Sky will be looking to run trials of fibre-optic broadband

[Kona Owner]

If Sky were to charge say £15 p/month I guess you would be more than a little upset.

Not really, my monthly bill as a BT/Sky user has dropped slightly not increased although admittedly i did lose my Sky HD sub as a consequence to achive it. Lets not forget ive had FTTC for 3 months already where as everyone hanging on in waiting for Sky to announce something are having to put up with crap speeds.

Thanks to VMs announcement earlier i am guessing the 80Mbit speeds BT are about to announce will be a free upgrade also

[Kona Owner]

look I know everyones excited about fibre but you do realise that the reason why sky has not jumped on it is because of lack of demand.

I am sure the 350,000 customers BT alone have on FTTC are shocked to hear that.

[deadman1984]

im sure sky will come up with something they have to surly

[Kona Owner]

Apparently FTTC has now been installed in our area - according to the BT infinity site, we could expect a speed of:

23.5Mb download
7.0Mb upload

Not exactly super fast, but bearing in mind our streets cables are all knackered (paraphrasing BT engineers) and that the best we can get on copper (according to BT) is 2.5Mb (although we're getting 4Mb through Sky's equipment), it's better than we get now by a large margin.

It is a little annoying that we keep getting letters from our local cable company (Virgin) taunting us with their speeds - when I know perfectly well that it isn't even installed in our street!

It would be nice to get a decent speed - more and more now we are using streaming services and that "buffering" icon is sooo annoying

You will get more than 23.5Mbit as all the 17a profiles are now in place. Use the checker after the last weekend in January when it has been updated to take in to account the 17a profile and you will find it is probably at least 40Mbit.

The checker for me currently says 37.5Mb download and 10.0Mb upload but look what my modem is showing as the max attainable rate as (it was about 53Mbit before the change to the 17a profile)

[Scubbie]

Lets not forget ive had FTTC for 3 months already where as everyone hanging on in waiting for Sky to announce something are having to put up with crap speeds.

Whilst I am slightly jealous, I do not have access to either Virgin or Fibre where I live, but wait I must as I have no Fibre options anyway.

As mentioned previously, Virgin cover all the homes surround mine, but not mine. As I'm not a Virgin fan, this isn't a major issue though.

My exchange was included in the December announcement for the next batch of exchanges to have Fibre added, but I have no more info than that at present.

[deadman1984]

wonder if virgin will come to my area though i doubt it cause its a bt area

[joe pineapples]

And virgin have announced a free doubling of customers internet speed.

Time for an announcement please Sky...

And so Sky customers get left even further behind.

Yes, now ought to be the best time to make an announcement of their own and snatch a bit of wind back, out of Virgins sails. The old '*** for tat' routine, but who will be the *** and who the tat

[Stumpy]

look I know everyones excited about fibre but you do realise that the reason why sky has not jumped on it is because of lack of demand.

I've not seen that article .. could you link it please? Or is that just your personal opinion?

Hi Stumpy,

Whats the timing difference between the day your cab was installed and the day BT started taking orders?

Difficult to tell ... SamKnows was reporting a "start of installation" at late Autumn, and I did notice a marked increase in BT/Openreach vans around the area between September and November time, but I never saw any specifically at our closest cabinet (and I'm not even sure the closest cabinet is "our" cabinet).

Also .. despite me giving my email address to BT Infinity to notify me as soon as I was able to get FTTC, they have obviously failed to do so .. I simply went on their site today out of curiousity and discovered it was now enabled. I'd say somewhere between 1 and 2 months though, as a guestimate, as I did check several times during the latter part of last year.

wonder if virgin will come to my area though i doubt it cause its a bt area

I don't think it makes any difference .... BT is a major supplier of telephone and broadband services in my area and it hasn't stopped Virgin. I'm just unfortunate that, when Virgin last expanded in my area, they stopped at the end of the street, and then never came back.

I know plenty of people in the wider area who have gone with Virgin rather than BT or Sky, primarily for their TV/telephone packages, admittedly.

[deadman1984]

hum well no link but its the feeling on this forum scubbie mentioned on here or on another topic about why sky has not taken the fttc plunge straight away. he reckons its because of low take up

[Stumpy]

hum well no link but its the feeling on this forum scubbie mentioned on here or on another topic about why sky has not taken the fttc plunge straight away. he reckons its because of low take up

I didn't realise there had been the opportunity for a "take up" with Sky ... I signed up for the trial, but never heard anything else, and I know plenty of others on these forums also signed up for it, at the time.