Can I run Sky fibre alongside Virgin Fibre?

[David+Jackson]

Hi

I joined Virgin Media (VM) after they installed fibre in my estate. This ran great for 4 months but then it went down and stayed down for 2 days. As I work from home i need something more resillient. I am looking for a new primary broadband provider which will run in parallel to Virgin Media while I fight getting out of the contract. 

My Questions are...

• Can I run Sky Broadband alongside Virgin Media (FTTH)?
• There is a risk that both services could go down as they use shared infrastructure. Does this happen often?
• Is this failover solution worth investing in? 

[Chrisee · Accepted solution]

@David+Jackson Virgin and Sky use different networks so you can have both services. Sky use the Openreach network back to the exchange and then its is over their own network. There is always a chance both services go down but as they are independent of each other it is very low excluding things like power cuts.

Having a back up is sensible if working from home as both are sold as domestic services so you are not going to get priority fixes. Openreach's SLA is 2 working days from report in which time they fix 85% of issues and pay compensation if they dont. 

[jamesn123]

Note its getting more common for them to share the same ducts & underground paths so if the road is dug up for any reason or a duct collapses there is a good chance both services would go down