Using Sky Stream with non-Sky broadband

[MJK4331]

I have an existing Linksys Mesh which is brilliant and solved wifi failures in our rather thick-walled rambling house. Currently we use Virgin for TV and broadband but they are a pain and, as "full fibre" is at last available in our road,  I'd like to switch to an alternative broadband provider (probably Zen) with the hub in modem-only mode and keep using my mesh. For a tv service, I'd like to get Sky Stream (whole house with a couple of exra pucks). What I'd be grateful for advice about before I go organising all this is whether it will work ok !

(I know I cannot have Sky Broadband as the Hub won't go into modem-only mode)

Are there any issues with connecting Sky Stream and Pucks to a third party mesh in this way ?

Thank you !

[mikealanr]

Hi @MJK4331 

Sky Pucks can be used with any ISP (I use EE) as long as each puck gets a stable internet connections. They are simple client devices. 

The only thing in would say is there have been some reports with smaller ISPs using non UK IP address blocks or more recently a DNS issue with Gigaclear that prevented pucks from functioning correctly. Sky and Gigaclear did work together to resolve.

MikeAlanR

[MJK4331]

Thank you. I will check out those specific points with Zen.

(I thought of Zen for broadband as we had their service in our old home and their support is first class)

[Exiled-in-HH]

Did you need to get a lot of support from ZEN?

I have Sky BB and very rarely (well once) required support😉

[_Clive_]

Sky Stream working fine here on EE FTTP, with Draytek router and mesh. 

[Mister_Dalek]

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@MJK4331 wrote:

Thank you. I will check out those specific points with Zen.

(I thought of Zen for broadband as we had their service in our old home and their support is first class)

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Zen are excellent, if pricey, but there's no reason why your mesh shouldn't work with Sky Stream. 
The pucks can be temperamental though - they're slave devices which require a constant stable connection to Sky's servers in order to function reliably. All the apps are hosted on this server, rather than on the device itself, so any interruptions to the network speed can cause issues. 
The only way to know if it'll work is to try it though. Stream works well for some and not for others. If you don't like it or it doesn't work well enough you can easily leave. 

[MJK4331]

Thank you all

Pucks on one month rolling contract are on their way.

I will let you know how I get on

Re Zen support, I didn't use them often in our old home but when I did, I was clearly speaking to an IT-enthusiast with strong knowledge rather than, as experienced at BT and Virgin, someone not very techy who is trying to follow some sort of menu for what to ask or do next. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@MJK4331 wrote:

Re Zen support, I didn't use them often in our old home but when I did, I was clearly speaking to an IT-enthusiast with strong knowledge rather than, as experienced at BT and Virgin, someone not very techy who is trying to follow some sort of menu for what to ask or do next. 

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Size is of course a significant factor: Zen recently reported they have just over 200,000 accounts while BT has more like ten million broadband customers (and Virgin supplies about six million households).  That kind of scale does pretty much rule out staffing frontline support with anyone other than script-readers because there just aren't that many 'IT-enthusiasts with strong knowledge' around who are willing to do that kind of job.