worthless guaranteed bandwidth

[mjhagger]

I find it highly suspicious that my broadband is consistently below the "guarantee", which isn't a real guarantee at all because I declined to pay even more to sign up for the fixed term contract so magically does not even apply (could Sky get away with 1 bit/s... and say tough!?).

I'm starting to suspect I am secretly deliberately rate limited below it to coerce me to sign up for the more expensive fixed term.

Is this happening to others, or am I just paranoid...?

[Chrisee]

@mjhagger you are not covered by the speed guarantee when you are not in a fixed term contract but it is no big thing in praxtice. Assuming you are still on a partial fibre connection where the connection to your home is through the copper phone line the speed you get depends on the length and condition of that line which Sky can't control.

You can check the speed your hub connects out yourself by looking at the hub's connection stats see Find your Sky Broadband router statistics. If you want help in understanding these drop them in a post.

In practice if the speed is low apart from crediting a months subs Sky can only ask Openreach to check the line and they are increasingly unwilling to work on copper phonelines as these lines are due to be replaced by full fibre connection in the next few years.

If the speeds to the hub are OK the issue is likely to be slow wifi in your home which is not guranteed.

[TimmyBGood]

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@mjhagger wrote:

I'm starting to suspect I am secretly deliberately rate limited below it to coerce me to sign up for the more expensive fixed term.

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Broadband is a regulated industry and Ofcom would be very upset with any ISP doing such a thing.

[mjhagger]

Oh yes I know that.  Sky's systems even tell me my connection is considered "poor" and "below the guarantee", it is indeed a copper line from FTTC, so is never going to be great.  When I was first connected a few years and whilst in a "fixed term" it was pretty consistently above the guarantee though, its only fairly recently when I declined to pay extra for a fixed term that its mysteriously started to drop.

Sadly there is no plans for for FTTP around here for likely my life time by the sounds of it, small village communities are basically ignored.  Openreach seem to visit the area once or twice a month to "fix" things, although mostly for every single thing they fix at least one other thing is broken, I shudder to think what sort of mess the cabinet is.

As I wrote this I heard that 1/2 the village has just been cut off thanks to the local council slicing cables during hedge cutting 🙂

[TimmyBGood]

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@mjhagger wrote:

Sadly there is no plans for for FTTP around here for likely my life time by the sounds of it, small village communities are basically ignored.  

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The Openreach target to complete the fifteen billion pound 'commercially viable' phase of the national FTTP rollout (putting full fibre within reach of around 85% of UK addresses) is the end of 2026.  Beyond that, installation costs more than all likely future revenue and so alternative technology or additional funding is required.

https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband