Why has guaranteed minimum speed of my broadband reduced?

[chris.2553]

I renewed my contract for broadband (and TV)  this morning. Redaing through the emails I subsequently received, I was suprised to see to see that the guaranteed minimum spped has been reduced from 27,8Mbps to 19.9Mbps. Why is that? Are Sky getting to squeeze more data through without investing in more bandwidth.

Not anly that, my actual spped has been 37.5 Mbps from 7 March to 18th March and then dropped to 24.9 Mbps yesterday and today. I mentioned this to my wife and she remarked that two engineers were workin in the cabinet near our house the day before yesterday. Has my service been throttled? the speed over the last two days would be below the guranteed minimum i had until I renewed today. Cyber shrinkflation?

[chris.2553]

Actualy, I wasn't quite accurate in my original post. The Guaranteed minimum in the contract which has recently expired was 31.5 Mbps. That contract was for a service called "Sky Broadband Superfast 35". My new contract is for a service with exactly the same name, but with a significantly change to the conditions. I can't find anywhere on Sky.com where Sky state that the downgrade in guaranteed minimum is to be imposed. The first I knew of it was when an email arrived after I had agreed to the contract.This all seems very sneeky to me and I'm a bit miffed at what Sky have done.

As I said, it seems that sky are trying to support more customers without purchasing new capacity..

[TimmyBGood]

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@chris.2553 wrote:

As I said, it seems that sky are trying to support more customers without purchasing new capacity..

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Nope: reducing GMDS happens where an already poor copper line has degraded to the point where the previous speed is unlikely to be delivered, but ISPs know that Openreach is effectively abandoning such circuits to concentrate resources on the national FTTP rollout.  The only thing actually 'guaranteed' is the one-month refund clause.

[FLC]

There's definitely something odd going on with Part Fibre.

I've had a fairly consistant 65Mb+ over the last couple of years & maintained that when moving to Sky in November, with an MSG of 57Mb. But when I now look at the Wholesale Checker, my predicted speed is 51Mb max with MSG of 29Mb. Yet my neighbours either side are both showing the correct 70Mb max.

If I look at other ISPs offerings, some offer the correct speed & others only 40Mb. Not sure how that can be given they're all using the same data?

[Yakety]

Changing the conditions whilst keeping the name  with specifically '35' in it seems especially underhanded to me.

I'll know to pay more attention to my next renewal, thanks.

[FLC]

What does the Wholesale Checker show for your address?

BT Broadband Checker

[chris.2553]

Thanks for the reply, TimmyBGood.

I think it's a profits-based decision rather than technical.

BT Wholeesale's speed checker seems to be discontinued, but I tried four others - which, speed.is, virginmedia and cloudflair. The reported download speeds were 39Mbps, 36Mbps, 37.3Mbps and 33.1Mbps respectively. Additionally, Sky's own speed test results show 37.5Mbps every day from 8 to 18 March. the last three days the speeds have plummeted to 24.9, 24.9 and 25.3Mbps. That's a cliff-edge decline in speed.. Moreover, my last conteract ended on 20 March, so it would appear that the throttling (or whatever is casing the decline) was timed to start on the day when the GDMS would not be missed for three concecutive days.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Yakety wrote:

Changing the conditions whilst keeping the name  with specifically '35' in it seems especially underhanded to me.

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Wholesale FTTC is either 'up to' 80/20 or 40/10Mbs, so the marketing names reflect this 

[chris.2553]

Thanks for you reply FLC. I missed the search by address link when I looked at that site earlier.

I don't know what the row and column headings mean, but what appears to me to be the pertinent data is:

VDSL A Range Downstream Line Rate: 51.9 (High) 35 (Low)

VDSL B Range Downstream Line Rate: 50.8 (High) 32.4 (Low)

[FLC]

Did you choose the low speed originally, or was that all that was offered?

The other critical figure from the Checker is the Handback Threshold. This is the point at which an ISP can raise a fault with Openreach for low speed, so your MSG should be around that.

It might be worth visiting Sky's site from another browser without logging in & see what a new customer moving to your adress would be offered. Maybe check a few other ISPs too.

[chris.2553]

Thanks, FLC.

No I didn't choose a speed. I simply rang to get the price for a renewal, got an acceptable answer and went ahead. It never entered my head that "Sky Broadband Superfast 35" might be different from "Sky Broadband Superfast 35" . Lesson learned, although as I said in my original post, I didn't see anything about this change until I got the flood of emails after doing the deal. I've since looked all over Sky's (labyrinthine) website anf still found nothing.

The Handback Threshold reported is 32.4 for VDSL Range A and 27.4 for Range B.

I'll do the comparison you suggest.

[chris.2553]

Thanks for everyone for their comments and suggestions..

The speed to my hub has now returned to 37.5Mbps, which is what it had been consistently for ages.

Interestingly, when I log-in to my Sky account and visit the Service Checker page, I get a message that I coud upgrade to their faster superfast (SuperDuperFast?) service under which the MSG would be 36Mbps and the average speed 61Mbps.

Thanks again, everyone.

[Chrisee]

@chris.2553 sorry this is simply the limitations of the copper phone line to the cabinet. The length and condition of which dictates the speed it can carry. Sky have zero control over thatit is 100% within Openreach's network. Given the national switch to full fibre Openreach are increasingly unwilling to do work on under performing copper lines and hence customers get the message you got. It looks like the line either got better which can happen or an engineer did something after all.