244 Comments on More info on Sky Broadband

RyanC on Wed, 19th Jul 2006 10:09 pm


So basically its £5 a month then, as 40GB should be more than enough unless you live online or something. Still very good price compared to normal ISPs, especially since its apparently the up to 16MB thing…

Now one last problem, the fact that you’d be relying on Sky for your customer services fun and games :S

Unless of course they are outsourcing that to another company?

Oliver on Thu, 20th Jul 2006 8:31 am


They also supply a free wireless router (gradually becoming more common but some companies still lumber you with just a modem).

About the “free”. There is a connection fee of £40 on the cheapest one (but it’s free on the highest) as well as home setup fee (which I assume is optional) of £50 (again it’s free on the highest one).

And the speeds are 2MB, 8MB and 16MB respectively.

http://87.86.186.37/showmeskybroadband.htm

Why there is a dodgy IP address instead of a domain I have no idea. One funny thing is the first thing they mention on their compare page is “Will I have to sign up to an 18 month contract? – No, Sky’s is 12 months.”

RyanC on Thu, 20th Jul 2006 11:50 am


Yeah 12 months is great, much better than the 1 month ‘contract’ I have right now :P

Yeah the dodgy looking IP is a bit strange, and the fact you have to pay anything at all for activation is laughable!

Stupid Sky!

RyanC on Thu, 20th Jul 2006 11:56 am


Why can people advertise unlimited when it isn’t – a fair usage policy is a limit…

Scallywag on Tue, 8th Aug 2006 8:56 am


You know the above could just as easily be accessed from http://broadband.sky.com/flash.htm

FAIR USE
I’ve been with a few bband providers now that have unlimited and “fair usage policy”. now i download up to and around 40gig and more alot of the time and i’ve not had any emails from either companies so far…

COSTS
Free Connection etc for a 16Mb line and £10 a month is brilliant when you have to consider BeThere that do “24″Mb costs 24 a month and i never got more than 8mb-12mb..

After speaking to sky, to get their 16Mb service you HAVE to be in there specific areas, with their equipment as usual, thankfully i am now, 2 weeks ago my flat around the corner wasnt!

Oliver on Tue, 8th Aug 2006 9:36 am


That’s where http://www.sky.com/broadband redirects you to. When I originally posted it though it sent you to the dodgy looking IP address…

Rob on Fri, 18th Aug 2006 8:26 pm


I have Sky broadband Max, self installed 4 days ago, and have just had a very disappointing conversation with their tech support. Seems they have no mail servers, so no SMTP gateway for you to send mail, and the customer portal systems are down and do not work. I was told that these are still in testing (”we are still getting rid of a few bugs”). I switched from Pipex and am beginning to wish I hadn’t! Ok, so I can browse but cannot send or receive email and for me this is more important.

Also, I have no idea what the login is for the broadband router. So I cannot configure it!!!

Very disappointed indeed and will be refusing to pay while I do not have the service level suggested in the advertising…

Rajen Kandel on Wed, 6th Sep 2006 8:52 pm


Login details for router:
username: admin
password: sky

I wanted to use ADSL VOIP VPN router instead of Sky Box. Does anyone know the adsl login which is required on the ISP details on the router. Sky is not giving this out for whatever reason. They have already burned this information on their sky box (router).

Thanks.

Kevin on Wed, 27th Sep 2006 4:04 pm


Sky has changed the firmware in the router, so at the moment no one can access the isp details. the sky web mail, has never work yet (according to there customer support – which i think is stupid ), but u can creata pop3 account in outlook using pop.sky.com as the incoming mailbox, and smtp.sky.com as the outgoing, sky doesn’t support this feature, as they thought that there would not be a need ( again sky not thinking ahead….lol). any more questions?

Kevin on Wed, 27th Sep 2006 4:07 pm


You can use a pop3 mail account open outlook add pop.sky.com as incoming address, and smtp.sky.com as outgoing, and you’re username and password, mines has been working fine for at least a week now. Any more questions?

Dave Lindop on Tue, 3rd Oct 2006 7:02 pm


I wished I had found this site earlier, I gone to sky broadband max, nothing but trouble and no mail servers I told for another week,

Alan Turner on Wed, 4th Oct 2006 7:53 pm


I have set up outlook as Kevin suggested, but when I send emails I get them returned with an error message of unknown user.
I have even added the user to my contacts and it still fails.

sam carlisle on Thu, 5th Oct 2006 12:49 pm


i am able to send e-mails through outlook express but i cant receive them is there anything i can do all i get is is a failed message

mohan on Fri, 13th Oct 2006 6:39 pm


I cannot send or receive emails with attachments through Sky.

I have sent emails to Sky’s technical support but they normally do not respond. When they finally responded by email, it was to say that they could not contact me as the phone number they had was wrong. I responded by email within a couple of minutes with my phone number but did not receive any call from them.

I also talked to them a few times over the phone but they did not inform me of any problems with their email servers till today when the technical call centre person who picked up the phone this time said that they had a problem with their email server. He could not give me a date by which it will be fixed.

Fortunately, I still have my BT ISP service on another phone line and am able to use that to send and receive emails with attachments without any problem. If I was unable to do this, I would not have known that Sky call centre technical people were fobbing me off with lies.

I disconnected Sky, connected BT and was able to send and receive emails without problems. However if I connect Sky and disconnect BT, my emails to others and their emails to me that have attachments are not received. Therefore it is obvious that the problem is with Sky. When I mentioned this to Colin Payne, the Supervisor at Sky, he said they would not talk to me till I had disconnected BT permanently!

MsBear on Mon, 16th Oct 2006 3:52 pm


I got my sky broadband package last week, spent the entire weekend trying to set it up, seem to be some problem with the ip config – I dont know, spent hours to their tech support (are they based in India?) who just kept messing me about and putting me on hold, hanging up etc, Im fed up already!

Steve on Thu, 19th Oct 2006 7:53 am


I had a similar problem and I was told that I needed a new router (I’d already been without internet access for 5 days because of a delay receiving the first one!). I had a look at some forums and the problem was the DHCP service was not started on my PC. To check go to control panel, administration tools, services. DHCP needs to be started and set to automatic.

I tried to suggest the help desk include this but I got a reply from the technical team stating there is no conflict with the DHCP service! You try to help….

bob on Sat, 21st Oct 2006 10:51 am


I was on tiscali who had Subject to Fair Usage Policy. theyn sent me an email asking me to leaves because I use 40 gigs in a month. I want unlimited to mean unlimited. so I am staying with aol who give me 8mb connection totally unlimited free wireless router for 24.99. I download all the movies and tv shows I want. so I cancelled sky and just have freeview. ..so I am getting everything I want to watch plus total access unlimited broadband..all for 24.99

paul on Sun, 22nd Oct 2006 9:00 pm


sky are in breach of contract… they offered email etc.. they havent provided..thus i have to maintain aol account.. sky should reimburse .. but they dont give a toss… .. they make revenue from 0870 number so they dont care how long they waste your time..

Phil on Wed, 25th Oct 2006 10:49 am


I had Sky Max installed recently – supposedly up to 16M but the best I could get was 7.5M with regular dropouts. I am less than 2km from the exchange so I reckon I should be able to get more. BUT the real issue is that the service slows down to a crawl in the evening (like dialup). If you call customer service the best they can offer is for someone to call you back in 5 days time! So – I have cancelled the service – a shame as the price was great but looks like you get what you pay for…..

Simon on Sun, 29th Oct 2006 7:23 pm


I managed to get Sky to give me the password to the Sky router – its sky.

I don’t know how you cope without the log in as my box needs re-booting daily as it keeps stopping.

Has anyone else found this?

Percy on Mon, 30th Oct 2006 1:52 pm


Same here – I have to reset my sky router regularly, and it’s a real pain.

I’ve also had my line speed capped at 5.5Mb at my request as they said that was the max throughput available to me. They suggested that the greater line speed was the problem causing the router lock up, but it’s still happening.

Phil on Mon, 30th Oct 2006 6:41 pm


I found that resetting the router (by doing a power off & on) at a peak traffic time of day stopped mine from dropping out – it configured itself at a lower speed (about 5.5Mb instead of 7.5Mb if I did a reset in the morning). However it didn’t stop the more serious problem of major slowdown at peak times.

sam on Mon, 30th Oct 2006 7:12 pm


i just got sky Max today…the speed test from adslguide.org.uk says 3.2Mbps :O, i dont seem to have any connection problems so far…its good..since i previously had BT 2meg…but i expected to have a faster connection…

sn1p3r on Tue, 31st Oct 2006 9:52 pm


after first ordering sky bb 2meg on the 4th sept, they have told me my line activation will be today lol, n then only then will bt tell sky this n a few day after ill recieve my goods, – any truth to this, is this how it goes ??

anyways, im not huge on downloading stuff, but i am gonna be an online gamer, not hardcore but enough, will my 2meg connection n 2 gig download usage be enough ???

a nasrin on Wed, 1st Nov 2006 9:42 am


i moved my braodband from AOL to sky thinking that they are good value for money, when i recieved the equipment , i noticed that the fairmware in the router has been changed and will not allow connection to local area network and the isp has been hard coded and the tech support refused to provide me with isp in order to use my own router. and yet could not get me connected via their own router because of unknown problem which will take up to 10 days to resolve. Following this , i cancelled the subscription and was told that my line will be freed within 10 days. after 15 days of waiting they did not release my line and once more i found out that they did not submit request to BT to remove the marker from my line. following further conversation with customer servuices , i was told that it woul take up to 30 days before they can release my line due to backlog as people are leaving the broadband service. Frankly , I am not surprised that people are leaving Sky if they are getting the same support and response as me. Bt who own the line have told us the industry standard for removing the marker is 5 to 10 days. therefore Sky is in breach of their obligation as set out by the industry regulator.

leeman on Thu, 2nd Nov 2006 5:32 pm


you havent a chance of playing much online gaming with 2gb, online gaming will use it up before you know it.

ian bell on Thu, 2nd Nov 2006 7:58 pm


I started to switch from Pipex to Sky in early August 06
I’ve had nothing but problems.
e.g. Sky accepted the MAC code on 21/9 (after I had to make many very long phone calls)
Sky contacted me on about 15/10 to say there had been a BT problem but everything was sorted out and it would be ready on 22/10.
I then chase Sky (again), for Sky to get back a week later saying it had all gone wrong and I need a new MAC code.
Sod that.
Got new deal with Pipex and told Sky I no longer wanted to continue.
I’d rather pay an extra £8 a month to stay with pipex – you get what you pay for.
I put this down to a close call – Sky are not worth it – really.

ian bell on Thu, 2nd Nov 2006 8:00 pm


No way leeman, I play Everquest2 on 1Mb fine. It’s the PC that’ll slow stuff up not the broadband.

john on Fri, 3rd Nov 2006 11:19 am


Hi,

I got connected to sky broadband for free with my TV.

I have the exact same router as they sent but it wouldn’t connect.
Phoned up technical and they said I had to use there own router even though it’s the same.

Got that running via ethernet cable.
Couldn’t get wireless.
Phone tech again…
the option in the router to set it to “b only” was missing and that’s what my adapter is.
“g and b” for some reason doesn’t work.

I phoned back and said I wanted them to add my routers mac code to there system and I would put in whatever username and password they needed and return there sky router.
They said no!!!
It has to be there own equip.

So…
what happens when I want to used a IP camera?
IP cameras have there own modem and IP addy and you don’t even have a computer or router connected… all you need is broardband and the camera.
This doesn’t look like an option now.

Why the fcuk they “MAKE” you use there own stuff is beyond me.
Fair enough make there supplied equipment so it only works with there own stuff but to not let you use your own that you have already invested in is totally out of order and they did NOT tell me this when I trans’d from Pipex.

But it’s free and I was payin £23 to pipex so I get the sky TV for nothing basically and am paying £15 for 2meg broadband.

tim on Sat, 4th Nov 2006 6:12 pm


I have dreamweaver 4, Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver 8. All of which are unable to ftp more then a single item to and from a website. Works perfect on every other broadband service. Can anyone suggest what they have done or a fix. Their tech support just blanks the issue.

Steve Wilson on Sat, 4th Nov 2006 11:51 pm


If you need to access the Netgear Sky router it is http://192.168.0.1 ID is ‘admin’ Password is ’sky’, I know this because i must have been into it about a hundred times now! Five weeks with Sky braodband and five weeks of internet Hell! Intermittent connection problems, i am losing the connection now about every five minutes when on line, four hours collective phone calls to Sky, Three trouble tickets and absoluteley no response from Sky. They say level two support will get back to me within 48 hours, that was a month ago and about ten phone calls since. I have a theory though! I got Sky HD and they put back installation because they were not actually ready for it. I think it has been the same with the broadband i think that is why they never get back to me because they will not admit that they are not fully up to speed with it and they haven’t actually got it working properly yet.

Julie on Mon, 6th Nov 2006 8:42 pm


I have just received my pack from Sky and was thinking about changing from Telewest as I’m paying £25 for 4mb.
Having read these posts I think I’m going to wait a while and see how things improve. I’d rather pay over the odds and keep my service. Telewest aren’t brilliant but they always reply to emails within 24 hours and, although you have to wait a while on the phone to get through the chaps ontrhe other end are really helpful.
has anyone got any good tales to tell about Sky?

mark on Wed, 8th Nov 2006 12:44 pm


here is a link that could be usefull if you need to ring sky http://www.saynoto0870.com
you can find a free sky contact number 08000512595 there is a broadband option 1 i think

Rick on Thu, 9th Nov 2006 2:21 pm


I can relate to all the complaints. I switched from PlusNet which provided awful service (eg, Internet down for days at a time or cutting out for 3 or 4 hours during the day). I thought Sky would be an improvement but they are worse. First, I was unable to connect to my company’s email or websites (and all at my office that have switched to Sky have the same problem). Sky’s email server has never worked. (I have tried using their pop and smtp servers and have the same problems as mentioned here.) And their customer service is absolutely one of the worst. English is their 3rd language and they never listen to what you say. Their ‘tech’ help just reads from printed material. My mom would do a better job! I have cancelled them as well and they told me it would take 30 days (!!!!) to clear the line……

Ben E on Thu, 9th Nov 2006 10:45 pm


Anyone got tech soecs on the wireless router? Or can you get a non wired router? I have a perfectly good access point (connected to my home LAN) set up with all the security features I wan’t and don’t want to be restricted to what they give me. If it can’t give the acces to the LAN either with the right security features it’s useless. Some info on this would be appreciated. Though by some of the somments above I’m put off getting SKY broadband altogether!

Martin Pearce on Sat, 11th Nov 2006 7:51 pm


Thinking of signing up for Sky Broadband? Take my advice – DON’T RISK IT!!! My experience was an unmitigated, time-wasting, frustrating, costly disaster.

I already had BT broadband on a second line. I thought I’d try and save money by canceling my regular phone line. I signed up for Sky Broadband Max on 18/09. Sky apparently canceled my order the next day but when they finally got around to telling me that something had gone wrong they couldn’t explain why. Then on 27/09 my BT broadband stopped working – a total disaster since I’m a software developer working from home!!! It turned out that Sky had only partially cancelled my order and had instructed BT to discontinue service. Sky then put an ADSL marker on my line and despite repeated requests and numerous lengthy and expensive phone calls to their provisioning department have still failed to remove it thus preventing me from signing with any other ISP.

Nearly two months later I’ve been forced to pay for BT to reinstall the second line purely in order to escape from the indelible Sky marker on the other line. It’s almost cost me my livelihood. I shall be suing Sky for compensation and reimbursement of costs arising from their total incompetence as a broadband provider.

Rob on Mon, 13th Nov 2006 7:26 pm


I switched to sky broadband from aol having loads of trouble, if my router is powered upon start up my comp freezes, any ideas?

Kev on Tue, 14th Nov 2006 10:18 pm


I have spent 5 months trying to get TalkTalk broadband after registering with them in April, after 100’s of phone calls and no broadband in Sept I gave up! Registered with Sky 12 days ago, equipment arrived after 4 days! activated today. Installation was a easy took less than 5 minutes. Conected at 8mb and a happy bunny!!!!!!! So far!!!!!!

Katina on Thu, 16th Nov 2006 1:25 pm


The parents in-law have just connected to “Sky Broadband” and I would like to chuck the thing out of the window. It has been less than a week and the so called engineer has been out twice. I dread to think how many phone calls have been made to the so called technical support line! Technical support my arse!!!
The problem is quite simple my mother in-law cannot get on the internet all the time. She is on the unlimited package to you would think it would work all the time but not in Sky`s twisted little world.
I hold Sky responsible for the headache I have from having to go and reset the router, wiggle the router as that works. And yet the one thing I really want to do which would get rid of my headache is chuck the bloody wireless modem out of the window and see if it flies because its does nothing else!!!!!!!
After reading the posted comments I know my life will consist of making trips to the mother in-laws (do I need to say anything else on that joy) and spending hours yelling abuse at the monkeys at so called technical support. Technical support should be renamed ” we don`t have a clue but your paying for the call so we are quite happy to take your abuse because we know you will never get the broadband your paying for!!!!” I know it seems a long title for them but the real one begins with F and ends with the word you!!
I am on the internet at home via Telewest cable so can sit here somewhat smugley typing this. I have few problems with cable, touchwood! But, sadly my headache is back, the mother in-law`s internet is down and so its another trip and another conversation with the useless monkeys. Oh joy! I wonder if she would notice a modem flying out of the window into the garden?

Jewkesy on Thu, 16th Nov 2006 4:54 pm


Here is the link to the Netgear site for the router (DG834GT) http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/dg834gt.asp

It has links to the manuals and firmware

steveo on Fri, 17th Nov 2006 11:03 am


0800 0512595 is a free phone number for Sky. Let them pay for it ;-). Any other 0870 number you come across go to http://www.saynoto0870.com and simply enter the companies name. At worst you will get a local rate number, an 0800 if you’re lucky, but you’re not playing into their who-cares-about-service-the-more-calls-they-make-the-more-money-we-earn attitidue. Stick it up ‘em.

Porter on Sat, 18th Nov 2006 3:11 pm


What a PALAVA!!!!!! Signed up to sky broadband beginning of September. Since then have been unable to log into email, unable to log onto the broadband site itself and apparently our password is incorrect even though we’ve never been able to log onto the damn site to change it!!!! Customer services/tech support is utterly utterly crap!!! I’m supposed to be studying and have spent the last 2 hours going round in circles with the poxy phone system!! AAARRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

johann on Sat, 18th Nov 2006 11:28 pm


Have sky broadband for a few hours now, switch from BT-Yahoo via MAC adress. I choosen Sky Max after they invited me to join the service. Few things I noted so far.

1. Sky Speed: 800k download and 400k upload, vs 512k download and 256k upload I got with BT – Improvement (I’m far from the exchange)

2. The egineer was not up to the job, I had to finish the job for him to get my Belkin wireless (Desktop) and Intel Pro wireless (Laptop) working – what I usually expect from most ISP tech support, bunch of script readers – Guess you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

3. Had to scrub the web on how to configure the router to work with emule and have my own flavoured settings – had to do the same with my BT Home Hub.

4. oh the login is “admin” and password is “sky”, was thinking of changing it for my own health and the safty of the ISP.

5. password they send me doesn’t work, acctually the password work for pop email, but not for the website. figured the web password was the same I used when I registered on their website few months ago (was to lookup some Sky TV programs). Bummer is that can’t use the website to read emails…

6. BT-Yahoo charged me £25 for a crap service, now I’m getting the same crap service for £10 – I win !! (so I hope)

7. Was out of Broadband for 2 days, switch by getting a MAC adress – remember the MAC adresss is only valid for a few weeks.

Zub on Mon, 20th Nov 2006 1:58 pm


To get your real login info for your broadband just enter this into your web browser:

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26%2Fbin%2Fbusybox%20grep%20ppoa_%20%2Ftmp%2Fnvram%20%3E%20%2Fwww%2Fnetgear.cfg

then wait a while and then type in:

http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg

it should bring up a save file prompt. Save it somewhere. Then open it with notepad or something and hey presto there is your login info. Each new subject field is seperated by pppoa.

so you shopuld end up with:

pppoa_username: (yourMACaddressOFrouter)@skydsl
pppoa_password: 1234567aa1
pppoa_idle=0
pppoa_ipaddr=

enjoy, and get yourself another router, at least one better than the crappy netgear router that has constant connection drops and needs constant re-booting!

Kev on Tue, 21st Nov 2006 2:21 pm


Installed mine myself about a week ago after switching from BT so easy I couldn’t believe it! unlike my mates orange broadband that I set up a couple of weeks ago where I ended up spending till midnight round there for 2 evenings!
Just wired up put the Sky cd in and in less than 2 minutes it was up and running and has been ever since! It is true that there broadband web site is down and has been for the last 3 weeks!! called them this morning and they reckon it will be down another week! Although this shouldn’t stop you accessing the web and all other web sites should be fine.
You can pick up your email by setting outlook to access skys POP email server direct. The address to set up in outlook is outgoing server “smtp.sky.com” and incoming “pop.sky.com” then obiviously set your user id and password in outlook. I have done this on mine and it works fine, I am able to send and recieve emails via my Sky email address.
The web site is giving the error “You do not have the required permissions to use this site” I believe if you get this error you are using the correct password its just they are not giving you access to the server because it is down! If I enter any other combination I get “Incorrect Password error”
Hope this helps guys!

winston on Fri, 24th Nov 2006 11:01 am


i have sky broadband but my my router will not let me connect to MSN Messenger,i have to reset the router every 10mins,what can i do ?

haroon on Fri, 24th Nov 2006 1:44 pm


Hi,

Can I suggest that you all please pass your coments to skys customer relation department. When you get through to customer services/broadband etc, ask to be put through and voice these comments and also contact bbc watchdog. I too have had many problems before even being connected to the free broadband- cancelled 2 orders for no reason, waited 20 days still to date no broadband!! Thanks!!

haroon on Fri, 24th Nov 2006 1:47 pm


And nearly forgot, I have been advised by sky that you can claim back call charges to their 0870 numbers if you send a copy of your phone bill in-these will be credited back to an active sky account

Kathy on Fri, 24th Nov 2006 7:33 pm


I just wish I had found this site before I decided to change from a really reliable, though more expenesive, IP. I signed up for Broadband Max and can confirm that I have had 2 months of “max” hell and two bad tempered children, pulling their hair out becuse of the disruption to their studies (and of course msn). One’s attempting to do Alevels; the other GCSEs. I have to switch off the pc and reboot approx every 20-30 mins. everyday, and have wasted hours on the technical support line ( so thanks for the free pnone number) I’ll never again switch to anything new, but wait until the dust has settled – in my case – the ashes!

Nick P on Sat, 25th Nov 2006 12:26 am


Sky bb is driving me mad. have now connected by ethernet cable as recommended by “tier 3″ advice. just as well as wireless doesn’t work for long at all. Channel keeps changing and I can’t open netgear icon – is that right? Cna get broadband now but can only start up my PC if I turn off their pathetic router box first and turn it back on after boot completed.

Any advice? Sky techs are hopeless. At least you’ve given me a freephone number to ring.

Kev on Sat, 25th Nov 2006 6:07 pm


Well dont know whether it will help, but I have been with Sky for 3 weeks, during the first 2 weeks everything seemed fine apart from 1 loss of connection which required a reboot of the router, but the last week has been hell! having to reboot router up to 4 times a day because of slow page downloads or complete loss of connection! Then I found a forum skyusers.co.uk and they seem a very helpful bunch! they suggested I turn off upnp in the router menu. I haven’t got a clue what it does but turning it off seems to have fixed the problem I have now been up for 24hrs no probs fingers crossed!! To get to router menu type http://192.168.0.1/start.htm on explorer then, login admin password sky.
Hope this helps.

Johnny on Sun, 26th Nov 2006 5:57 pm


I dont happen to have a HND in Computing, and unless you do, I wouldnt even bother going with Skynet.

Nothing but absolute crap from the beginning. Allow me to illustrate

1) we have sky broadband installed, our BT phoneline is crossed with another guy who gets it installed the same day. We get calls for some other guy for the next 2 months or so, Sky blame BT. BT blame a crossed line. Nothing gets done for a month or so till finally an engineer phones me and we actually have our phone line fixed… i think?

2) we have it installed. i cant download ANYTHING. My flash player doesnt work. I can’t game online. Luckily i knew enough to fix this but my p2p sharing software is still crippled.

3) now i have virtually no internet, i wouldnt be half suprised if when I submit this comment i get a stupid “Cannot find server” error message which i seem to be getting every 5 or 10 minutes, which results in me trying other urls, getting the same messages and then switching off my router, only to repeat the same process for the next 3 minutes. In short you get roughly 10 minutes of internet, sometimes a few hours (if your lucky and its a friday) before your router has a fit and the internet dies. it usually takes about 4 or 5 tries to get back on.

4) its just a waste of time trying to stream anything, it just freezes up with me.

5) my dad was told by the “technical support” team that the reason for all his problems was that his cable was too long. second call straight after and he’s told that isnt the problem what so ever

6) we havnt been able to access the website for the last 5 weeks.

7) my mums email is shocking, it displays every single email she gets in ASCII text, therefore any html coding applied to a message is all displayed and she can’t make head or tail of any email she gets.

8) i turned of UPNP and its actually worse, i even configured my firewall to open up certain ports and still no joy.

9) we started getting popups from a company called deluxe communications which was adware. to get rid of this we had to search for deluxe communications in add remove programmes and delete it. since then

10) my internet crashed while typing this. therefore i had to save it as a notepad file and post it later. :) haha.

thats pretty much everything so far, but i expect to hit more snags in the future. if this is broadband internet for £10 A month, it pretty much reflects the price.

a very VERY unique positive is the speed. Its pretty quick, ifyou ignore the very short second snag it takes to realise what its doing, other than that its an absolute shocking service from a company who’s reputation is clearly at stake here by releasing such an inferior product.

Verdict : the minute your 1 year contract is up, do like british gas customers and go back.

2\10

greenfaldo on Fri, 1st Dec 2006 7:00 pm


we have had so many problems, we had tiscali and it was about 2.3 mbs speed, and that wasn’t too bad but we did alot of p2p downloading and when we first started it we got put on with the high users, and we left. We were able to download films in several hours which was fine, you could leave the computer on over nite and the film was downloaded, cds albums only took a few hours but we changed to Sky………big mistake…..
Our line went live on 15/11/06 but they hadn’t told us that so on the 15/11 we lost all our internet, we didn’t get the router arrive until 2-3 days later and the letter didn’t arriver until about the same time, when we were set up it still didn’t work and we had to wait until the monday for it to start working.
it seemed very slow and as we couldn’t get any broadband due to the exchange needing to be upgraded they could offer us the Connect which was up to 8mb £17 a month, but its running at between 3.4/3.5 and 4.7 mbs but everything is still so very slow, the torrent site that we use have tried to help speed up the downloads, b and they have been great, even with my limited knowledge of computer speak i have done my best but still it is very poor. But reading all the posts it seems that it is Sky’s problem and not mine.
My wife and i have spoken about it and we are still considering camncelling the broadband, it is such a shame as we love the Sky + its fantastic, but boy they haven’t got a clue about broadband.
Does anyone have any clues about p2p sharing and why its taking so bloody long to download stuff.

Sky broadband what a joke

A Nasrin on Sat, 2nd Dec 2006 10:15 am


I posted a while back, still no joy, how I wish I had read the comments on this website before making the fatal decision to sign up for the so-called service with Sky Broadband.
I’ve now been without internet access for 2 months and even when I finally got a MAC code from them, BT said it was invalid. Their customer service have been trained to lie … and lie… and lie. I now have records of all the lies and since they tap their keyboards when I’m calling them, I’m going to submit a data protection request to find out what they are recording, it certainly isn’t my repeated requests for them to speed up and get their tag off my line. i’ve been told repeatedly that my request hasn’t yet been actioned, but they will of course do it for me and it should be only a couple of days (lie). I got into the habit of asking who I was speaking to as I am now keeping records of what they say, the first time I opened the conversation with this, the guy said “you want my identification number?” and then cut me off immediately, so another 20 minutes on the 0870 number making menu choices and listening to canned music and sky ads.
Eventually I got them to put me through to provisioning (usually they put me on hold for 15 mins and then claim proudly they have sorted out the problem in provisioning and it will only be a couple of days…) The girl there admitted there was a 30 WORKING day backlog in dealing with requests because there were so many people leaving and joining (and presumably leaving again because of the crap service)
I asked if I could talk to a manager and (the final insult,) she said I could not because “they are not CUSTOMER FACING”.

So let’s applaud the company philosophy shall we – the monkeys deal with the customers on 0870 numbers making fat fees out of the hours of calls they take, never resolving problems and their managers are not customer facing, even if they are in charge of CUSTOMER SERVICES.

I’ve submitted my details to Watchdog and I suggest everyone else do the same. I can’t take legal action because unfortunately you can’t put a price on frustration, your time etc and I don’t work on the internet, unlike Martin who posted above.

Luckily my neighbour has kindly allowed me to piggyback his broadband using a wireless connection so at least my kids can go their homework, but they have to squat in the attic, facing his window so we can get a connection!!

Cal on Tue, 5th Dec 2006 12:23 am


I was considering going with Sky bb in the new year as I am tired of paying over the odds for a 2 Meg BT Line (which, touch wood, I have Never had a problem with). Much as I hate to benefit from others’ Misfortune I can only thank everyone for sharing their experiences. Despite the expence of seperate bb & Sky TV I will certainly not be going with Sky bb anytime soon.

ISkyrater on Tue, 5th Dec 2006 9:09 pm


Another dissatisfied Sky broadband customer here. all the same problems you guys are experiencing slow in the evenings, unable to access mail through the sky website, tech support that are clueless. I havnt paid for the two months I have been with sky because of all the problems I have had with intermittant service. Tier 3 support takes a week (at least) to ring you back. if you ask teir 1 tech support if others are having similar problems they say very few people are. ANYONE thinking of moving from their current ISP to SKY …Don’t DO IT!

Never thought I would say this…..ever……come back AOL all is forgiven!!

Kev on Tue, 5th Dec 2006 11:18 pm


Dont knock Cal, after a few teething pro’s mine is fine. There was a couple of settings in the router had to changed cos it keeped droping off line, but now have a constant 6mb for 5 quid a month.

Erol on Wed, 6th Dec 2006 12:33 pm


As a sky technical support advisor, i shouldnt really be saying this but Sky havent got the equipment in to limit how much you dl at the moment and won’t have for a few months so at the moment its completely unlimited.

James on Wed, 6th Dec 2006 10:28 pm


Hey Erol, as a tech advisor can you answer any of the above questions? Why do our routers constantly drop the internet connection? Why are speeds painfully slow? Why do we have to restart routers to get internet connection?

I spent about an hour on the phone today and (in the nicest possible way) the person on the end of the phone seemed to have no idea what she was talking about. Its crazy, all I want is a stable internet connection, right now I couldn’t care if it capped at 2mb (despite my supposid 16mb connection) as long as its always on..

Thanks mate,
James

Dan on Thu, 7th Dec 2006 2:35 pm


Just a quick warning for those having Sky wireless installed. Two engineers turned up at my house not 30 minutes ago to install the service while my girlfriend was at home. They told her that the Netgear router would not work with the Belkin dongle I have on my desktop and that she had to pay them £20 for a Netgear dongle so that they can set up and test the service. My girlfriend immediately calls me (I am an IT Manager) and I have a brief conversation with the engineers, who tell me that it will work with internal devices regardless of make, but only external Netgear products. I politely tell them that they are talking bull and they depart after wiring the router to my PC.

I’ve just called Sky technical support and informed them of what the engineers said. They told me that it is policy not to wirelessly connect non-Netgear products (I am guessing that the “engineers” training only goes so far..), but that there is no reason that it won’t connect to Belkin devices.

I am now writing an official complaint (Sky Correspondance, 4 Macintosh Road, Kirkton Campus, Livingstone, EH5 4BW for those who are interested). Not only is nothing written in the T&C’s about not connecting to non-Netgear products, but if I had not been available, my girlfriend would have been ripped-off by £20.

To top it all I have just found out that the engineer tested the service my logging on to Wannadoo and retrieving his own personal e-mails! Good job I have a net nanny program that logs all web activity, eh?! :)

Stuart on Fri, 8th Dec 2006 7:26 am


Hi, just wanna post as I have read all the problems written here that people have had and tbh it put the fear of god into me that I had made a terrible mistake moving to Sky BB. Although my previous provider Fast24 would not issue me a MAC code so I had to cancel my connection altogether and wait for the line to clear before I could order Sky BB, the whole Sky BB process has been very painless. From my order with Sky going through, it has taken 7 working days and my connection is now live. as of 15:00 yesterday.

However the connection won’t work with my Netgear router only the Sky one and atm I am only getting speeds of 3.5mbps when I was quoted by Sky as getting 8mbps. All this aside I wanna say that these types of forums CAN be very misleading as well as being very helpful. Not everyone has the same problems and a lot of these problems can be geographic. Yes I have problems but all in all no serious problems. My last provider Fast24 was an absolute nightmare. Time will only tell how Sky shapes up as an internet provider and I believe these problems are teething problems and mainly caused by the overwhelming response Sky have had to their service. At the end of the day its up to the individual what they decide to do and I feel sorry for those who have had major problems to deal with, it must be driving you mad, I know oit would me. I just wanted to be one of the few to post and say…..so far so good :)

BTW, just wanted to ask the guy above (Dan), if your an IT Manager why did you need engineers to come and set up your Sky BB. I’m no IT guy, but I did mine myself and it took me 10 minutes…strange??

Kev on Fri, 8th Dec 2006 5:33 pm


I agree with Stuart above, had a few teething probs which were easy to resolve. A very useful website is skyuser.co.uk, Its a forum with again lots of grips but also lot of help and tips for fixing known issues!

Stuart on Sat, 9th Dec 2006 4:30 pm


Just wanna say thanks to Zub, who posted above. His info helped me greatly, I have now binned the crappy router Sky supply an I’m using my Netgear RangeMax 270 and guess what……..no drop outs, download and upload are spot on :) So thanks again Zub :)

Prasad on Sun, 10th Dec 2006 6:04 pm


I am with NTL cable at the moment and had a Sky basic TV package. So to save some money I signed up to Sky broadband 2MB ( I am not a heavy user). The netgear router arrived in time ( paid 40 quid for that), and Sky gave me an activation date of 11, Oct. Midnight passed and no adsl. Called customer support and they tell me there is a hardware problem in the exchange and will be sorted out soon. Nearly 8 weeks later and few phone calls, still no connection. Last info from their support ” Nobody in Sky knows when this will be sorted out”. When I pointed out that I was told in Nov that the problem will be fixed in 2 weeks, he said Oh, I shouldn’t have been told so.. Who is responsible ? answer has varied from Easynet to Sky to No one knows…

In a public network I can’t believe it takes 10 weeks to fix a hardware problem…

I am left with a Brodband router and 3 ADSL splitters. Don’t know what to do .. Sell them on e-bay perhaps ?? Fortunately I didn’t cancel my NTL cable..

Craig on Mon, 11th Dec 2006 8:38 pm


Hi – at last somewher to complain about the SKY.

Why do we seemingly intelligent humans put ourselves through these things.

Similar problems – I have been a happy SKY Customer for years and always refused to go BT Broadband because of their service issues on a simple dial-up account.

So far with Sky Broadband – they have never return so called “level 2 service calls” – these are the ones without a philipino call centre – (dial later and get the scottish one!) – I have called 5 times – so far no response.

There is a service level “firewall” which stops you genuinely accessing someone intelligent or who gives a damn at these organisations.

Issues :

- The engineer told me that he had never seen such a slow line and that it takes approximately 2 weeks for connections to “bed-in”

- I am viewing/creating/sending this using an old BT Dial Up account and this is much faster than my current Sky Broadband

- 2 of the 3 adsl splitters were faulty

- The line is up and down like a whores draws – like a light house or trying to jump onto a running bus

- Phillipine help desk is useless

- Scottish help desk al least nice to talk to!

- Both help desks do not understand IP Config issues or the use of a so called internet gateway in your “network connections” box.

- This is not a “clear” or “open” line (the ability to send & receive email to / from other ISP’s (BT/Demon/Pipex) – I was told it would be and therefore i have been conned! – I actually do not use my sky email address

- The send out speed is slower than my Dial-up – this does matter to me!

The web based NetGear Router Login – http://192.168.0.1/start.htm confidently tells them that your connection is fine although you cannot even open their http://www.sky.com web page – I think this is a jpeg image and not a live screen!

All getting very silly – we humans clearly cannot trust anyone with regards to Broadband or even anything else

Have fun with your Sky Broadband and learn to die/paint/fix cars/grow a beard whilst waiting for Sky Helpdesk to get back.

I have been using dial up for last 3 days as I have a job to do!

Rgds
Craig

Craig on Mon, 11th Dec 2006 8:55 pm


Hi

Further to note above- I forgot – I live in a Victorian House with real walls. The Broadband does not work downstairs or upstairs from where my study has the router – only really works in the same room as the WIFI router – can anything be done here ?

Thanks

cbax on Tue, 12th Dec 2006 6:37 pm


I don’t know what you lots problems are. I set up my skybroadband last week and it works perfectly. The E-mail problem is bad but if you setup outlook correctly it works fine. May I suggest most of you put your computers back in the box and return them from where you got them as you obviously don’t have the intelliegence to use them correctly. I don’t work for sky or even particulaley like them but there is no problem with their routes or the speed. I was getting 3meg from my old provider and was quoted the same speed by sky when i signed up due to my distance from my exchange and that is what i get. It doesn’t slow down at peek times and i have never had to reset my router once!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kev on Wed, 13th Dec 2006 12:02 am


Well that was a bit harsh cbax! Well mine was fine for the first 10 days then I ran into some problems including the router having to be rebooted every 3 to 4 hours because the connection kept dropping, most of these teething problems I have now sorted with the help of the skyuser.co.uk forum. But I will say that Skys first line phone support is useless, there usual answer to a problem is “Yes we are having some issues please try again later!” But over all I am happy with the service especially for the £5 a month I am paying for a 8mb service with 40gb download limit as oposed to Bt’s £17.99 for 2mb with a 2gb limit! When yours goe’s tits up give me a shout I might be able to give you some tips! lol

Kev on Wed, 13th Dec 2006 9:20 am


Why was my last post deleted? It was not abusive in any way unlike the one above!

Kev on Wed, 13th Dec 2006 9:22 am


Sorry mods I take that back it has now appeared!

Chris on Sat, 16th Dec 2006 2:39 pm


I used to have BT yahoo 2mb and just before i switched to sky i used speedtest.net to test my connection and it came out with an expected result of 1.9mb download 200kb upload and showed me as ~350mile from the test server in london with a 22ms latency, But with my supposed 16mb sky connection (with me being roughly 1km from exchange) it came out as 7mb download and 415kb upload BUT the weird thing is that i’m showing as less then 50 miles from the london test server with a latency of 57ms.

I’m not overly bothered with the download speed , i would have preffered a higher upload speed as i do a lot of online gaming but the latency is absolutely destroying my online gaming and to this day no-one even in sky’s tech department can explain why i am showing as being within 50 mile of london possibly something to do with my IP address not resembling any IP addresses from up to 50 mile around my area (i know this through asking over 30 different friends whose IP’s generally start with an 80 number and mines seems to start with 90)

Anybody here know why ??

paz120 on Sun, 17th Dec 2006 9:44 pm


I have had the same problems of the internet intermittantly dropping all the time for the 4 weeks I have had it installed, whether it was a wired connection or a wireless one. Didn’t matter if i used Gentoo (Linux) or Windows, the connection was always dropping off.

So after reading the post above by Zub, and being fortunate enough to have a Trust ADSL modem/router lying around, decied to obtain my user name and password from the Netgear box, and use the Trust box instead.

Guess what? for the last week it has ran as well as it should do, no reboots of the router, no loss of the internet, and speeds have been better than I was quoted by Sky. This may not be the soloution to everyones gripes about sky broadband, and there probably is ways to mess with the router settings to get it working, but my advice is to get yourself another ADSL modem/router and use that instead. They are cheap enough now and as we got that Netgear thing for nothing (you know what I mean), whats to lose? Unless you like talking to the people at sky and listening to their hold music and pulling ya hair out everytime you want to use the internet.

Joel on Mon, 18th Dec 2006 5:26 am


Just wanted to add to this how rubbish Sky Broadband truly is… I am currently jealous of my mum’s 512k broadband because my helpfully informs me I am not connected to the internet at 5-10 fu*king minute intervals… had the same old ‘call you back in 5 days’ shite as well!
Just to give you another example of how painfully slow and inefficient this piece of crap is; I am still currently downloading an mp3 file (162 MB) which I started at about 4.30 yeaterday afternoon (more than 12 hours ago!)… these lying scumbags wont be getting my money, that much is certain
And just to add, since we have had the broadband service (in conjunction with getting a satellite and so on) the router has died on us for NO reason… 5 days replacement was more like 7-8 days, the telly cuts in and out regularly as a nice extra and we had to wait something like 5 weeks in the first place just to be shat on over and over again!

Ivan Povey on Mon, 18th Dec 2006 5:18 pm


Just A quick thanks to Zub, for the info on getting the log on details, I now have a choice of which router I use, either the Netgear Sky one or my old BT2100.

Still have some line drop outs with both but no where near as many as before. However even when I have a drop out the router and my PC still thinks I am connected and even with a reboot it can take up 3 reboots to actually getting running again.

Currently connected at 6.2mb down and 768kbs up, and been running nicely for 5 days without a drop (Using BT Modem)

Cheers

lookpigh on Tue, 19th Dec 2006 8:17 pm


i have two users on my computer, and sky bb was set up on my account, but when the other user logs on the computer, sky bb wont work for her . HOW COME???? someone please tell me!

Mark Oz on Tue, 19th Dec 2006 11:57 pm


I’ve been on SKY BB for 3 weeeks now and its not been too bad, the first problem I had was I couldn’t connect to the Netgear router via wireless, no matter what I did with the SSID it just wasn’t there.

Once I finally got the router password I just changed the wireless speed setting from B & G to Auto which switched it to another channel (11 I think) and as if by magic the network appeared and connected first time, why they don’t come configured on Auto I don’t know.

Since then its been up non stop with no router reboots and no drop outs, the speed is good in my area.

The only problem I still have is logging into the homepage or email, as I enter my details and the progress bar just sits there for hours, its doing something as you can see the packets being sent and recieved but its never logged in as yet, I keep meaning to call sky but haven’t done yet.

Anyone thinking os switching yo might want to leave it a few more months, until they iron out more of the problems, to be honest I don’t think the service is any more trouble than BT, Orange or NTL/Telewest its just luck of the draw, I’m a field service engineer for SCC the IT company and have installed and setup lots of connections in the past, some go without any problems and others can be a nightmare with endless calls to the provider to get the problem fixed, I had one experience with BT where it took 6 engineer visits to the house and exchange before the got it to work.

So it really is a case of will you be one of the lucky ones!!

lookpigh on Wed, 20th Dec 2006 8:23 pm


can somebody please tell me why sky broadband wont work when anybody else but me loggs onto the computer. it is driving everybody crazy!!! as everybody has to log on as me to access the internet!!! im sure somebody knows why??!!!

durrantie on Wed, 20th Dec 2006 8:30 pm


I have been checking this website recently to find out if I could get another Netgear DG834 router to work with SKY as they were slow sending my SKY router out, there wasnt and I had to wait an extra week for it & it works perfectly at all times. I would like to mention that this is the ONLY problem I have had with SKY so if you are planning to join then I would say – dont be put off by all the negatives on this forum page as this a very very very small majority of people who are with SKY broadband – people who have no problems with their connection have no need to post or even look in this forum page.

Mark Oz on Wed, 20th Dec 2006 9:53 pm


lookpigh, It might just be you need to configure the wireless conection for every user that logs on, you can check if this is the problem by temporary connecting your PC to the router using the network cable, then log in as a different user and see they can connect, if they can then you just need to log in a each user and set up a new wireless connection to the router.

Tom on Thu, 21st Dec 2006 7:15 pm


I agreee with Mark Oz.

I connected today and so far has been great. I tried ADSL max with plus.net a month or so ago, and my 2mb connection dropped to under 512k instead of getting faster!

I switched to sky, and instantly I’m getting 8Mb.

£15 for 16mb with a fixed IP and 33:1 contention ratio? Not bad if you ask me.

Remember Sky bought Easynet, who were the first company in London to start LLU. Plus easynet have excellent peering. I get under 10ms pings to most servers which is twice as quick as my plusnet connection. If anything, Sky Broadband will be better than a normal BT ADSL line.

lookpigh on Thu, 21st Dec 2006 7:22 pm


We do not use any kind of wireless thingy, it is just one computer, connected by cable to the box thing, and it was set up when i was logged on, and it worked. But say somebody else logs on, it says access denied. I just need some instruction about what i need to do. i just hope somebody can tell me what to do, to save me from ringing the sky people (who put you on hold every 2 mins).

markoz on Sat, 23rd Dec 2006 9:42 pm


Lookpigh, if you have any internet security (norton or mcafee etc..) turn it off whilst you try to sort it out, it could be blocking the connection, also check the connetion settings are the same in internet explorer for all accounts, make sure they all match the one that works.

Under Tools, Internet Options, Connections, Lan settings

Also give all the accounts the same privaleges, such as administrator, and if all else fails, reinstall the sky disc under each account (make sure there an administrator account.

where does it say access denied, at what point and in what program?

Russell on Sun, 24th Dec 2006 12:54 pm


Anyone having problems with Sky e-mail,….have you logged into the sky website ( NOT the sky broadband portal ) and set up your ‘profile’. Once you`ve done that you should be able to access the sky broadband portal, e-mail etc.
I`ve been with Sky just over a week now and it worked for me although i had already set up outlook express to send/download mails anyway.
3.5 meg download whereas on freeserve ( orange ) i was 512k for £19.99 so i`m a happy bunny ;)

Darren on Sun, 24th Dec 2006 3:14 pm


HELP!!

After reading Dan’s comment’s on 7th December, I bought a Belkin USB adapter and was glad I decided to install myself. However, I may have to eat those words, after a few days I lost my broadband connection completely. I have now plugged directly into the SKY router and it is working perfectly fine, but if I try and use the Belkin Wireless G USB Network Adapter I cannot get a wireless signal at all.

I must have done something right for it to work ok at first.

Maybe I need to check the re-check my settings. Can anybody help me?

Richard on Mon, 25th Dec 2006 3:13 am


My girlfriend has Sky and waited about 12 weeks before they managed to deliver it, various excuses. One aspect of the episode I found completely unforgivable was the fact they gave phone numbers on letters they sent which didn’t work!

They eventually got the Netgear box to her and now it needs rebooting every so often as it loses its connection. Also its speed seems to degrade until finally it has to be rebooted.

As an aside I in the past had three Netgear DSL wireless modems taking a feed from a Telewest DSL modem. Two failed within a month – being under warranty they were replaced each time. The forums on netgear wireless routers should be seen to be believed – I for one will never buy one again. I have a Buffalo myself now which works fine and Dlink have been reliable as well.

Terry Bailey on Wed, 27th Dec 2006 9:24 pm


Hi I have waited a month before comment
I had sky broadband a month ago the installation date as promised was spot on I was in fact only down for 1.5 hours. It went straight on line within 5 minutes I have had to recycle the router only once so far. Speed wise it does vary but even at worst time is still quiet fast I am on MAX
Most annoying point was the refusal to give user name and password BUT ZUB has solved that I bet sky are delighted.
The out going mail server works fine ie smtp.sky.com
At Moment am a happy bunny hope it stays that way

Omar on Wed, 27th Dec 2006 10:33 pm


Hiya,

Thanks for the tips for username and password. My netgear keeps slowing down every 2 days, then I have had to reset the router and it went up to max speed 16meg (I live only 0.7 km away from exchange), and enjoyed fast speed, then end of the day, router behaved funny and I had to reset again. Told Sky and they said they will change my router. Let’s see what they say, otherwise I will go back to my old trusting Speedtouch 716WL with Voip ports, and enjoy again.

OMar

Mark on Sun, 31st Dec 2006 4:52 pm


I’m paying for the £10 a month service and it is absolutely awful. You can eventually get through to India but it’s hopeless, and I’m still waiting for the promised call back. I have to reset the router every half hour or so, and after a while the speed drops below dial-up….
Anyone thinking of changing to Sky you’ve been warned enough!

Jonson on Tue, 2nd Jan 2007 1:34 pm


My girlfriends family were contemplating on getting on sky broadband, and being the technical person I am, I could do without the headaches of having to go round and sort their problems out every 2 days.

It would be interesting to know where people experiencing problems are located geographically, my girlfriend is located in Rainham Essex, anyone one in the local (by local anywhere within 20 miles say) thats got “it” and has got problems?

Thanks for any info.

Warren B on Tue, 2nd Jan 2007 2:42 pm


Today is my acytivation day, so as yet cant comment on the service, Rang (india) technical support (15 mins on hold) for username and password (PW) problem told sorry no PW on the system you need to speak to customer service, was xffered to CS.(another 10 mins on hol), CS then say sorry they xffered you to wrong department need to speak to BB CS so they transfered me (15mins on hold) eventualy was tol no this is a technical support isuse need to xffer you (see a pattern). after another 12 mins on the phone a nice lady says sorry you have been messed around i will send it you out in the post as i cant give it out over phone. If they had been done with 1st phone call then quite amount of call time would have been saved, She did say she would credit my account with 10UKP for the trouble.

Found website that says lost pasword follow link, trouble was you need password to get past main portal, Nice on sky .

So on the whole i am not yet connected customer service is wprse than come cable providers which i thought was impossible. I hope that when the seervice is up and running i dont have problems, (pigs fed and ready to fly i think).

Luckily my Telewest service doesnt cease till the end of Jan so i can still remain online, but i refuse now to pay cable 17.99 for a intermettent 2mb service.

OPnce online i will give another review of the sky service as i see it,

yoyoguts on Wed, 3rd Jan 2007 8:22 am


Thanks to Zub!!!
Get rid of SKY router:
Reconfigured my Belkin in 2 ticks.
Works like a dream.
Maybe SKY don’t want you to be able to do this is that the MAC code is part of your logon. That means you can terminate the service whenever you like.

I reckon the supplied Netgear box is a fire risk personally. It certainly suffers from thermal runaway. (Meltdown). This is my third experience of Netgear hardware not fit for purpose.

Here’s how I switched boxes:
With Sky Netgear box connected type:

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26%2Fbin%2Fbusybox%20grep%20ppoa_%20%2Ftmp%2Fnvram%20%3E%20%2Fwww%2Fnetgear.cfg

Then wait a while and then type in:

http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg

It couldn’t find an editor so I opened with notepad and save to my local hard drive.

Then I connected my faithful Belkin and connected to http://192.168.2.1 and just ran the setup wizard and pasted in the details from notepad. Hey Presto! No more meltdowns, disconnects or Sky call centre bull****. By the way, they told me that if I entered the user id and password (logon) they supply for email into the router I would be able to log on. Do you believe that!

Thanks to ZUB again. I hope others find this useful. I think if you throw away the crap router then this is a good barebones service, I hate pop server mail anyway and who wants their stinking web page. Long live Google Mail!. People who want to use outlook express need their heads examined.

Good luck all. Death to propritary hardware!

lookpigh on Wed, 3rd Jan 2007 9:30 pm


Thanx marcoz, but iv tried it..and the access denied comes up every time they click on the internet or sky bb icon. hmmm…..i bet it will probably be something really obvious iv have overlooked…cheerz anyway.

Bob on Sat, 6th Jan 2007 2:34 am


Just been connected – have to say it’s the most blindly crass installation, Sky are considering us like children – probably because that is their level of mentality.

Ignoring the installer that crashed at 97%, the fact that it tweaks your IE setting to sky’s web site is the first sign you are dealing with an incompetent outfit – thought that was considered a crime in some countries (didn’t’ give it my permission).

Connection works but so slow that it would be quicker to send messages via the UK post office :) – never though I’d say thank goodness for BT internet – nearly 100% uptime and decent speed 2M, and they don’t lock everything down.

£10 might appear to be good value but if it doesn’t delivery then it’s a waste of money.

Sorry sky you can shove the service up where the Indian sun never shines (that’s if you can get through to them!).

dave on Sun, 7th Jan 2007 8:34 am


I am one of the minority who has had no problems at all with both the service and the gear,came from BT and so far Its been great

Mosh on Sun, 7th Jan 2007 4:56 pm


Hi Ive got sky broadband Max and ive had it for the last 2 weeks and im a online gamer. The thing is im really annoyed is that i get high ping 30-60 and my last isp provider bulldog i had an 8mb and my ping was 9-20. Can sum 1 help me plz because im really gettin annoyed with the ping Thanks.

Carl on Sun, 7th Jan 2007 4:59 pm


Good site got the info I was looking for/MyTip
UNINSTALL THE SKY SOFTWARE I think it contains another type of ware begining with S! After you have done this re-boot the router and restart you pc.
Hope it works for you!

Rehmann on Sun, 7th Jan 2007 7:36 pm


Hi,
I am also unfortunate to get SKY BB. I am working from home sometimes. I am unable to login to my office VPN. I tried calling customer services but they do not know what they doing or talking. Any does any one know how to enable router to get working. They do not support IPSEC etc I think. Any body got experience how to do that>?

ccbup4it on Mon, 8th Jan 2007 10:54 am


hi guys , just wondering is it possible to use your own router yet on sky broadband and if so what are the settings

spenoir on Mon, 8th Jan 2007 3:28 pm


Looks like Zub wins the most useful post award. What happens if you are still waiting for your SKY modem to arrive? I guess you just have beg customer service to give you your mac address.

Aaron Hibberd on Mon, 8th Jan 2007 6:08 pm


Zub,
Thanks for that trick… now running on my own router no problems at all really. and ccbup4it check for the post by Zub it explains it. Cheers for the help.

Azhibberd

Ivan Povey on Mon, 8th Jan 2007 6:43 pm


Here’s how to use your own router !!!!

Thanks to Zub!!!
Get rid of SKY router:
Reconfigured my Belkin in 2 ticks.
Works like a dream.
Maybe SKY don’t want you to be able to do this is that the MAC code is part of your logon. That means you can terminate the service whenever you like.

I reckon the supplied Netgear box is a fire risk personally. It certainly suffers from thermal runaway. (Meltdown). This is my third experience of Netgear hardware not fit for purpose.

Here’s how I switched boxes:
With Sky Netgear box connected type:

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26%2Fbin%2Fbusybox%20grep%20ppoa_%20%2Ftmp%2Fnvram%20%3E%20%2Fwww%2Fnetgear.cfg

Then wait a while and then type in:

http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg

It couldn’t find an editor so I opened with notepad and save to my local hard drive.

Then I connected my faithful Belkin and connected to http://192.168.2.1 and just ran the setup wizard and pasted in the details from notepad. Hey Presto! No more meltdowns, disconnects or Sky call centre bull****. By the way, they told me that if I entered the user id and password (logon) they supply for email into the router I would be able to log on. Do you believe that!

Thanks to ZUB again. I hope others find this useful. I think if you throw away the crap router then this is a good barebones service, I hate pop server mail anyway and who wants their stinking web page. Long live Google Mail!. People who want to use outlook express need their heads examined.

Good luck all. Death to propritary hardware!

Ivan Povey on Mon, 8th Jan 2007 6:44 pm


Oh Yes forgot to add.

Use Notepad to read cfg file to get your username & password

sharon on Thu, 11th Jan 2007 9:28 pm


I have had sky broadband since the 4th dec andoh my god I have had enough I STILL cant get to my e-mails and I put in the pop.com stuff in out look but it astill doesnt work ! I have really had enough and when ive rung the techincal line they go through the same routine as always, but the lastest was when kevin had a go at me and said it was my computer ! I suggest to everyone out there to complain to sky , we must join forces and let them know that we will not stand for it! I am now considering contacting watch dog . I am no computer expert but im not a fool either!.
my passwords dont work and my e-mails dont work and its slow and so frustrating!

Karen on Sat, 13th Jan 2007 10:10 am


I have been on and off line with SKy since December, I am still talking to technical support now. After seeing the price of calls I have been conversing by email and they have been calling me back, however if I had known about the 0800 number sooner!!

I am going to try attaching my faithful Belkin Router today, (nervously)the best thing is Sky won’t admit that it the problems are from their end or their equipmen, they say it is he line and it needs capping!! What difference should that make to a wireless connection? I have to sit here with me very short ethernet cable attached constantly so I can stay online.

I was nervous of changing from my ever faithful Tiscali, but they have changed to a foreign call centre and weren’t concerned at keeping my business, so I decided to move accross. It is a poor decision on my part, from day one I have been having “conflicts” (so they say) with my hardware and the router, apparently my system doesn’t like wpa encription but is ok on wep??? should that make a difference my belkin ran on that>

Anyway enough complaining. I have managed to get a bit more info, by changing my channel on the settings that should contact and they have given me the network address settings instead of it doing it automatically (this has taken me 3 weeks to get it out of them!)

Fingers crossed it all works, unless the Belkin is coming out of it’s box.

Karen on Sat, 13th Jan 2007 10:54 am


Attached my Belkin but don’t know how to configer the sky details to long on if anyone can help. I have got the ppoa details but haven’t a clue what to put where if someone can help?

John York on Sat, 13th Jan 2007 1:02 pm


I am trying to get a partially sighted friends SkyEmail towork with Outlook Express. Having struggled everything works including Email from skybroadband.com EXCEPT outgoing Email from Outlook Express. As far as OE is concerned the email has been sent but does not appear at the TO email. Running Free AVG anti virus with scan O/G emails OFF and XP firewall. Any suggestions wlecome as would be that you have O?G email using OE

John York

Karen again on Sat, 13th Jan 2007 1:42 pm


I have had enough, spend 1r 12 mins on the phone because I wanted to get to the bottom of all this rubbish. They can’t do anymore, and can’t support my wireless card (Intel!) because it isn’t one of theirs. They won’t tell me how to set up my Belkin box either

I have spoken to customer service to cancel you have to write (after 14 day period) to Customer Relations Department, SKy Subscriber Services, PO Box 99, Livingstone, West Lothian, EH54 7PR.

I won’t hold my breath, looks like I am going to be Ethernet for next 12 months! with a bad back!

Jerry on Sat, 13th Jan 2007 6:35 pm


Have had Sky broadband since September and have nothing but problems both wired and wireless (router freezes) on my PC. Usually remains connected for 15-25 min before a reeboot of the router is required. Sometimes it will go 1 day no problems 1 day full of problems and so on. However there does not appear to be a problem with my sons computer or his PSP these remain connected with no freezing of the router. My pc is a 4 year old Packard Bell, Id be interested to know if anyone has any experience of this, anyone know of any fixes.

I was originally with NTL Freedom, to be honest I wish I had not changed.

My experience of sky customer service is that they are a waste of time, they do not know what they are talking about, and cannot give you any basic technical advice. The only thing that has prevented me from ditching sky is that it seems to be ok with my sons PC.

Mike on Sun, 14th Jan 2007 12:21 am


WRT a couple of comments above.

1. Craig. – I, until recently, worked as a general network support engineer, and had the dubious pleasure of having to get wireless working in an edwardian house ( the client was on BT but that, in this case, is irrelevant ) – the structure of houses built in that era simply absorb signal – we ended up installing the router as centrally as possible in the house, and using a matched repeater to boost the signal to other parts of the house. Sorry, but you’re stuck with the architecture, and that’s not really skys’ fault. My recommendation is frankly go wired if you can, but if you can’t – place the router in the best place for the most PCs and get a booster for other parts.

the other thing i have tried – elsewhere – is buying a larger aerial preferably for the PC ( both would of course help ) to increase the signal. – the netgear should accept this – maplins do one @£15.00 :- http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=38211&doy=14m1 this may help. YMMV.

please remember that if you boost your router signal them more people may find it, so please secure your wireless lan. – it’s in your interest ( tame geeks can be found to do this if required ).

2. more general sky stuff. Due to a set of circumstances i’ve installed sky BB for my ex wife ( and moved my other account with me, but i still admin her PC – “my job”). I’ve *not* installed the supplied disk, and don’t know the “benefits” it gives you – though google says “dubious”, but the router supplied works just fine ( the family across the road have the same router not on sky ) and that seems to be fine too. – the firmware AFAICT has been bastardised to skys’ requirements, including having the connection details pre-installed and hidden. i guess zubs post above is the most useful there. ( and _very_ intersting )

i’ll hopefully be able to supply reconnnection times etc later as i’ve put a dyndns name into the router.

hope this helps.

mike.

Mike on Sun, 14th Jan 2007 12:33 am


supplemental.

John. – my ex has AVG (7.5) ( at my insistance ) and can send fine.

make sure the SMTP server settings are “smtp.sky.com” no authentication required AFAICT.

Await feedback.

mike.

Mike on Sun, 14th Jan 2007 2:05 am


supplemental 2

how to test smtp :- this is nasty low level stuff – keystrokes matter, firewalls matter – XP firewall _should_ be well behaved.

if you can get hold of “putty” then it is better behaved than the windows 9x (i think 2000 and xp behave ) command prompt. ( echo and response is much better. ).

you need to “telnet” port 25 on the smtp server

on windows – select “start -> run” type in cmd. and select run.
( dos type window appears ).

type in “telnet smtp.sky.com 25″ and press

on putty – enter smtp.sky.com in the host window, slect telnet ( default ) and change the “port” to 25.

you should recive a prompt like “220 ” ( the 220 is important )
type “helo 127.0.0.1″ ( best i can do here – 127.0.0.1 might need changing – i’m not on sky – my ex is!)

you should receive a prompt “250 ”

type “mail from: ”

response “250 ”

type “rcpt to:

response “250 ”

type “data”

response “354 (may vary) End data with .”

type “test”
type”.”
type “quit”

pray.

additionally – IME ( this is a noted phenomenon – except in *very* rare circumstances ( my isp wins here ) – BT have a device to ensure this) in any technical call there is always a sane person and a dribbling moron at each end of any technical support call made ( make sure you’re not the moron! ).

also – anyone using norton/macafee? they both used to be superb, but now they try to be “all things to all users” and i *know* they have caused problems.

alternatives :-

Anti virus – “AVG” works. free. ( free.grisoft.com ).
anti spyware – try spybot search and destroy ( also free ) – read the instructions carefully please – please be careful if you have multiple users per PC.
firewall – you’ve got a router! – this *will* protect you from inbound attacks, however if you’re using peer2peer filesharing then you are more vulnerable – your choice – go find a geek to nail it down further.

have fun.

mike.

btw you may have noticed i’m bored tonight.

John York on Sun, 14th Jan 2007 10:14 am


Here is acopy of a reply from Sky technical support

Thank you for contacting Broadband Technical Support and I am sorry to learn of your continued difficulty with our webmail facility.

Please be aware that we are currently experiencing technical problems with our log-in facility at the moment. Work is currently ongoing as we try to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

In order to gain access to emails, it is necessary to change the password in Sky.com, please follow the procedure below.

Go to the sky.com website.
Select ‘MY SKY’ and enter original log in details.
Go to section marked ‘EDIT LOG IN DETAILS’
Change password to one that is at least 7 characters in length, starts with a capital letter and has 1 number in it. (e.g. Phantom7)
Confirm Password.
Press Submit.
At this point, please ensure you are shown the ‘Thank you’ screen showing password change is confirmed.
If not, please change the password again until this happens.
After this is successful, please log into skybroadband.com using the new password.
Please ensure at this stage you can view emails, if not or if you would like to set up Outlook, please continue.
Exit the Sky website, and go into Outlook
Go to Tools > Email Accounts >Change Existing Account details
After entering the POP and SMTP settings (if not already set), you will be asked for a user name and password.
The User name is your email address without the @sky.com e.g. j.bloggs@sky.com becomes just j.bloggs
Enter the new password that has been created at the Sky website

This should now allow you to use Outlook/ Outlook Express fully. If this procedure fails to resolve the problem then please ensure that you have entered the correct settings – : POP.SKY.COM for incoming and SMTP.SKY.COM for outgoing mail.

(Please be aware that Sky Broadband are unable to offer you any further assistance with regards to Outlook Express. Outlook’s own Help Wizard should give you the information you need to set these up)

I hope this information is helpful to you and should you require additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact Sky on 08705 515 515 using option 1 then option 3.

Kind Regards

Peter

Broadband Technical Support

I had aked them to reset the account, because of password/security rejection, which I believe they had OR it had never registered the original details. One thing I noticed is that the password MUST start with a capital, I am sure this was not the case on first registration! So aprt from no O/G email via Outlook Express it now works.

On the subject of other routers a profession support outfit cannot get it to work either!

JT on Thu, 18th Jan 2007 4:16 pm


Yup, kudos to Zub – now set up my old SAR715 on with the netgear.cfg info and works like a charm – I,m on max but due to exchange distance I only get 2.5MB (strange the BT Business gives me 3MB) – the 715 maxes at 8MB so no probs.
PS if you really want to keep Sky (or any other ISP for that matter) out of your LAN I advise adding a Cable router (I’m using a Netgear with SRX as it needs to go through 4 solid walls an a couple of studs to boot – result about 50% signal when used in conjuntion with SRX USB WiFi instead of a hopeful 15% without) – this will just hook into the router connecting to ADSL and gives you a double F/Wall

amerikon on Thu, 18th Jan 2007 5:39 pm


Hi,

Can anyone advice me on how to cancel the subscription for this pile of poo?
I’m on max, worked reasonably well for a day, I was only expecting above 1meg to be more cost effective than NTL. Have struggled to reach it since the first day.
Missus won’t use it as it keeps dropping the connection.
Just put NTL back on just to post this note.

Thanks in advance.

KaremLore on Sat, 20th Jan 2007 7:40 pm


Hi,

I started with SKY MAX when I found out that my local exchange (according to sky) does not have ADSL MAX. I know that it does.

I went down to the medium package…2Mb out of 8Mb…I can see my exchange from my window…

Even that has response times of >60ms to UK and 500ms to any continent other than europe (200ms).

I must admit though, they promised to do a complete line check and get back to me by Wednesday…I am not holding my breath though but who knows…

Thursday next week I will be returning to NTL…My experience of ADSL in the UK has been very poor (In belgium my ADSL experience was excellent. I was on 3Mb back in the mid-90s…UK is completely stuffed when it comes to ADSL, don’t know why).

thanks all for the info on here…basics is SKY=RUBBISH

Ric on Sat, 20th Jan 2007 9:09 pm


Have had sky max now for over 2 weeks and am having no problems whatsoever. I came from using AOL for about 4 years and am glad i changed cos AOL are absolutely useless. Plugged in router and got wireless in less than 3 minutes, smooth.

Ric on Sat, 20th Jan 2007 9:16 pm


just did a test and got 8.5Mbps, thats ok for £10 a month, i was getting that with aol for £26 a month, bargain i say.

Jacek on Tue, 23rd Jan 2007 11:05 am


See this:

Customer Care
Sky Subscriber Service
4 MacIntosh Road
Livingstone
West Lothian
EH5 47DD

24 January 2007

This letter is a complaint about lack of delivery of my broadband box I have ordered it in November 2006 and still haven’t received it. The delivery company tried to deliver it to my home address where there is nobody during standard delivery hours.

After the first unsuccessful delivery attempt I contacted Sky Consumer Service and gave my office address where I am always available during office hours. But the delivery company tried to reach me at the home many more times. Each time I phoned Sky and informed about the office address for the box to be delivered.

After another few unsuccessful attempts when I called again, I was informed that the delivery address had still not been changed. So obviously there were no records of all those complaining calls.

Each time I phoned your operators promised me that the box would be delivered within 5 working days. I tried to speak to their supervisors or managers but they refused to give their names or put me through to them.

This is my second complaint in fact. The first one was sent on 4 December to Mr. Mark Anderson, Customer Marketing Director to the address given on the letters you keep sending me. It was also sent by email to the email address your operator gave me. The copy of it is attached. I haven’t received any answer to it.

I would like to remind you that The Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (as amended) requires any service to be carried out using reasonable care and skill and within reasonable time.

The explanations of your team that you tried to contact delivery company but you did not succeed and that your system is not prepared for sending the box to an address other than the subscriber home address is absolutely unsatisfactory. Your company made no effort to contact me and explain the situation. My multiple calls to your customer services (about 15 calls) were absolutely ignored.

Additionally it was actually a very attractive broadband offer that made me subscribe to the Sky TV. Although both contracts are independent I would seek legal advice to quit both if the things will not get definitely better.

The only think that was done by your company was the direct debit from my account. You took the activation fee and more than one month subscription fee. I have serious doubts if taking charging for a service, which was not delivered, is legal.

Once again to confirm the delivery address:
…

The ultimate date for the box delivery is 5 February 2007. If the broadband box is not delivered by that date, I will take further action. I have already notified Consumer Direct and, if still no positive result, they will pass my claim to the Trading Standards.

Once more I would like to express my concern and disappointment. If I’d known the things would go that way, I would have never become your customer.

Best regards,

…

holly on Tue, 23rd Jan 2007 3:27 pm


Had sky max installed last friday which also included 1 year free subscription to McAfee security suite. I was having problems logging into a few different sites that require passwords, also my emails on msn and Sky. Have now solved the problem thanks to a technical advisor on McAfee. Turns out it wasn’t Sky’s fault which I thought it was, but I hadn’t set my Privacy service to allow cookies. Have now done that and can access my emails on Sky and Msn no problem. Still a bit miffed about the Sky Max though, I can’t believe how slow it is, I’m having to wait for about 2 minutes for every page to load!!

holly on Tue, 23rd Jan 2007 3:54 pm


make that 5 mins Grrrr!!

Prasad on Wed, 24th Jan 2007 6:57 pm


It’s nearly 15 weeks after my Promised activation date. Still no broadband.. Yesterday I was told that the line should be active this week.

Wonder what kind of compensation Sky will offer for my endless wait and on top of it spending £40 for the broadband router which is of no use to me at the moment..

mat on Fri, 26th Jan 2007 11:05 am


i am a online gamer too, i have signed up to sky max. and my ping is awfull. like the previous poster i was getting 8-20ms with bulldog now i get 30 to 60ms. if gaming is top priority then dont get sky broadband. Also i was on bulldog 8mb service on old adsl 1 technology and connecting at 8mb. (the exchange is less than 500m from my house) now im recieving exactly the same speed on adsl2 with sky most disapointed. plus my connecting drops daily. i guess u get what u pay for :(

debbie on Fri, 26th Jan 2007 10:40 pm


Have had so many problems with sky email that I have now set up a gmail to use for work etc as I can’t access sky webmail at work due to their problems. technical support are a waste of space as i know tons more than them!!! Wasted time on the phone talking to people who do not even understand what pop or smtp is!! Only thing that keeps me with them is that for a fiver a month my son and hubby happy enough with their online gaming and sky seems ok in that respect however they need to sort out these email issues.. Seems their DNS name server not very good and given that it is their own website seems that the server they are hosted on not up to task and too slow ( my hubby’s view)
By the way, their technical team say different things about webmail status.. One said there were no problems another says there are. Seems they do not communicate.

don on Sat, 27th Jan 2007 12:46 pm


Can anyone tell me if there is a way of checking how much of your monthly usage cap you have used? I know of external monitoring software but surely Sky can tell you how much of your limit you have used? Trying to get through to technical support is a nightmare however.
im on the 40gb monthly cap btw.

Prasad on Tue, 30th Jan 2007 8:40 am


Grrrrrrrr………….. No broadband still. I suppose a trip to the local skip over the weekend will be in order…

Utterly useless sky……

mrm208 on Tue, 30th Jan 2007 7:18 pm


Thanks for the insight into what’s what with Sky.

I read this after I committed to Sky and was deeply worried. I’d considered cancelling but Pipex had already cut me off (bless). Soooooo How did it go?

Chap arrived this morning….was clearly the sort of engineer that climbs ladders and fits dishes. Didn’t have a clue bless him.

Kept having to step out the room as his partner/wife kept ringing about car keys and petrol and god knows what. Fantastic customer support.

He got the wired connection working and then struggled with the WiFi. Had the cheek to tell me that it wouldn’t work because I had a non-netgear card in my main PC.

I pointed out that I have D-link in a Linux Laptop, belkin in main PC, Linksys on another and BT voyager (don’t know what the actual card is) on my works Laptop and have never had a problem. Have your heard of IEE standards and 802.11…? He hadn’t.

At least he didn’t try to sell me any cards but he said I’d have to buy new ones.

Any how. I knew the router passwords from watching what he typed and what I’ve read here. When I asked for it he wasn’t prepared to hand it over. I thanked him for his time and asked him to leave and continued to set up everything else myself.

Hind sight says go for the self install rather than let these monkeys into your house.

But….other than that everything is working fine. speed is topping at 6Mbit but it’s three times faster than Pipex was for a third of the price so I’m happy at the mo.

Thanks for all the advice.

Dan on Wed, 31st Jan 2007 8:34 pm


I am also an online gamer, my previous isp was BT and i only had a half meg line, i was getting pings of around 60/70ms, since switching to sky I now have a 2.5 meg line but during peak times my ping drops to 500ish all the way up to 2k ms – unplayable in other words. The tech guy at sky said that the time of day shouldnt affect my connection quality – yea right. During off peak hours i get to look forward to a 200ms ping woohooo

Hazard on Fri, 2nd Feb 2007 8:54 pm


Unlock full broadband speed and run programs smooth such as Windows Live Messenger, without reciving port/firewall errors.
http://www.publickeys.co.uk/skybroadband/fixconnection.pdf

Share with your friends.
Regards, Hazard

andy on Mon, 5th Feb 2007 4:31 pm


After reading your comments decided to cancel sky package and you know what, it was a nightmare, 20 mins of arguing with a customer service man thats telling me all the forums are preaching false complaints/problems.
Now if it took me 20 mins to cancel something I hadn`t even got yet god knows how much hassle I would have got with a real problem
Thanks everybody
Andy

sheppy on Thu, 8th Feb 2007 2:16 pm


The free sky Tel no 08000512595 is still working, I used it today. I thought i had rang my local takeaway at first, but the lady on the other end was quite helpfull, more so than the Scottish bird the other day.

V5cog on Fri, 9th Feb 2007 12:54 pm


Please can anyone advise me.
I have like many others am experiencing problems with sky!! my Sky Netgear router has died on me & i would like to use another router… i have read Zubs mail regarding obtaining the Real username & login, but that is from a working sky router…. is there is any way of getting your correct user name & password from a dead router…is so how do i do it so i can input the details in to the new router HELLLLLP !!!!!

Pud on Sat, 10th Feb 2007 3:28 pm


Hey V5, just call SKY and get them to send you out a new box, it will still be under warranty. When you get the new box I can confirm ZUBs procedure works as I am now back to my trusty belkin, with no wireless dropouts…

Stevebhoy on Sun, 11th Feb 2007 11:50 am


Hey folks

Reading all the great stuff about using my Belkin router. I have read the config stuff from the Netgear router. It is like a mac address with @skydsl at the end and a password.

where do i input this info to the Belkin?
I can see the configure page but don’t know what to update

boris on Sun, 11th Feb 2007 5:19 pm


I received a voice text (from Doctor Who – Tom Baker) telling me my Sky broadband had been activated, and on the day they had promised! I swear I will never ever return to dial-up because this so-called free broadband is brilliant.

One small problem, though, is with sky pop email: it wont accept outgoing mail as stmp.sky.com, but will accept my previous dial-up smtp – relay.freeuk.net. Very odd.

Pud on Sun, 11th Feb 2007 10:51 pm


You need to go to the router homepage and enter the login and password details.
the xxxxxx@skydsl is the user name and the other alphanumeric is the password.

Simple as…….

joks on Mon, 12th Feb 2007 8:34 am


Sky Broadband installed on 2nd Feb. Problems started immediately – Belkin router not recognised. Set up the netgear and things seemed okay. Happy bunny – I’ve saved over £20 a month and then I started having real problems – dropping every so often, repaired link, up and running for a while and then down again. Contacted support, yes 0870 xxx xxx, must have spent a fortune, they don’t seem to be able to cope with “Belkin has worked fine wirelessly for 18 months on BT Broadband, no dropouts etc”. They just carried on with their script. Four different engineers later I’ve referred to level 3, still waiting for another call, problem still. Now I’ve found this site and Zubs posting and Terry Bailey’s. I am demented at the moment, wife and kids not happy.
It seem from Terry that I should be able to hook up the Belkin again, put in the username and password and should be up and running again? After 10 days of hell can it be that simple? Watch this space!!!

Dave on Mon, 12th Feb 2007 10:01 am


Got Sky BB setup 07/02/07

I’m an IT consultant and setup and configured the router and PC myself. (not rocket science!)
Since switching the router on, I have been only able to get a 288kbps connection speed (Upload & Download), this is on their base package (£5.00).

After speaking to their customer service dept I was advised that I should be seeing 4x this speed? – its taken about 5 calls to their “customer service” department so far to advise them of this problem, but each time I get a ‘1st line’ “Script monkey” telling me to do things like “Reset the router by pushing a pen in the small hole in the back of the router”!!!!

The last conversation I had with their customer support was last night, in the end I hung up after the “script monkey” advised my connection speed was down to the fact that I was using a Belkin wireless adapter at my PC instead of a Netgear item, I explained the fact that it was a 802.11g adaptor and perfectly compatible with the Netgear router, but he still insisted this was the problem – I even advised that I had used the “Show statistics” program on the router, and it was this that was saying that I had a 288kbps connection…before it even gets to my PC!!!!

I will (for my own sanity) connect to the router with an ethernet cable that I borrow from work (a long one!) tonight, if the connection speed problem still persists I will be calling them up to ask them to collect everything and I will go with another ISP.

Dave
Farnborough
Hants.

John on Mon, 12th Feb 2007 12:59 pm


Has anyone got Sky BB running with a Linksys wireless router (WAG354G). I used it for 2 years and it worked flawlessly. I followed Zub’s procedure – much respect – and got my login and password. I have a DSL connection but it just won’t connect to the internet. Many thanks in advance. John.

marc on Mon, 12th Feb 2007 9:04 pm


Top shout Zub. I just managed to get my Draytek 2800vg working by changing the mac to the same as the sky router and then added in the uname and password and it worked first time.

I have noticed that I get some packet loss (upto 25%) but I have a felling that this is down to oversubscription on the sky network as it seems to happen at peak times i.e 6-10 most evenings, anyone else notice this?

Marc

stevebhoy on Wed, 14th Feb 2007 2:15 pm


Thanks PUD

Got the connection yesterday
Belkin router configured straight away, getting download speeds between 1.3 and 2.1 Mbps.
Even got the email to work. Quite chuffed with the whole lot.

Steve

stevebhoy on Wed, 14th Feb 2007 2:17 pm


I should thank ZUB too, his gen on extracting the details from the Netgear router were superb. Thanks folks, a really handy forum this.

Steve

Anne on Wed, 14th Feb 2007 7:30 pm


My husband and I are considering changing to Sky Max on ’saving dosh’ grounds but I am reluctant as at present we are on AOL which is fabulous!! Really – if it wasn’t for a chance to save a third each month we would stay with AOL.

Are people still having problems with emails?

Does anybody reconmmend Sky or are we better off – if not in money terms – staying with wonderful AOL?

Zkh on Wed, 14th Feb 2007 8:54 pm


Been consdiering switching to Sky base (£5ppm) but seen too many negative feedbacks on too many sites to be convinced that this is a good idea, but the thought of saving £10ppm is still tempting me.
When I swtiched from Pipex to Plusnet I noticed a lot of negative feedback from Plusnet customers about the 8MB service. I have had no probs – and havent posted on their forums – maybe its the same with others who no probs. Sometimes there is a locality issue. But the problem with Sky seems to be the naff eqpt they utilise and an inability to cope with the demand – what did they expect when they offered probably the cheapest bb packages around.
I think I am going to wait a few more months before reconsidering the switch to Sky.
Big thanks to all the techies who write into these forums with very useful info that benefits the masses.

Baxter on Thu, 15th Feb 2007 1:40 am


I dont have any horror stories about SKY bb cause im not with them. All these bad reviews put me off for now. But in 5 months my contract ends and who knows, SKY bb might be better then. So the only advice i could give is, if your wanting to change to a different ISP in the future, check the forums first. Then you’l know what to expect.

Dave on Thu, 15th Feb 2007 10:12 am


3 days later and I am still awaiting my call back from their 2nd tier desk! Spoke to BT myself and they checked my line and distance from the exchange and reckon I should be seeing a minimum of 1mbps (the package I pay for should be giving me 4.5mbps minimum!), the router shows I have a 288kbps connection, and a quick ’speed test’ on Thinkbroadband.com confirms this.

If I had the option I would go with cable (NTL) but this is not available where I live so I am stuck with getting this connection to work.

Very very unimpressed.

mrm208 on Thu, 15th Feb 2007 11:57 am


Anne and Zkh,

I think you’ll always get a mixed experience on blogs and forums. It’s human nature to talk about the negatives of a service and not the positives. I was really concerned at reading this excellent discussion and others around the patch but I thought “it’s too late now!”

Other than my comments on the sky monkey that came to install I’ve had no problems! Speed is about 2-3 Mbps but hey! that’s what I had with pipex and it now costs me a third less!

Was I lucky or are others unlucky? It shouldn’t be a lottery. It should just work.

Either way the service support is appauling and letting people down in resolving their issues.

marc on Thu, 15th Feb 2007 1:50 pm


Well I had a spare 5 minutes and I thought you guys would appreciate some alternative uses for your sky broaband router:

http://www.splashblog.com/zub

The blog was named after the good man that unlocked this piece of ****.

If you have any more pics please email and I will update.

Raju on Fri, 16th Feb 2007 8:39 am


Hi,
I ordered SKY broadband Mid package (which should cost me £5)and received confirmation letter with activation date 9th Feb and wireless router (after charging me £20 for activation). My current broadband was cancelled as SKY decided to change line to them. On 9th Feb, they called me and said, I need to pay £17 per month as other packages are sold out!!!!!!!!!!!!. Now I am left with no broadband and the only reply from SKY is sorry, cancel Mid package and order connect. I think it is 100% misleading and blackmailing by any standards. I am planning to take appropriate action aginst SKY as I had confirmation letters and I am left with no broadband till I get activation by another provider.
Any suggestions on to whom I should complain and how to take action aginst SKY for misleading and threatening behaviour.
Thanks
Raju

Paul on Fri, 16th Feb 2007 8:01 pm


Ordered Sky a few month back, had constant disconnects since my line was first activated, 6 – 12 disconnects a day. After 2 month of waiting for it to be fixed, they said I needed a download line cap of 4.5mb, so instead they cap my Upload to 300kb.

Shows how retarded the people are.

Now for the 3 month wate for them to fix my damn internet.

mrm208 on Fri, 16th Feb 2007 9:00 pm


Raju,

try ofcom for complaints

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/internet/

Kev Grant on Sat, 17th Feb 2007 7:44 am


OH MY GOD – WHAT HAVE I DONE??? i wish i had seen this site 3 weeks ago. Im on the mid package, up to 8mb. I was with eclipse and full 8mb connection. Now i get 3-4mb and it always drops out. XBOX Live gaming is a joke, and if you download via torrents or usenext then forget it as theyve screwed back the speed on these ports to dial up or ave 3-4k. Wish i stayed with eclipse…. or went back to nildram. Now im stuck for 12 months….. Gutted doesnt even come close to how i feel. Instalation went perfect, worked within 5 mins, but the speeds and drop outs are shocking. Any idea how i set up more email alias’s if theyre web email client still doesnt work?

cheers

Pud on Sat, 17th Feb 2007 7:34 pm


Well, I am beginning to think this is just a bitching forum and I don;t think that was the intention.
I have had a braodband connection for in excess of 8 years. I switched from BT to Sky 3 weeks ago, and having replaced the Sky supplied netgear router, I have no issues at all with the service provided. I am on free 2mb and it suits me fine, and lets not forget that its FREE. If you work on the context that if its free its worth nothing, how can you ever be dissapointed ?
The netgear router appears to be causing numerous problems, but I suspect that it is the router because after changing mine to the Belkin that I had, its just great.
For those of you maoning about email, just don;t use it !! Get along to googlemail and get an address from them, its better and more convenient anyway.
I think that posting on here should be reserved for Q’s and A’s , bitching on is pointless, it just provides a misleading bias that the service is poor. I guess that for every moaner there are 100 happy content customers.
Stay positive !

JohnW on Sun, 18th Feb 2007 8:07 pm


I already have PlusNet on one line and have ordered Sky on my other line. I can afford the extra tenner so I’m not too worried.

My PlusNet connection is 512 or worse and I;m fed up with it… however. It DOES offer e-mail redirection etc and website space.

If Sky works OK, do you reckon I’ll be able to switch PlusNet off and get my old domain redirected to Sky? I bought another UK domain name from PlusNet so that I didn’t have to use my plus.com address.

Or…maybe I should just change all my e-mail addresses to gmail.

Will on Mon, 19th Feb 2007 3:21 pm


I have just cancelled my Sky Broadband Order.

I placed the order on 17 January 2007. It was active by 26 Jan 07, but I still haven’t received the router!!

I started phoning them from around the 29th of January. I must have spoken to more than 30 people in various sections in the SKY Broadband Realm of Confusion. They couldn’t manage to sort out my address between these 30 people and some of their supervisors. Some people were pretty helpful, but couldn’t generate any results and some where downright useless and rude.

I then requested it to be delivered to my work address on the 5th of February, but this was an even bigger mistake! They didn’t seem to have any clue how to get this actioned, some guys put a “note” on my account, some people tried to phone the delivery company. They even changed delivery companies somewhere in this period.

By the sounds of it I didn’t lose out on too much for now. I think they will probably sort out their service over time, I mean their TV service is the best by far.

Pud on Mon, 19th Feb 2007 4:23 pm


If you register for Googlemail, it will collect from all your POP3 accounts, will handle your domain, will support email forwarding and its free too. Free sky and free decent email, this is the future !

Alison on Wed, 21st Feb 2007 10:49 am


I ordered Sky Max in Aug 2006 and finally got it in December. The installing was easy even to a computer idiot like me! Since it was activated in January 2007 I thought it was strange I wasn’t getting any e-mails and then I discovered after needing e-mail confirmation for something that I am not receiving incoming mail at all I have tried Outlook Express but they won’t accept my password even though it works to get into my sky can anyone help!! Please!! I have tried Tech Support but they haven’t phoned back for 2 weeks

Dave on Wed, 21st Feb 2007 10:36 pm


There is confusion here:-

MAC Code = Migration Authority Code. Allows your current ISP to quickly verify the migration request by your ‘new’ ISP, speeding up the process and helping a “no-loss” migration between two ISPs.

MAC Address = Media Access Control address. Uniquely identifies your network adapter (hardware) on an Ethernet network (LAN\WAN etc.). Fundamental to DHCP (acquiring IP address). First 3 octets (xx-xx-xx) usually identify manufacturer.

The MAC ADDRESS of the router is printed on the bottom (like most external network-attached hardware). A MAC CODE is generated, ultimately, by BT Wholesale at the request of your current ISP when you ask them for it – it is not something that is pre-determined and therefore not suppliable to an end user in advance.

Supremegermalene on Thu, 22nd Feb 2007 1:01 pm


Mike:

Cannot send email through outlook so tried your smtp test thing above, got to this bit:

type “mail from: ”

response “250 ”

but the message I got back was 501 MAIL must have an address operand

Could you let me know what this means?

Ta

Angryandy on Thu, 22nd Feb 2007 6:44 pm


Ordered Sky Broadband max on 25th January 2007 and gave Sky my MAC code from Tiscali. (my current ISP) to Sky.

27th January received my user name. 13th February received my Sky broadband password.

14th February received a letter saying ………………Not long now, saying BT have informed Sky that line should be active by 23rd Febraury, however due to a huge response for Sky broadband I will need to allow an additional 3 days for the work to be completed!

Saturday 17th February knock at the door and I have a parcel it is my Netgear wireless router! Sunday 18th February, I log onto my Sky account and successfully change my password, and set up my user accounts. I was then just thinking all I have to do now is wait unitl the activation day and yipee!

…….. Except I receive a letter dated 17th January on the 19th, titled Your Sky broadband order – Please call us………………. and – “Unfortunately we are unable to process your order as your MAC that you supplied to us has been rejected by BT as being invalid or incorrect. The MAC code should match the following formats as illustrated.

My MAC code matched their examples, I call Sky on the new free phone number and verify the MAC number.

Next is is back to Tiscali, who assure me that this is the correct MAC Code, and after a series of several phone calls they re-issue me the same MAC code three times!

I call back Sky, who say, Tiscali are lieing and are trying not to loose you as a customer.

I call back Tiscali and explain that they are in breach of new OFCOM rules as of the 17th February 2007 under the Broadband Migration code of practice (as listed on the OFCOM website) and that they have to give me a correct MAC.

Tiscali are now saying that BT issue the MACS and BT would not lie. The only way they can re issue me a new MAC is if I wait until the 17th March.

So now I am still with Tiscali, and not sure wheather to stay or whether to migrate to Sky, and in fact who is lieing Sky or tiscali?

V5COG on Fri, 23rd Feb 2007 12:12 pm


Hi all,
At last sky hav finally replaced my dead router !! so i was going to try using my own router.. i have got the proper username and password using the code that ZUB originaly supplied us all, which was…

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26%2Fbin%2Fbusybox%20grep%20ppoa_%20%2Ftmp%2Fnvram%20%3E%20%2Fwww%2Fnetgear.cfg
and then after a while

http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg

this worked fine and i have the user & password… but after i input the details my router still wont connect to any websites, so i was wondering if there was any other fields in the setup wizzard that i need to adjust to make it work? or indeed am i being a complete “Gimp” and putting the wrong MAC ip address in? ie do i have to put the old Sky box Mac address or the one of the Router i am currently using?
if there is some one who could explain it in a little more detail i would greatly appreciate it!!! as im not a techy
Thank you
ps …. the router i am trying to use is a Netgear DG834PN

Jess on Fri, 23rd Feb 2007 3:55 pm


I reckon call back Sky again as sometimes people input MACs wrongly, call order status and get them to check the MAC that was sent over to BTs equipment, as sometimes numbers are put in instead of letters (typical example, sometimes they have put an O instead of an 0). They should always read 4 letters, then something like 8 numbers, then a forward slash (/) then 2 letters, 2 numbers, and finishing with 1 letter. All letter must be put in capitals, so double check that as well!!

Also, i think it’s tiscali that are lying, they are obligated to issue you with a mac, so if it keeps getting rejected threaten them with Ofcom!! Also, macs only last a month so you will need a new one soon if you got yours on the 25th of Jan

taz on Sat, 24th Feb 2007 6:19 pm


HEEEEELP!!!!!! im using the free sky broadband, which started on the 23rd january. however, last week (since around 18th February) my broadband has become so slow, that even dial up is faster. At first i thought my download limit had been used up, but come the 23rd february, the broadband connection is still slow.

I have tried switching the netgear router off for a few days, but it still doesnt help. I know its not my pc because the connection is slow on my laptop as well.

Please can someone help me fix this problem.

Philip on Sun, 4th Mar 2007 11:26 pm


I ordered Sky two weeks ago. Got the dish installed 4 days later, and the broadband kit arrived 7 days later – 1 day after my previous (completely faultless service) was cancelled. Plugged the kit in, and 5 mins later all was working fine. The only problem is that the speed is slightly slower than previously (1MB, but I am at the end of the line).

BIG thanks to Zub. His post means I can now switch back to my previous router, its just better than the Sky netgear one). Maybe I have been lucky, and it is all going to go wrong soon.

Matty on Mon, 5th Mar 2007 8:55 pm


A quick one, I get 6.5 MB on a speedtest throughy my Ethernet wired connection

But my wireless laptop will only download at 2.5MB is this normal ??

Angryandy on Mon, 5th Mar 2007 9:15 pm


Got there in the end. Thanks to Jess and others on this site.

Called BT wholesale number listed on this site, eventually found option one was the only option to speak to anyone without call being rejected. BT confirmed my MAC code, and gave me the holy grail, the MAC code ended in zero not O.

Called SKY on freephone number (Also on this website) and spoke to SKY in Newcastle and not call centre monkey I had spoken to last time.

Really helpful guy there, acknowledged my MAC code straight away explained to me that the zero on the end of the code should have been entered the first time and it was a mistake made by SKY. MAC Codes should begin with four letters and end in a letter.

Very easy install followed idiot proof CD, and installed first time.

Tried to use my own Netgear router using info suppied by ZUB, but just get Login screen for router??? and not any further?

I will try waiting longer.

ceri.d on Mon, 5th Mar 2007 10:01 pm


Just thought I would say a big thanks to Zub – only bought a brand new router 3 weeks ago (Netgear Rangemax Next) – after problems with Virgin Net (after being a customer for 10 years) I decided to switch to the free Sky service (already had the TV package) – saving my a huge £18 per month.

Was frustrated on ringing Sky to find that they just told me to use their supplied router (which I did) – but not wishing to give in I thought I would search the net and find out if anyone had found a way around it.

Took a bit of fiddling but am happy to report that I have now got my Rangemax router working fine – thanks to Zub! Nice one!

Have also sorted out my password and set up my outlook to use the sky mail servers. All in all not bad considering it has only taken me a couple of hours.

Thanks again people for all the help!

Angryandy on Mon, 5th Mar 2007 10:28 pm


A bit of playing around, and realised user error my end. Now have my router details, but not sure what to do with these ppoa details??

Angryandy on Sat, 10th Mar 2007 4:20 am


Well thanks to ZUB, now have my Netgear 834 router all sorted it was well easy to set-up !

Have had no connection problems so far, and good download speeds of 7MB, but I am unable to log-in to Hotmail, or even the new Gmail by Google?

May have to configure to work with MS Outlook.

Also not sure i like the McAfee Anti virus, as have used Norton for years, (which is excellent!) – On satrt-up I get lots of McAfee eroors? – Think I will remove McAfee and buy a nw Noron Security 2007, as only days left off 2006 product.

mad-jock on Mon, 12th Mar 2007 12:46 pm


Don’t anybody ever even think about buying the Sky Broadband offer. I ordered the MAX services in Dec2006 and moved from Virgin , because I thought the price was excellent and anyway how bad can a broadband provided be?
The answer is very bad indeed.

The phone support is nothing short of shocking. It is obvious that they have at least one contact centre abroad and there are language issues in dealing with the people based there, but the one based in Scotland isn’t much better (and I’m Scottish!). I have never been able to log into the Sky website to set up multiple e-mail addresses – even after numerous calls to Sky. Its always the same result “give it 3 days to setup a new password and send it to you” Even if a new password is sent (which hasn’t happened twice) the new one won’t work.

The Service itself is worse than my 2MB Virgin, which I moved from. I work from home and at approx 4pm EVERY SINGLE DAY, the service gradually grinds to a complete halt and I have to re-boot the router and re-establish connectivity to the Internet apps I was working on, such as IM, IE and my companies Citrix farm.
The gradual slowing down of service doesn’t seem like a DNS issue so I have assumed this is due to the router heating up and failing, but it means that from approx 4PM the service is very patchy at best, as the router has been on since approx 9am and fails on and off for the rest of the evening – requiring a reboot each time.
I don’t mean the connectivity is slow – I mean that it gradually completely stops and I eventually get the IE splash screen informing me that the connection has been lost. – until I reboot.

I have recently tried putting the router on its vertical stands rather than having it sit flat on my desktop, to see if that helps with heat dissipation – wont hold my breath though.

I know the Sky service is relatively young and teething troubles are expected but, COME ON! not having access to the multiple e-mail accounts they offer is pretty basic, as is the daily connectivity failure.

I am sorry I moved from Vigin Broadband. My advice is stick with your present supplier at least until Sky sort out some of the problems they are having, even then I would be wary. As soon as my 12 months contract is up (9 months and counting!) I am moving ISP.

Dan on Mon, 12th Mar 2007 1:19 pm


Hi,

For weeks i have had no internet after i was disconneted from my last isp. So when my router was delivered an entire week past the delivery date i was a bit unhappy but i had it. Wacked in the setup CD and followed the instructions fine untill it told me to switch the router on. Nothing happened no lights nothing, so i unplugged it and tried again still nothing. I got on to the technical support line and told them my problem all they said was plug it in somewhere else to make sure it isn’t a faultly electircal wire which i had done anyway so they told me they would send a replacement one within five working days. It’s been four now so i am hoping it will be here tomorrow.

shelley on Tue, 13th Mar 2007 9:19 am


Hi, my sky router died last night. Yep thats right – half way through surfing the internet – the router just went dead. No green lights, nothing. Plugged it into another socket, tried another adapter. DEAD!!! No intrenet so cant work either!
Please can someome tell me how to configure my belkin router so i can use Sky broadbad. I know my sky user name and passwprd to access my account. Is this what I use to enter the details into the belkin router?
Thanks.

mad-jock on Tue, 13th Mar 2007 2:09 pm


If you have got Sky Broadband and have tried Sky BY Broadband (which I did)
then its worth checking out this article I found on the net the other day. Its actually a bit scary….and yes it was on my PC.
I have followed the guys instructions and both my PC AND connection appear to be functioning just a little bit faster. Its worth a look.

http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=2452

BLANDY on Thu, 15th Mar 2007 12:56 am


only new to computers so this bit sucks reading that sky f**ked it up big style and are happy to take my cash with no refund or awnsers. got a call from them asking if it was ok told them what was up and to ring me back as i was busy guess what? no phone call
F**KING SKY
keep havinvg to reset that modem they sent out can’t belive this has been going on for so long and with all the money they have this should be put to rest once and for all !!!!

Dee Gee Double You on Thu, 15th Mar 2007 10:52 am


Hi.

Took out Sky broadband before Christmas 2006 with digital TV for £21.00 per month, great deal!, except the day after the digibox and dish was installed I was told that my broadband service wasn’t available, cancelled everything within the minimum 8 day period, the took away the digibox, I never received a modem, but got reimbursed the £40.00 set-up fee, after sevral letters of complaining, I had to pay £15.00 for a deinstallation???, received an invoice weeks and weeks later saying I didn’t owe them anything (£0), then recently received a final reminder letter saying I owe £120.00???, put straight in the bin, waiting for so called debt collectors to knock the door, ready to tell them to go f**k themselves and can’t wait to tell Sky to shove the £120.00 up their fat A**ses, they ain’t getting nothing from me, friggin’ incompetent crooks, take me to court, I’ll give you a good battle!!!

ob on Thu, 15th Mar 2007 5:19 pm


hi i waz thinking can the sky broadband router give out a wifi signal so i can play my ps3

Kerri Proulx on Fri, 16th Mar 2007 2:46 pm


As above I ordered Sky Broadband payed my £40 activation fee and received my activation date Feb 2nd. Received my modem set everything up. I work in computers and have done for 15 years so I couldn’t see I had done anything wrong but IT WAS NOT WORKING. Rang through to sky after being on hold for 43 minutes determind to speak to someone went through loads and loadsa of windows just confirming that i had correctly installed the software and inputted all codes correctly but still didn’t work. Then by chance i inform ladat sky i was using my modem on an extension line. He said this wouldnt work unless the exyension was under 15ft in length told to get an extra phone socket put in or buy a wireless adapter. Went to my local computer brought a Netgear adapter as required. Went home set it all up . Still dont bloody work, yet again another 37 mins holding to speak to someone at Sky…..this young lady assured me that she would have me up and running within minutes…….what a load of crap 1 hours worth of going through all the previous call and reinstalling it still don’t work. She told me she would inform another area of sky and they will call me back in 5 days that will be 17 days ago i am pretty pissed off as they have had my £40 quick enough……WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE

mad-jock on Fri, 16th Mar 2007 2:47 pm


A follow up from my previous post re putting the Sky router on the vertical stands rather than lying flat on the desktop to see if it helps with heat dissipation:

Unbelievably, this actually appears to have improved the situation markedly….I have not had to re-boot the router once since I tried this..so give it a go!

On a more negative note….my pop3 sky mail has stopped authenticating properly…so no mail.

And what did Sky say? yep…”give it 3 days till we reset the password and send a new one”!
I said that this was unacceptable after all the problems I had been having…(sky agreed!) and they promised a team leader would call at 2pm…..well its 2:45 and I am still waiting!

paul on Fri, 16th Mar 2007 7:28 pm


i’m afraid that if anyone on here thinks there’s a way of circumnavigating skys 0870/2 # then you’re living in a dream world ( ring and see ) the service sky gives ya is directly proportionate to the price ( cheap and nasty ) thankthe lord that i’ve only gone for the free one and luckily ( for me ) it was on an old couples line ( blame sky not me i was helping out a neighbour ) i know now to stick with tiscali llu ( remember )

Rob on Sat, 17th Mar 2007 5:49 pm


Orded sky broadband 18 weeks ago i received the moden with in 5 days and it did not work, after hours on the phone they said my moden was faulty and they would send another one out with in 5 days. im still waiting spent over 50-60 pound on calls to them and i have still not got my modem.

i have a bt account for broadband and can not use that either due to sky taking over the line. so if any1 wants any advise STAY CLEAR OF SKY BROADBAND

panicatak on Mon, 19th Mar 2007 10:11 am


I was with Ukonline, had to cancel before moviong to sky max, had an issue with an outstanding order on the line, from where I have no idea. Sky assisted with getting this cleared, line went live in January i am sync’ed at 15323/764 and with the exception of not being able to conect to msn messenger sometimes every thing has been wonderfull. my Emule has worked flawlessly sometimes maxing out at 1.5Mbs which is the same as I get downloading from Microsoft, Ati etc.

I have aided my Father in setting up his free Sky BB, again he has had no issues either.

George C on Tue, 20th Mar 2007 12:10 pm


Thankfully I didn’t move to Sky BB. After waiting for weeks to be given the option to subscribe I was offered a package called Sky Connect – I wanted the Max package. I reported them to Trading Standards and now see that the Connect package is now mentioned in their ads. I agree with all those who say their customer service is second to none in its awfulness – they just don’t care. In moving to Sky HD I managed most of the time to circumvent their 0870 numbers but still had to wait for hours to talk to anyone and then wished I hadn’t. A letter of complaint to their Customer Services Director got me 3 months half price but they managed to cock that up too.
My advice – STAY WITH YOUR CURRENT ISP IT CAN’T BE AS BAD AS SKY.

wushuuuuuuu on Wed, 21st Mar 2007 12:59 am


for those people who wants to connect on wireless but not using netgear adapter. I am going to give you other options on how to be get the connection. On this process you will use WEP security encryption. open a explorer, in the address bar type 192.168.0.1 (ip address of router), USERNAME : admin PASSWORD : sky. then go to wireless settings and on security options, choose WEP, encryption type is 128 bit and on the passphrase box, type any words. copy contents of key1. that will serves as your network key.

Pud on Wed, 21st Mar 2007 5:34 pm


George, My sky works fine thanks. Its probably got a lot to do with your attitude that they treated you like the gobby prick you appear to be . You should learn to shut your mouth, open your eyes and read. No I don’t work for Sky, I just hate pricks with an attitude posting pointless bollocks.

Kev on Wed, 21st Mar 2007 10:49 pm


I’ve had Sky broadband for a few months now. At first my rooter needed resetting every hour or so but it settled down with no need for intervention. For some reason I’ve never been able to get more than 2mb but I’ve always put this down to the exchange and it’s fast enough for me I guess.

For the last three day’s however my connection seems to have been throttled back to 130-160kbps. This is barely adequate to surf normally let alone stream audio/video or god forbid, download anything! I’ve become accustomed to the regular drops in service but it’s never been for more than 24hrs before and never so consistent.

I download about 2-8gb a month, usually in one go, on top of my normal surfing.
Any ideas why they might throttle my connection so harshly?

toz66 on Thu, 22nd Mar 2007 9:01 am


guys,

any of you still getting modem freeze ups, theres a simple solution.

enter…192.168.0.1 into your web address.
you will get a pop up asking for user/pass

its admin
and sky

then on the left menu pane, choose….UPnP

then UNTICK the UPnP box
and then click APPLY

got “Diagnostics” AND CHOOSE THE LAST OPTION…” reboot modem.

follow on-screen instructions, for a modem reboot.

when done, just go and check the UPnP is still UNTICKED.

close down web pages, do a full pc reboot.

and there you have it.

no more modem lock ups and full speed,

iam getting constant 15 meg download speed now, its the best ive seen anywhere.

and yes the customer service is poor, and also now the free phone number no longer works, its changed periodically, so if anybody gets the new one …post it up.

hope that helps you guys.

karen on Thu, 22nd Mar 2007 5:09 pm


we have had sky broadband activated sine 24th november 06. We had no problems with the broadband or only problem is the macfee it keeps crashing the p.c. The settings for outlook express is small case pop.sky.com and the smpt is smpt.sky.com and the the password is the same is the login password on the sky home page.

Chris B on Mon, 26th Mar 2007 9:28 pm


I’m not gonna go into the problems I have had with Sky as it has all been said above.

One thing I will say is that I have exactly the same router (well the DG835G as opposed to the DG835 GT – just slower WiFi)

I used the url above to get my details (Zubs post) and my net is tip top now.

Whereas before I had slow load speeds and random drop offs it now works fine like a fast ISP should !!!!!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CONSIDER DOING THIS IF YOU STILL HAVE THE ROUTER FROM YOUR OLD AND SADLY MISSED ISP !!!!!!

PS – Im getting 1 month free – all phone charges reimbursed and Sky+ FOC !!!!

I HATE THEM ALL !!!!

PASS THE BUCK – NONE PROBLEM OWNERSHIP – NON ENGLISH SPEAKING – BOUNCED FROM DEPT TO DEPT – HOLD FOR 4 HOURS – NO CALL BACK

Hope these words deter people from migrating across !!!

Kev on Mon, 26th Mar 2007 11:18 pm


Been with Sky for 5 months now and yes I did have a few teething problems but thanks to this website http://www.skyuser.co.uk all problems solved and very I’m a very happy bunny now!

Jim on Fri, 30th Mar 2007 3:18 pm


All your questions answered on Netgear’s router and how to bypass it
http://www.asininemonkey.com/netgear-dg834gt-hacking.html

Rob TrueBlue on Sat, 31st Mar 2007 10:18 am


Have changed form tiscali to Sky Broadband only problem I had was having to have a new line fitted by BT.Service from Sky is great no problems so far connection speed much better than tiscali all in all I recommend it.Having said that I think I must be in the minority!!

Pud on Sun, 1st Apr 2007 2:01 pm


You’re not in the minority mate. Its british, most of em just like to blow hot air off. Always for negative things. Gets on my tits . Personally my glass is always half full !

Chris B on Tue, 3rd Apr 2007 8:52 am


To PUD

You obviously haven’t had any problems with your connection. If all you do is surf and email then you probably will not notice any problems.

For the more heavy user like Gamers and people downloading there are issues. The uPNP keeps droppping the WAN connection which takes approx 1min to reconnect. This is way too long and causes the games to crash out. Also it can take upto 20 mins for downloads to establish a decent seed table – then it disconnects and you loose all your seeds.

I use my own router so I have much more control over my network. I couldn’t belive that SKY had locked down DHCP settings etc. The LAN is MINE – NOT Sky’s !!!

Now I disconnect uPNP for torrents and have to reconnect it for gaming but my ping is now terrible and more often than not I will still loose my WAN IP.

I’m not even going to bother ringing Sky becasue they will tell me to use that crappy DG834GT they sent that is locked down !!! Also they won’t be able to speak English !

Paul B on Wed, 4th Apr 2007 11:59 am


Got sky broadband in Feb 2007 at the special price of £5.00, connect as Max was not available in my exchange, activation date of feb 1st, no modem, 2 weeks passed no modem, called sky over and over, couldnt send one out as one had been dispatched and didnt arrive, had to wait for comformation from postal company,modem arrived couldn;t connect, another 2 weeks finally tier 3 lady, said well the problem is your user name is not on our server,i ll do it now, 20 mins later online at 6 meg, knocked down to 4.5 becuase of line, but am happy with that.
got bill,charged full price for broadband at 17.oo rather than 5.00, called again said they would credit my account with 12.00 amonth so that i only paid 5, but wont credit me back for feb and march, robbers

March 28th speed drops down to less than 56k, called sky again, modem states down stream speed of 4.5meg as normal,but still only connecting to PC at less than 56k.
cannot get a call back from tier 3, level 1 useless.
Bt say nothing wrong with the line, however sky tells me that they have installed there equipment in my exchange now, so should get max soon,date of installation 28th march,same day as i lost my connection, seems a bit odd to me,but sky refuse to accept this may be the error.
i m totally lost now for what to do,this morning it was at 1meg which is abig improvement but not the 4.5 i had.
I would find another provider but 8meg are around 25.00, sky is cheap but i think we re paying for that in calls to them.
I was with AOL expensive,but never really any problems and till recently free tech help.
So any advice would be appreciated,any one know what the problem could be and how to solve it,.

thanks

Simon on Thu, 5th Apr 2007 11:27 am


We’ve had Sky broadand for a week now and have had problems galore.
Firstly we can only connect via LAN cable if we plug it into the main telephone point in the hallway. Plug into the extension lead in the living room and we get no service.
Secondly, we lose the connection far too often. Lost it at 10.15 last night and at 8.30 this morning it still hadn’t returned – even after resetting twice.
Thirdly, like everyone else – can’t log in to the website. Sky say that if you hit your usage cap they will email you, telling you to stop or they will cancel. All well and good if you could actually ACCESS the emails!
Fourthly, wireless doesn’t work. Signal holds for approx 0.2 second the disappears and that’s when sitting next to the box! Saying that, I have now printed the illustrated guide to setting up the wireless connection and will try again tonight.

Slightly OT, but still Sky related – Anytime doesn’t work for us either. Downloaded the software and went to register on My Sky, but it says my viewing card number is either invalid or already registered. Go to sign in and it says neither my wife or I have an account set up…!??!? Make your minds up Sky!

Kev S on Thu, 5th Apr 2007 3:55 pm


My dad got Skt broadband back in February, and has rarely got into his mail account. Several calls to Sky led to him being promised that he would be called back within 48 hours, and nothing heard. Is there ever going to be a good service provided by them? The home page is useless as nothing changes on it when you log in, in fact you don’t know when you have logged in. I’ve just tried accessing email again and still get the message ‘We’re sorry but there is a server error and we can’t bring you the page you asked for. Please try again later’.

The home page says ‘Welcome to Sky Broadband’, well they are welcome to it.

Declan on Thu, 5th Apr 2007 6:07 pm


I need help!!! I got 16 meg Sky broadband, router came fine, activation came fine…but the SSID and Network Key given aren’t right. The new internet works like a charm on the main computer, but the second computer and laptop in my household are left with no internet at all. For the laptop this isn’t really a problem, but the other computer is used alot by my son for gaming.

I don’t want to call customer support, because of their astonishingly poor reputation, but i don’t want to have my computer permanently used by my son. I need to add his ISP to the router but, as I say, can’t log in because the SSID and Network Key given on the card are both incorrect. It has only been like this for about a week now, but I don’t intend to have it carry on for too much longer.

Is there please a way of finding my REAL SSID and Network Key without calling Sky Customer support?

izzie on Fri, 6th Apr 2007 8:33 am


Good news & bad news: I’ve had all the probs mentioned above, but currently working OK. SMTP problems sorted by un-ticking the ‘Server Requires Secure Connection’ in Outlook/Accounts/Properties.

Good news is that my sky works much faster than BT did (4.4mb not 0.5); TechHelp have been ‘adequate’ though not without serious deficiency. I also used direct email adress to one of managers amanda.kelly@bskyb.com who was helpful.
Worst news is that their billing is dire; watch those bills!

Paul D-S on Sun, 8th Apr 2007 9:31 am


I have just moved to Sky BB. Must be the lucky one. No Problems at all. Router arrived early, found your site, email up and running. And. Its faster than I got from Tiscali.

Pud on Mon, 9th Apr 2007 4:58 pm


Join the happy club Paul. There are many members….

Pud on Mon, 9th Apr 2007 4:58 pm


Izzy…..Billing is no problem for me. Its Free !!

Kev on Sat, 14th Apr 2007 1:48 pm


Hi Declan, If you haven’t found a fix yet? then on your main working computer in internet explorer type 192.168.0.1 this will get you to router menu, the user id is admin password is sky, you can go to wireless settings from there and set your network key and ssid to what you want, also lots of useful info on skuser.co.uk.

Colin N on Tue, 17th Apr 2007 8:04 pm


Guys. I feel for you all. Essentially your speeds will need to be capped much lower than you would wish. I merely get 3.5 Meg & after 6 months of dreadful service & costly/futile servcie calls I am beaten down to accept thats the best I’m to get. It is very stable now though. Question for you all – I now have a spare router since they sent me another due to all the switchin off & onning! I want to reset it to Netgear default so Granny can use it but how? anybody? I dont mean just press the reset tit, I want it really back to the day Netgear gave birth to it before Sky f’#*& it up.

Melvyn Lucas on Wed, 18th Apr 2007 11:51 am


I signed with Sky Broadband in January. I decided to do this as Tiscali (my original ISP) took over 7 weeks to fix a problem during the summer 2006. The annoying thing was I knew what the problem was, the line was no longer provisioned correctly. They even told me this but wouldn’t do anything about it. In theory I am still waiting for a call back from their technical team from August! I must have made over 50 calls to Tiscali all of which took over 10 minutes just to speak to somebody, I even had to call them when they tried to bill me to tell them that I can’t access the net so why should I pay them!
Since switching to Sky I have had no problems whatsoever, I had to call them once when their was a connection issue (no fault of Skys it was a problem at the exchange) and got straight through to an advisor who informed me of everything I needed to know.
Sky broadband has been a fast & reliable service that I am very glad to have changed to.

stevebhoy on Thu, 19th Apr 2007 5:24 pm


I’m a happy Sky broadband customer. I just want to know if Sky have any news group services. I had this facility with Pipex and it was great for downloading obscure stuff.
Is there a provision for a news server at Sky or Easynet?

Kev on Fri, 20th Apr 2007 9:21 am


Colin N, you will find all you need to know here skyuser.co.uk

hazzard 13 on Sat, 21st Apr 2007 6:30 pm


I’ve no probs with broadband access but as for configuring outlook to allow both sending and recieving emails… thats another story.
I can send using my sky account but as people usually just hit reply it’s no flaming use to me. I think I must have tried every configuration of the settings in the account options and ended up after a hell of a lot of trouble getting a goolemail account and not without some problems I have managed to set it up to work with outlook express.
I am, like so many of your other readers, disgusted at the lack of ‘technical’ help Sky gives, if they email me the bit of papaer they are reading from I can do all that myself, I have done many times at great cost and have now got into an emailing situation with a named person at sky as I refuse point blank to spend any more money, mind you I might be tempted to use the freephone number now I have it.
I hope to get the email working cos I recently went self employed and dont really want to use my hotmail accoount for business purposes, it doesn’t look professional. I will continue to hassle them and when I get it working properly will post the step by step idiot guide!

laura on Mon, 23rd Apr 2007 9:47 pm


I’ve been with Sky (connect upto 8mbps) for 4 weeks now and I HATE it!! Firstly I was put on the wrong package so was getting download speed of 288kbps. That took 1 week,3 phone calls (3hours) to customer support to sort out. I got 4.8mbps for a day and since then I’ve had 1.8mbps. Now after a week of trying to configure ports so I can use WinMx I’ve been told that Sky throttle your bandwidth making it practically impossible to use file-share programs. I was with with Telewest before and didnt have 1 problem with my broadband only changed because of channel cuts on TV. I totally regret changing suppliers but I’m stuck on a 12 month contract, and would say to anyone thinking of going to Sky “DON’T do it”

Pud on Wed, 25th Apr 2007 9:27 pm


Laura.

You should not be getting involved in the illegal act of sharing/downloading/uploading illegally

ben@ten on Thu, 26th Apr 2007 10:03 pm


i work at sky and i have to say that some of the calls that we get through from customers dont need to be dealt with the are simple solutions and when we get the customers that do need help come through the are angry about the time they have waited on. once they come through we get them shouting at us its not our fault it is people who come through when they shouldnt for easy solutions.

Andrew on Thu, 3rd May 2007 9:41 am


Just signed up for SKY BB, I’ve not had BB previously at my current address. Received the modem and set-up disc, and Sky advised that I should have access to the internet on 02/05/07, I set everything up, constant green internet light on the modem (Great I thought), followed the set-up CD, and two hours later doubled clicked on the ‘S’ icon to access the internet but got the ‘unable to access web page’ message, tried again the following morning same message. Anybody able to give a techno-phobe any tips. Tried unplugging all other filters in the remaining phone sockets, no joy!

Phyllis on Sat, 5th May 2007 7:42 am


I changed from BT to Sky, basically to save money, I was online March 30th 07, had nothing but the same problems as everybody else, keep phoning Sky but you don’t get anywhere with them, they even said they would send another router, then when I phoned again the idiot hadn’t registered a new router on my record, so I won’t be getting one. It kept overheating and the plug was too hot to touch so we bought a plug adapter from Argos and the problem is solved, no more overheating, and it stays on much longer now, occasionally it will go off line but not as ofter as before, the plug that came with it is probably the wrong amp.

Ian on Sun, 13th May 2007 8:00 pm


Have been on Sky BB since Jan 07. OK but annoyed that connection kept dropping. Anyway read posts on switching to Belkin.
Decided to switch this weekend. Zub’s instructions were good but needed alot more info. Suggest that you write down all the existing Netgear connection info before switching.
After lots of trial & error seem to have it up & running for the moment. When it is set up it is a good idea to copy & paste all the info on the Belkin modem homepage for future reference.
The secure network may also cause afew headaches.
Hope this helps if you are thinking of switching from the Netgear modem.

PS Rebooting the Netgear modem as Toz66 sugests did not work for me, it lasted about 20 mins before dropping again.

Pommy on Tue, 15th May 2007 9:00 am


Hey all
I too have connectivity for around 20 mins and then i am unable to open a new browsing window. Has been going on for about 5 days now – since being installed. This is bizarre, read on. I am fairly technical so could speak with tier 3 no problems. They kept telling me that the line has not been dropped and that i am still connected, this is weird as I cannot surf. However, last night, whe i lost the connection, i closed all browsers and then I actually retyped the website i was on when the line dropped, to my astonishment it was the only website i could open. This is very strange. But it answers the question why sky tier 3 support keep telling us the connection is still established. In order to clear it all of bugs i too have to reboot the router, which will give me around another 20 mins, apart form when i was on the phone to the actual tier 3 when it wouldn’t drop (he was doing tests at the time) but once we clsoed the call, 20 mins later the line drops.

SKY should eat humble pie and provide everyone with routers that have not been tampered with.

As others have said – i too am grateful to ‘Zub’ – i will certainly be giving his recommendations a try tonight.

Don’t bohter with SKY until they have sorted their router problems out – by the way i now have two routers both giving me the same problem.

Has anyone tried rolling back to Internet Explorer 6 to see if that solves any problems with connectivity.

extremely disgruntled with sky on Wed, 23rd May 2007 3:16 pm


“Sky Broadband is here, exclusively for all Sky TV Customers. Sky Broadband offers EASY, HIGH QUALITY broadband combined with AMAZING SAVINGS†. We are offering three broadband products to our customers in Sky Broadband network areas: Base, Mid, and Max. For those Sky TV customers whom our network hasn’t yet reached, we can offer you Connect.”

Direct quote lifted from skys website, the next step is to check your availability where you enter your home phone number.

Now 2 weeks ago I did all of this, the next page said I was able to get any of the 3 packages (free, £5, £10). So I order sky tv which was installed on Saturday and then ring sky to get my broadband sorted out. Here I was told, sorry but all the lines in your area are taken so you can’t get the broadband. But hold up I signed up for the tv on the fact that I’d been told I was able to get the broadband! Sorry sir, nothing we can do about it, you can take our £17 a month offer….like hell I can!

Now since I rang and complained about this issue Sky have conveniently upgraded the website to say that only the £17 option is available in my area.

I intend to complain about this as I was falsely lead to believe I could get the broadband service I desired!

Paul D-S on Tue, 29th May 2007 12:04 pm


Just a thankyou to Zub for the password tip.

I now have a backup router. My first ‘Sky’ router died and it took over three weeks for a replacement. Tech support said it was impossible to give me my login details.

Paul

Irim on Fri, 22nd Jun 2007 6:15 pm


I’ve just installed Sky (Max) broadband, which was a pain in the a***, b/c we have WEP rather than WPA. It’s working fine so far, touch wood.

The only problem is that it installed IE7, and now I can’t allow Firefox to access the internet for love nor money. I’ve firewalled and put it as an exception, but not IE; I’ve unfirewalled (is that a word?); I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled Mozilla.

I hate IE; I hate Microsoft; I hate Bill Gates. Does anyone know whether Sky/IE7 knowingly blocks all other browsers from accessing the internet, and if so, how can I undo it? I’m not impressed.

Ixx

JimA on Mon, 25th Jun 2007 6:35 pm


Responding to a post much earlier from Kev on November 25th, 2006. I have been having problems for a couple of months with the Sky broadband connection dropping after about 15-20 mins or so. The quick fix was always rebooting the router, but after seeing the post I’ve made the upnp change. So far so good for me too. I have been using a speed checker http://speedtest.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ and for whatever reason I’m no longer getting the 14-15MB speeds I was before (now fluctuating between 1-5MB) but I’m quite willing to sacrifice that for a connection that stays up to end my madness.

http://192.168.0.1/start.htm on explorer then, login admin password sky. Turn upnp off, to get to the setting it should be at the bottom of the left hand menu. Like Kev though, I’m not sure of the exact details behind why it’s helped.

Sheppy on Sun, 1st Jul 2007 1:12 pm


Sky free number 08000512595 not working. Anyone have a new free number?

Kev on Fri, 20th Jul 2007 4:19 pm


Hi JimA, I did have further problems after switching the uPNP off which turned out to be problems with my internal extension wiring which was causing errors on the line and in turn slow speeds, resolved that problem about 5 month’s ago with a bit of fiddling around with the wiring and my connection has been perfect ever since. The skyuser.co.uk website is very useful for sorting out these niggly problems as Sky tech support seem to be pretty clewless. Although I had further issues the uPNP is a known bug with the router and turning it off seems to fix alot of peoples problems.

gareth on Sat, 21st Jul 2007 10:37 am


i have set up sky broadband on 2 of my friends lines and both were slightly better over their older isp. one has line issues but they had them with tiscali and the main reason they left them was because of the european servers causing high pings in games., not the intermittant connection.

the line problem is down to bt (its all their cabling) and his neighbours experience the same even tho the exchange is within sight. the lines have been up since WWII.

some things cant be blamed on the isp directly. i am with eclipse at the moment and cant wait to leave for poor customer service. the line is good and was when i was with pipex. they have a referral scheme where you get £30 for referring a friend, after referring 7 people i only got paid for 3 and told thats all i am going to get – thats my reward for giving them customers. when i migrate to sky max i will post again if the line shows any degragation

alot of the above issues though are strictly pc related. if you have to reboot your pc to regain your connection, its your pc but if your having to reboot the router or simply waiting for it to return, then its your line.

you will want to make sure that sky router is upright cos they do heat up (i have a non sky one and its the same) and if your line is intermittent ring bt and ask them to increase the gain on the line. give them a week as bt arent the fastest of people then report the issue to sky as a fault. if you dont get anywhere mention contract and that if it cant be delivered they are in breach, giving you a window to leave – even tho they will dispute this. friend had this with wannado but after 10 minutes arguing he advised he was recording the call and was going to chuck it on youtube …. next thing the manager was on the telephone promising a mac code only 3 months into the service

Jimmy-Lee on Fri, 17th Aug 2007 6:11 pm


This is in no way my work. I did not work this out myself but I have seen many people posting about they want to use their own modem for sky. I do this and it is a lot better!!!

First thing’s first….type this into a new window:
http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26/bin/grep+ppoa_+/tmp/nvram+%3E+/www/netgear.cfg

Once you have done that enter in:
http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg
Save this file to you pc. Open the file with a text editor such as Wordpad and you will see your Sky Username and Password listed. (Top one username second one password).

It will look something like this:
pppoa_username=SKYARECUNTS@skydsl
pppoa_password=SKYSUCKSASS
pppoa_idle=0
pppoa_ipaddr=
With this you will be able to use a different router other than the Sky provided Netgear one.

I am sure this will help many.

-Lee

snoop on Sun, 26th Aug 2007 7:25 pm


I have had sky since late early this year and have previously posted on here.I am on maxi package,which is suppose to be 16meg,but i only get between 5 and 6, whcih is odd as when i was on the connect package up to 8 i could only get 3 or 4.

Anyway, i ve done the changing router thing, and its not the netgear router thats at fault,i beleive its the speed sky are trying to push down the line,i have mine cut to 2 meg and never had any problems with it dropping out,i asked sky to increase the speed which they did and now it drops out about 4-5 times a day.I am prepared to put up with it as it means must of the day i get fast download speeds for the inconvience of several restarts, the alternative is much slower speeds.

i agree sky are terrible, but it a price we have to pay for a low fee

Pete on Tue, 25th Sep 2007 8:07 am


yeah this seems to be my problem as well

Says upto 16MB and I get no more than 5-6

I spoke to Sky and they said it is up to 16MB when available in the area……but more likely to 8MB – but will increase in time ??? whatever that means

I am fairly happy with it….. better than tiscali……

Just a question if anyone knows – Is there anyway to change the IP address you computer has through this ? I connect using one of the 4 networking connections on the back on the hub ?

thanks

Rob on Tue, 9th Oct 2007 2:00 am


Pete

Are you talking about setting up a static IP? The Netgear router from Sky comes configured with DHCP enabled, which allocates IP addresses on the fly to devices that connect to the router. If you want the same IP all the time (for example if you use p2p clients), you need to set up a static IP, then portforward. Check out http://www.portforward.com for guidance setting it up.

Me, well I’m new to Sky Broadband, and having read through the whole blog, it sounds like the early adopters got a raw deal. I set mine up with no fuss, and have seen notable speed improvements over the Tiscali Max account I had (that one refused to give me a stable connection at speeds over 2Mbps – Sky is giving me a solid 6.9Mbps).

The one thing i did do was let the configuration CD that Sky sent me get nowhere near my PC! In fact, I configured the router with the same settings as my old router BEFORE my old ISP was disconnected (I had the router from Sky 6 weeks before they took over my service – dont ask!), MAC addresses, static IPs, even down to naming the SSID the same and giving it the same password. That way, all my wifi enabled devices just connected to the new router as if it was the old one (which was on its last legs anyway!). The Netgear has been rock solid for the week I’ve had it working – no drop outs or reboots at all. And I’ve noticed the noisy telephone line I had with tiscali has now gone, too!!!

All in all, very happy – but I’ve had no need to call Tech Support yet! lol

Jamie McAuslane on Thu, 11th Oct 2007 8:11 pm


Hi All

Had two Sky guys round tonight trying to encourage me to take their broadband service. I think they bit off a bit more than they could chew!!! I was as ever replete with questions. Sure the download/upload speeds seem very tasty indeed. But me being me I wanted to check a few things out 1st, as my mum had invited these two chaps round without my knowledge.

(1) Check the speed of my local exchange…6.5meg/sec … not bad …ok so far so good

(2) Will the wireless Netgear router work with Linux? Erm ….well…..yes….it’s not been mentioned at our seminars ….erm yes definitely….erm let me call technical… Technical….’Is it a games console?” Flippin’ eck!!! No, it’s an operating system…”Oh we only support 2000, XP, Vista and Osx” Told the guys that would not sign up until did some research about the routers compatibility with Linux (Ubuntu — My NTL/Virgin media works just a treat as its Ethernet and cabled)…Although polite and professional I could see that they weren’t sure, which to their credit thaey did say…but none-the-less still pressed me to sigh up… I said you guys are welcome to come back in a couple of days after I have researched….they were none committal and said they weren’t sure if they would be in the area….OK…no I’m not signing at the moment.

(3) Found this site….Glad I didn’t sign up!!! Reading all this just totally puts me off, the Netgear router sounds awful and the whole lock down of your ip adress and mail problems sounds like a nightmare.

Lesson 1 = Go with you gut, mine said no…turn out right.

Lesson 2 = Do your research. It pays off.

jeh on Mon, 22nd Oct 2007 7:50 am


SKY is wholly crap…
I ordered, Sky broad band early this month, and I got it activated on 18th oct. I also got the Netgear Router from them. Infact, I got 2 telephone lines, one with Bulldog broadband, and the other line i used for Sky broadband. luckily, bulldog broadband will be disconnected from end of october, so i still have a internet connection,
I use a cisco 837 router to connect to internet, so i needed the Account details like username, passwrod, dns address, VCI/VPI values, snmp address etc, so i called technical department last night, and they have no idea what i was talking about, they kept saying, u can access to the internet, so whats the problem, hell, i explained again, that i got internet connection with someother ISP as well, the information i needed inorder to configure my cisco router, they are unable to provide any information, and they dont have knowledge about these info. they kept giving the username is Admin, and the password is “sky”, and the dns address is 192.168.0.1, blooooody helll.
My best advice is that, you guys dont go for SKY broadband unless if you are not going to use your own router, as they have newbie/no knowledge people in their technical dept, and you wont get any info from them execpt username is Admin, and the password is “sky”, and the dns address is 192.168.0.1.

Finally I just called sky today and ask them to disconnect it.
Thats all.

james on Wed, 31st Oct 2007 1:15 am


was on tiscali 1meg =£14.99 had various download speeds problems
and was not into changing my isp because of all the bad press but the cost win in the end
switched to sky 16meg unlimited for internet and ps3 console
for £10
switch on was on time and router arrived day before change over
had small problem setting up but was because i did not read all
the info! have never set up a router or wireless conection

Andy on Thu, 1st Nov 2007 11:28 pm


Where do i start with this.. i have SKY TV ,SKY phone and SKY Broadband.. and i can say without any doubt I WANT TO LEAVE.
i have been with them for about 6 months now and they still have not set up my broadband properly. I have had 2 routers now ..the first one stopped working..and now the second one is going the same way. my connection comes and goes and at night time all i can do is is sit and watch as my connection goes down every 20 mins or so. i dont get the good deal either because of the area i stay in so i have 2 pay full price for an up 2 8meg connection which is actually more like 1meg i left BT for this and god i cant wait for the year to end so i can go back to them…and i never thought id say that..

Really tho SKY Broadband is a joke the tech team have no knowledge at all and they read from a script that you have to follow or they get lost and dont know what 2 do next. i got my phone bill in last month and all my charged calles were from them on the bill over £9 just calling them to try to get my connection up again..
they dont have any idea about this in my very honest opinion ..and as im a technical support engineer i have a little insight into this. if i can offer any advice its this

..go with virgin media if u can … or find an operator other than sky for broadband yes even BT at least when u get through to them after 30 – 60 mins waiting they can at least offer some sort of help with your problem…

Boris on Sun, 11th Nov 2007 11:52 am


Iv’e had Sky Broadband for several months, and the first prob I had was no connection, as I shouldn’t have been running my iMac on an extension lead, so I moved the mac nearer the phone socket. Problem solved.

I then connected via airport – no problem ‘cept I then had to moved my mac back! No problem.

I then had the problem of Pop 3 email and I couldn’t send emails unless I sent via my previous ISP address. For months I tried to correct this fault but no luck. Last week Sky moved all their emails to Goggle only keeping the same email addresses via gmail, and once I had enabled pop3 at sky.com/tools I now have at have no problems.

At last I have got free broadband AND pop3 working perfectly!

neil smith on Mon, 12th Nov 2007 10:06 pm


ive got a belkin f5d8633-4 and am trying to connect to my sky broadband. everytime i try to complete the setup cd it fails saying i havent given the right details. ive used the tool to extract my username and password but still no luck. is it better to setup the connection manually? i dont have a clue what to do as im a novice in this area. any ideas?

Kev on Wed, 14th Nov 2007 3:23 pm


Lots of help and tips on this independant web site skyuser.co.uk I’ve been up and running with Sky now for 12 months at 8mb, all my teething problems were solved with the help of this site.

w leath on Mon, 19th Nov 2007 11:53 am


Switched to Sky last week.Took a while to get my Outlook Express working but ok once I sorted out the
correct entries.Having a problem with my AVG free virus
checker as it only gives a dial-up option. No sign of
a Lan option in the pop-up? Anyone know a way to get the ethernet port option for update?

Nick on Wed, 21st Nov 2007 8:09 pm


Hi I have just got the black netgear on Sky – anyone know how to obtain username and password on this? The solution above doesnt work. Wireless range is CRAP – my old netgear Rangemax is fantastic

HELP !!!

Kev on Fri, 30th Nov 2007 5:19 pm


“Nick” No the new router is even more locked down than the old one was, there’s no utiils to extract the username and password yet. Keep an eye on the skyuser.co.uk forum something will propably come up before too long.

Stephen on Tue, 4th Dec 2007 10:46 pm


Hi,
Ok, I’m an online gamer. I previously had virgin media in my old house and my ping/latency was relatively low (averaging about 20-30). I have moved house and no longer able to get virgin media in my street and have now got sky broadband. With sky i have high pings and my online games are becoming unplayable averaging about 80-90. I have seen websites saying contact tier3 and tell them to decrease your max delays – Does this lower pings/latency if so can anyone tell me exactly what to say to tier3 because they dont have a clue what i’m on about when i try to talk to them???

Stephen on Wed, 5th Dec 2007 7:06 pm


Hi,
I’m an online gamer. I previously had virgin media in my old house and my ping/latency was relatively low (averaging about 20-30). I have moved house and no longer able to get virgin media in my street and have now got sky broadband. With sky i have high pings and my online games are becoming unplayable averaging about 80-90. I have seen websites saying contact tier3 and tell them to decrease your max delays – Does this lower pings/latency if so can anyone tell me exactly what to say to tier3 because they dont have a clue what i’m on about when i try to talk to them???

Stephen on Wed, 5th Dec 2007 7:07 pm


Hi,
Ok, I’m an online gamer. I previously had virgin media in my old house and my ping/latency was relatively low (averaging about 20-30). I have moved house and no longer able to get virgin media in my street and have now got sky broadband. With sky i have high pings and my online games are becoming unplayable averaging about 80-90. I have seen websites saying contact tier3 and tell them to decrease your max delays – Does this lower pings/latency if so can anyone tell me exactly what to say to tier3 because they dont have a clue what i’m on about when i try to talk to them???

Stephen on Sat, 8th Dec 2007 11:08 am


Sky Broadband – When i phoned tier 3 to decrease my max delay levels in order to bring my latency down it went down by a good 50ms to 30ping but the next day when i loaded my online game my ping was high again with 80ping. can anyone help and tell me what to do?

pip scott on Mon, 7th Jan 2008 6:15 am


Sky broadband ha, every time I turn it on i’m having to reset the modem, and talk about slow, o would think I was back on dial up!!!!

bobwarner on Fri, 11th Jan 2008 1:43 am


i have a friend who is with sky as isp but he has just had a new website and email service set up but cant receive emails with his new non sky.com email address in outlook… he has done everything sky have told him to do but he just cant send emails through outlook.

can anyone help??

ldnsfs on Tue, 15th Jan 2008 12:55 am


lol the black router asking for dsl user and password? just reset the router for 5 seconds by the red reset button on the back :)

If you really want to know its admin for user and sky for password but you will be asked this when you try to go to another page

How do I know? I am sky bb tech support guy xD

BW on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 7:23 am


I had all sorts of problems with sky in trying to get my username and password for the service to use my own router. They sent me the new Sagem router. What I did find out though, if it helps, is that the Sagem doesn’t support VPN. Since I work from home sometimes, I need VPN support. Customer services said there was nothing they could do so I went through to cancellations on the basis that I couldn’t use the service they were providing. Cancellations did manage (after two attempts) to send me a NetGeear router, which of course, you can hack with url injection (skyuser.com) to generate the netgear.cfg file whic contains your username and password. I got nowhere with sky on this front. They just kept telling me the user name is admin and the password is sky. NO, I don’t want to get on to the box, I want the credentials for the service itself!! Well, whether you need VPN or not, they’re not to know and its a reason for them to have to swap out the kit for a box you can hack until such time as the Sagem box is “editable”. Hope this helps. After all, who are a telly company to tell you what hardware you can and can’t use in your own home?

Oldwolf Serenity on Sun, 3rd Feb 2008 11:59 am


Hi all,
Sky have changed their supplied router to a Sagem one now.
I am having a nightmare of a time getting user name and password out of it. The login details are still the same ie Admin and Sky but I cannot find where it lists the internet login name and password.

Will Zub’s details work for this router as well?
Thansk,
OS

Peter B on Sun, 6th Jul 2008 9:38 am


Try this for obtaining your username and password from your router

http://www.philipnicosia.com/2006/10/03/sky-broadband-username-and-password/

I hope it helps