Broadband down & up repeatedly Maidstone

[Anonymous]

Broadband connection is continuously dropping and reconnecting in the Kingswood area of Maidstone. 

Sky App says "no reported problems in your area", the broadband checker says "we can't check you connection at the moment"

Why isn't there just one button on the app that says "I Have A Problem at this Postcode", and reports it without going through 10 pages of self help screens to be told "we are busy at the moment, please try again later". So frustrating!!

[Chrisee]

@Anonymous at the time you posted the loss of connection is probably due to maintenance or upgrading work which is done overnight. The test cannot contact your hub so cannot complete. The work is not a fault so does not get reported as one. The service should reconnect by early morning. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the reply. 

Unfortunately I'm on call overnight, so for me it is a fault and a huge inconvenience. 

If the engineering schedule was published, or a notice put up saying service may be affected, then at least that would avoid frustrating attempts at navigating looping 'diagnostic' menus, and rebooting the router. 

I am from an  IT background, and you would never carry out intrusive works without engaging in some form with the customer.

My point about improving the app reporting would also stand, as at least then Sky could gauge how much their 'improvements' affect the customer. 

Anyway I'm moving away from Sky broadband (and phone & TV) once my full fibre is installed, so only another month to go. 

[Anonymous]

.... and I've been with Sky for 24 years. 

[Chrisee]

Sorry @Anonymous that is not going to happen and this is an issue tgat affects all ISPs.

No ISP tells domestic customers in advance about planned work. The cost would be huge in identifying which of Sky's 6m customers will be affected by which work and in the vast majority of cases the customer will be asleep anyway.

It is further complicated that Sky are only directly aware of work on their own backhaul network a lot of which uses third parties kit.  Openreach control the connection from the exchange to your home and they would have to keep their mutiple telco customers informed that they are switching cabinet number x off for an uograde or working on frame y. 

The normal solution is some form of back-up connection using mobile data. As yet Sky only offer that to customers buying their business products which cost more. Hopefully you find your new fibre supplier more reliable but if thet are an Altnet supplier they will becdependant on third parties even more than Sky so have even less control.