Outage EX14

[GarethJohn]

Have been with Sky broadband just over a week. Have a 24/7 personal alarm system which connects via broadband, have emails from  alarm company saying connection lost over night in the hour up to 1.19 am and regained at 1.58 am. Working ok right now but obviously concerning that there was any gap in cover. Never had this problem with previous broadband provider, shoukd I report this to sky?

[JPR007]

@GarethJohn  A service outage of barely over 30 mins in the early hours is nothing uncomon and is most likely maintenance being carried out somewhere along the line.

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@GarethJohn wrote:

Working ok right now but obviously concerning that there was any gap in cover. 

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No piece of technology is 100% reliable, and whilst the concern is understandable, the service is a domestic one with very little/minimal service level agreements, and is far from being a guaranteed 24/7, 365 day a year uninterrupted service.

[Chrisee]

@GarethJohn as @JPR007 states over night interuptions of connectivity are usually for essntial maintenance or house keeping reasons so are unavoidable.

If you need a guaranteed 24/7 connection you will require a system that has multiple fallbacks usually provided by switching to a standby mobile data source. You can buy such a service but ben prepared for it cost a lot more than the domestic system you are buying from Sky.

[GarethJohn]

Thanks JPR007 and Chrisee for the input. In fact on the timings and content of the emails it could have been almost 2 hours. Hmm, had this alarm system for 11 months now and was with plus.net as provider throughout- with *no such outages*.  Your comments imply that sky's service is not up to plus.net's standards, OR is it that there is no longer a landline connection via the bt socket? I am also asking the alarm company for comment since before I made the switch they assured me the system would still work ok without the latter.

[Chrisee]

@GarethJohn Plusnet and Sky use exactly the same Openreach connection to your home from the exchange so it is pure luck you did not have issues before. You can go years without an issue and then be hit by a string of overnight drops. There is no independent evidence I have seen that Sky's backhaul network from the exchange is any less reliable than BT's.

The removal of the copper phone line is driven by Openreach who require telcos to stop selling copper voice contracts and to implement a voice over IP solution as they start to decommission all copper lines. This is explained here https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/retiring-the-copper-network Any VOIP service will cease to operate if the broadband connection goes down which is why mobile back-up is required in emergencies..

Where an alarm requires 24/7 connection it should have a built-in mobile sim so it has a mobile connection in an emergency. Sky run customers through a series of questions before installing such a system including questions about medical equipment, the availability of mobile signal  etc. as there are provisions to keep a copper line in certain limited circumstances. Once removed getting a line back can be difficult.

Alarm companies have had years to prepare.

[GarethJohn]

Thanks Chrisee, you covered the sutuation pretty well. On investigation I now see that my alarm  company have indeed just produced a cellular option which I will now explore.

[jamesn123]

@GarethJohn 

If you have just joined Sky then it is probably just DLM (Dynamic line management) optimising your line overnight. It usually happens between 1am & 2am.

This happens with every new connection so you would not have noticed it with your previous provider as it only usually occurs within the first 2 weeks of a broadband connection being activated. 

[GarethJohn]

Thanks James, that I didn't know

[GarethJohn]

To finish the story, the alarm company tell me that whilst they don't see any more issues with sky than other providers there was definitely something going on last night, presumably as James commented. Their advice is not to rush into their new cellular option unless such problems persist.

[jamesn123 · Accepted solution]

@GarethJohn 

Expect it to happen around the same time each night for up to 2 weeks from your activation date then it should stop