooBob]

I've been with sky for tinternets for years.

Last year I tried to order a TV package with the new streaming puck. It included a cost saving on my tinternets.

The whole thing was £40 ish, with the internet being discounted to £21 (from the £30 I was paying).

I wasn't in when they tried to deliver the streaming puck.. twice.

I got a bad feeling about the whole thing and cancelled the TV order.

My Internet has remained at £21. Which is a bit of a result.

If you go for Sky TV I think it includes a Discovery Plus subscription so you get BSB and WSBK on Eurosplurt for no extra cost.

[Mussels]

What does better mean, price, customer service or tech?
If they are all through BT FTTC then there will be little difference on performance as it's the same stuff sold by different companies, if some are full fibre then there could be a huge difference.
Have a look for local companies, I'm with one that only does the south east but I get 900Mb for £30 a month and the customer service has been better than any that relies on Openreach. I binned the landline as it only recieved spam calls.
Years ago when I had Virgin they were prepared to go very low to keep my custom, at one point I was paying £5 a month for BB.

[Eclipse]

BT are now in cahoots with EE
https://ee.co.uk/bt
https://www.bt.com/ee

I have been with BT for about 15 years I think and have no reason to change.
my BT bill went up to about £70 a month but after a phone call to their cancellations department came down to £56

[MrLongbeard]

Been with them for years, usually switch out every other year for a year with someone else, always come back to sky.

Despite it all running over openreach / BT, I get less service interruption when on Sky, BT are next best, and Vodafone the absolute worst and to be avoided at all costs, YMMV.

[Slenver]

My supplier tried it on recently and my monthly bill went up from £24 or so to £40.

I threatened to leave and they matched the best price I found elsewhere, which was £22 I think.

Whenever the price changes, switch or threaten to. Where we are it all comes via BT/Openreach anyway, so the service/speed etc is identical anyway. Price is the only factor.

[KungFooBob]

As I understand it, yeah the cable to your house might be openreach, but the equipment in the exchange might belong to a different provider if there's enough demand in the area.

There used to be a site called Sam knows, which would tell you which providers were available in your local exchange, but it looks like Cisco bought it.

Sky would only use BT wholesale services if there wasn't enough customers on that exchange to justify putting the kit in.

[roadster]

Because of the loss of analogue phone lines within the next two years I am planning to separate internet services and thinking of using Zen to avoid being tied to a specific digital phone service. The one sided contracts offering cut prices but allowing them to be raised massively in the small print leave a bad taste for me. I am running an IP phone service over my existing ISP using Andrews and Arnold as a trial at present. Their call charges are very reasonable and after initial glitches it has saved me some money on those interminable calls to insurance companies.

I appreciate that you are probably more concerned with entertainment channels which I don't use.

[Mussels]

I had a bit of a nasty shock a few years ago, I went to get an extra BB line put in for work and was told there were no spare connections in the cabinet so I couldn't get it from any provider. If you are thinking of going from Virgin fibre to something BT based then it might be worth getting the new one in before cancelling the old one.

[Skub]

Interesting stuff.

I've been with BT for the interwebz for a long time and use Sky for tv. Sometimes the two don't play well together and each blame the other for drop out. It may be in my best interests to have everything lumped in at Sky when my current BT contract expires.

Oh,if you think it's a ballache to talk to someone at Sky,it's nothing to the bot-fest that is BT. I don't believe there are any humans left in customer service.

[Mussels]

Interesting stuff.

I've been with BT for the interwebz for a long time and use Sky for tv. Sometimes the two don't play well together and each blame the other for drop out. It may be in my best interests to have everything lumped in at Sky when my current BT contract expires.

Oh,if you think it's a ballache to talk to someone at Sky,it's nothing to the bot-fest that is BT. I don't believe there are any humans left in customer service.

I tried the Sky streaming service with their own dongle and it was buffering hell, looked like an internet issue but it only ever happened with Sky TV.

[Mr. Dazzle]

We've been with BT for years, only ever had one service interruption I can recall and that was caused by a physical problem - someone dinked something in the cabinet! It took BT about three days to fix it But 'cause they're joined with EE now they sent us a 5G wifi router to tide us over plus gave us unlimted data on our mobiles for a few months.

Spoilt for choice here though, BT, Virgin and CityFibre all do fibre to the house with their own infrastructure. It was CityFibre who broke our BT line

Mrs. D pays for it, so I had to go sifting through WhatsApp...we pay £42 a month for 500 down / 150 up. We don't need anything like 500 down, but the up is actually quite useful 'cause Mrs. D does a few running photography gigs and has to upload ~1000 photos with semi-regularity.

[Mr Moofo]

I tried to talk to someone at Sky about changing - not chance, just the help bot who could get round the fact that I didn't have Sky broadband , even though I had gone through to the "thinking of joining us" bit.

Will see if EE can do better