Sky to perform a spot of ADSL line management on some 300,000 lines

Sky are getting ready to perform a spot of ADSL line management on some 300,000 lines. This is to reprofile them to get them working to the best capability. For many this will be good news.

For some it will mean a speed decrease if the line is misconfigured. The process is going to be automatic and will continue across the entire network eventually.

Another issue, not associated with that at all, is a problem at the hands of BT Openreach and Wholesale that affects not only Sky but other ISPs also. What it amounst to is that a new ADSL service is delivered on BT Connect using their IPStream Home 200 service which is capped at 256Kbps. It is due to a problem where a new BT line is being provisioned with ADSL and Openreach + Wholesale do not have all the line details, so BTW "suggest" the Home 200 service which automated systems, like Sky's, accept and order against. Sky then have to upgrade the customer to Mid or Max which takes a while and costs Sky. Eventually the BTO and BTW systems get into sync and would allow a original ADSL order at whatever speed the line is capable of.

A test of this is for the customer to check their line against anyone's ADSL checker and if it says something like " you line can only operate at 256Kbps..." then regardless of what they order from Sky it is 256Kbps that they'll get. But Sky will normally capture that fact and upgrade the customer automatically subsequently.

This is being discussed in our forums here