I have been with Sky for TV and Broadband since June 20th 2008, my Broadband package is supposed to be 16Mb, but I have been getting 3.3Mb since the first day, a 5th what i'm supposed to be receiving.

I understand that ADSL can be affected in so many ways and I have been embroiled in a war with BT about the phoneline as they claim nothing can be done about the speed of my Broadband, and when I talk to Sky, they always point me towards BT and blame the phoneline.

I have had enough now and i'm going to go over to Virgin for my Broadband service but I need help with what to do about cancelling my Broadband contract with Sky.

After speaking to my father about this, he said as I have been receiving a 5th of my speed I should ask for the bills I have paid to be deducted so I only pay for a 5th of the Broadband bill. But to me this seems extreme.

I would like to know whether I will be made to buy out the remainder of my contract or whether I should phone and demand that I am allowed to end with Sky ASAP and changeover to Virgin.

Thank you

If you've got a service that is providing 3.3Mbps consistently, my opinion is that you should stick with it. It is a very respectable rate and you may well end up with something worse by switching. My 7.2Mbps service occasionally has an actual transfer rate over 1Mbps, but that's not often. I reckon that if you are consistently getting more than a tenth of the maximum, you are doing ok.

To be honest sky are corrrect in what they say, but if you look at their terms it says upto 16mb. Virgin is very slow at times, billing is poor too I have them now. Dont jump out of the chip pan into the fire.

Aside from yourself i've not heard anybody have anything bad to say about Virgin, although to be honest I havn't actually took the time to look.

I suppose that I have used the service for 6 months and I know that my problems don't lie within Sky, they are with BT.

I'll see out my minimum contract and then see what happens after that, I imagine i'll be going over to Virgin though.

Thanks guys

Sky's LLU product is generally thought of quite highly. Before you jump ship find out your line stats from your router - Downstream attenuation figure gives a indication of line length, 0 - 40, excellent , 41 - 55, ok, 56+ poor. Check out your own wiring too

Unless you check these things out you won't know for sure where the problem lies.

I have been with them since the good old days, once I left anovo (bt) I went on to virgin as I was no longer getting it free. Virgin is good when things goto plan and work. If you serach for virgin hell / ntl hell in google a lot of people say what its really like.

ThePenguin:

Aside from yourself i've not heard anybody have anything bad to say about Virgin, although to be honest I havn't actually took the time to look.

I suppose that I have used the service for 6 months and I know that my problems don't lie within Sky, they are with BT.

I'll see out my minimum contract and then see what happens after that, I imagine i'll be going over to Virgin though.

Thanks guys

We are currently doing the very opposite to you! We are changing from Virgin to Sky! Our Virgin speed has always supposed to have been upto 8Mb but for the last 3 years we have only ever got 4Mb at the very highest usually somewhere between 3 and 4. It depends on how far you are away from your exchange, the sky website tells you what speed you should expect at your address, we are only 1 mile away and it affects our speeds by half. We are switching to Sky because we have been paying Virgin £18 a month for the past three years and can get sky upto 8Mb for £5 a month!! They also keep writing to me asking for over £400 because they failed to cancel the braoband at my previous address, so instead of cutting us of when they didn't get payment from the credit card that was not active because we cancelled them all when we moved house, they kept the service live and wrote to me over 2 years later to say I need to pay!! I dont think so! Our Virgin service has never been a problem, I don't like the way they say there's no 12 month contract then charge you £50 if you leave within 12 months but don't actually say it, that was never mentioned to me when I went with them and actually asked the question! When we called earlier to request our MAC code they were extremely rude in the retention department, i know its thier job to keep our custom but it's not right to be rude. If I were you I'd contact Sky and ask to reduce your broadband package, then you'll save money and still get the same speed of broadband you would get if you switched to anyone else!! Good Luck!