My experience with the new Sky Broadband Hub

[GNinga]

Very nice @mae-3 !! Impressive

[Lynzy67]

Are you serious that the only way you can use your landline is through your hub. Bloody fantastic idea Sky. So when theres a power cut and you need to ring the emergency services your screwed tut tut.....very bad 

[rscott]

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@Lynzy67 wrote:

Are you serious that the only way you can use your landline is through your hub. Bloody fantastic idea Sky. So when theres a power cut and you need to ring the emergency services your screwed tut tut.....very bad 

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That's going to be the case for everyone by 2025 - the copper analogue phone network is being switched off by then. So doesn't matter if you're with Sky or BT (or anyone else) , your calls will require a router with power....

[Chrisee]

@Lynzy67 this is not something Sky are doing off their own bat but is part of the national migration of services from copper to fibre.

Openreach who own and maintain the phone system have stopped selling what is known as POTS services at 188 exchanges. This is in agreement with Ofcom who presumably  have assessed the risks. 

[Dave+H68]

Well, I've got to admit, the phone thing during apower cut is something that I'de not heard about, nor was I made aware of by Sky when migrating from EE in the summer, but as @rscott  & @Chrisee  I belive have identified............ this I guess is something that should be ssen as a positive step forward pehaps....?

Let's face it........ many, if not most of us nowadays use our mobile phones for phone calls now rather than out landlines, and I think if we're being presented such a big step forward in our internet by the country wide roll out in full fibre, then having to rely on out moilbes when there's a power cut is prbably the way we'd all prefer to go???

At least the mobile operators masts and systems have power back up to keep the network going if out landlines go down.

Out of interst, as we move over from the copper line to our properties to the fibre line, that will mean a new in-comming master socket, but as we stand now with a copper line, and with us having the BT master socket that is pre-filtered and the phone into that...... how does the power outage effect us if we have a standard phone plugged in?

Also, the other thing to consider is that many, if not most of us now have a home phone that has some sort of mains power supply in any case, so if our electric goes down, so does the phone, regardless of the line and hub situation??

[Chrisee]

@Dave+H68 The current arrangement of internet services and phone line by VOIP is interim. The end point is fibre to the home where the master socket disappears and Openreach fit a fibre terminal box known as an ONT which requires power and outputs data over an Ethernet connection.

You are right these days there are far more options than traditional landlines and increasingly people are moving away from them. like Telegrams the old landline is out dated technology.

[MarkusMark]

Sky do ask you, (or at least they asked me), if you have another way of contacting the emergency services when you go through the sign up stuff.  I never thought about what it meant until I read about it in these forums.

I told them I didn't want VOIP and they left the original line intact, just through Sky now instead of BT.

I'd just bought a 3 handset phone and in my case I didn't want to have to plug the base into the hub as the location in our house is impractical.  Guess I've still got a few years yet to make it practical.

[CyberFriday]

@Dave+H68 i suspect the rational as you say is down to the expectation that users will also have a mobile for fallback. And it will be interesting to see whether in time more home routers will come with a 4/5/6g failover option. 5/6g speeds should offer good fallback speeds, unless you live in the sticks and have poor mobile coverage. On the home power loss you always have the costed option of fitting an uninterruptible power supply to feed the fibre termination in your house. Although you have to hope that the outage doesn't take out the fibre service in your area ☹️

[Really+fed+upQ]

This is also an issue for anyone with a response alarm, it needs to be converted to one with a SIM card for these reasons. There will be a lot of unhappy people as a result as this incurs an extra cost. 

[Chrisee]

The switch from PSTN to IP telephony is somewhat off topic for this thread but people maybe interested to read this document from Ofcom that explains the various concerns and deals with emergency service access and response alarms. Any supplier of the latter who is not already looking into solutions does not deserve to be in business as this is hardly news as it has been on the cards for years.

As I understand it currently Sky will allow people with good reason to keep a standard phoneline but clearly that is a temporary solution. My concern which I know I share with at least one other Oracle is the poor way Sky staff explain the implications of the switch.

[Johnny1688]

Hi, is the new hub just a plug and play exchange for the old one? 

[Chrisee]

@Johnny1688 yes it is. 

[Johnny1688]

Thanks Chrisee, I think I'll buy one from ebay. I was looking for a way to boost my signal to a garden room, but didn't want to pay the £5 a month Internet boost.  This could be a better option. 

[Chrisee]

@Johnny1688 be warned Sky have never sold the SR203 so all ofvthem remain Sky's property so should not be sold. If you buy one you run the risk that Sky can brick it at any time. 

[Johnny1688]

I didn't know that, maybe I might call and try to get a deal instead.