Sky or UPC?

pakks

We would be moving to Douglas next month.
At the moment, in galway, we have the UPC package for broadband, home phone and tele.
With all the channels (no HD) plus the phone bill comes around 120 per month.

We are now deciding to go for Sky or UPC - any inputs regarding coverage around that area would be beneficial.

Also for people using Sky, is it Eircom the only option for home phone and broadband?

Thanks in advance

Hogzy

Where ever Eircom is available then Vodafone and the other DSL resellers will also be available. Douglas is probably the best suburb of Cork for broadband penetration so your safe.

Outkast_IRE

Eircom and other broadbands through the phoneline are pretty crap in comparison to upc in most areas in cork .
Dont think your getting like for like when comparing prices your defo not, and also remember sky have a good habit of giving you an excellent price for 1st year or free channels for 1st year then jacking it up afterwards.

omerin

In the ideal world it would be Sky for tv and upc for broadband, for both services nothing comes near

fonecrusher1

Upc tv service is a bit crap. Clumsy interface & a fair bit of delay between pushing buttons & getting an action. Sky tv is definitely a slicker system.

Mind you UPC works out a little bit cheaper. If you like your tv & you can afford sky, go for it.

Bloody Nipples

We have UPC, it's generally grand but can on occasion go down for a few hours. They're fairly cowboyish too. We rang for a quote on how much it would cost to install, they then turned up and installed two chorus boxes in the first two rooms they found TVs in :rolleyes: had a bit of hassle trying to get them to come back and move one of the boxes to a room we actually wanted it in.

We would have told them to f*ck themselves after that but they are cheaper than Sky so we just kept it :P

Have eircom broadband, no issues with it really.

Solair

For broadband, UPC is definitely the way to go.

Sky's TV service is better, but UPC's catching up and their newer cable TV boxes are actually quite nice.

If you want to have a look at UPC, they've a stand in the carphone warehouse in Patrick's Street with current generation boxes to play with.

pakks

Thanks everyone for the replies, it helps:)

ofcork

Afaik you cannot get upc in some areas of douglas,guy at work was told he could get tv from upc ok but not the broadband.

FTGFOP

You should put the address(es) into the Service Available widget on the Upc website.

funnights74

In the ideal world it would be Sky for tv and upc for broadband, for both services nothing comes near . especially upcs's fibrepower bband is lightening fast, had vfone,eircom and more and its the best by a mile.

blindsider

If you need a landline, broadband and decent TV, you will save money with UPC.

Best bb in the country, phone is perfect and for me, the TV is very good. We get ESPN, ESPN Classic and Setanta Irl as well as Eurosport for a good price. I watch a fair bit of sport on TV.

I keep hearing that Sky have better channels, but I'm yet to be convinced. UPC have lost ITV2/3/4 but I miss them less than I expected.

The only channel I'd like is Sky Atlantic - but do you need to get movies on Sky for that?


UPC HD is great and the interface is vastly improved. It's still got a small delay, but nothing worth talking about.

mikeym

blindsider wrote: »

The only channel I'd like is Sky Atlantic - but do you need to get movies on Sky for that?

No its available on all sky packages.

Lustrum

We have UPC tv and broadband in the house in Frankfield. Tv isn't too bad but I don't really watch it much anyway, broadband is rubbish! I'm convinced they just switch it off about 11pm every night for some reason. Compared to the quality in the home place in Dublin, it's miles behind

rcdk1

It's true that UPC's TV isn't as slick as Sky but you get used to it after a while and UPC are definitely the best on price for package deals.
For €68/month we have:

• 25mb broadband
• the middle TV package (no HD or movies) with 2 digital recording boxes
• home phone with free off peak calls to landlines and 400 minutes to european landlines

kub

I suppose the bottom line is, you get what you pay for. Sky are more expensive but are a hell of a lot better when it comes to the TV. Eircoms broadband has improved a lot in Douglas especially in the past 12 months.

pakks

ofcork wrote: »

Afaik you cannot get upc in some areas of douglas,guy at work was told he could get tv from upc ok but not the broadband.

This is what the UPC told us also. They do not even have TV services for our address. So this means, we will go with Sky for TV which is not the issue. But when it comes to landline and broadband, Eircom seems pretty expensive.

Any other choices for the douglas area?

Spiritofthekop

UPC are the worst service provider & customer service in the history of TV and customer service.

Stay well clear of them.

Their internet can be cheap & works ok, but if it starts to drops out, get ready for a world of pain.

For TV Sky is light years ahead and better.

The fact the ireland has only 2 providers is shocking.

UPC are cheap & nasty (but their internet if you are lucky and get no signal drops can be very cheap & good)

ofcork

I wonder why sky dont get into the broadband and phone market here as they do in the uk i believe.

Solair

ofcork wrote: »

I wonder why sky dont get into the broadband and phone market here as they do in the uk i believe.

They purchased Easynet in the UK and have unbundled access to about 1,179 exchanges, which isn't actually that big a footprint i.e. it's mostly just large urban areas.

To be honest, their service isn't anything to write home about. I've used it in the UK and it's just bog-standard ADSL2+ exactly the same technology as eircom use in most areas.

They sell you various high speeds, but for the first 10 days you are in 'training mode' where you have to wait for their exchange to analyse the line conditions and, if it so chooses, it will up your speed to a theoretical maximum of 24mbit/s. In reality, you'd need to be actually living in the telephone exchange plugged directly into the DSLAM to get that kind of speed.

It's certainly not comparable to cable broadband.

Also, because it's just DSL, it relies on BT's infrastructure for the local loop. So you still have to have a phone line and pay line rental.

In Ireland, Sky would just have to either acquire or use services from another phone company e.g. the likes of BT Ireland or something like that.

It would be no different from Vodafone at Home or UTV internet.

The only advantage is that you can get decent deals by bundling it with your Sky subscription.

They might be more interested in entering the phone and broadband market here now that UPC is actual competition for them. That's why they got into the market in the UK i.e. to have comparable products (although with slower broadband) to cable companies.

There's nothing stopping them from entering the Irish phone/DSL market if they thought it made business sense to do so.

Chuck Stone

Hey OP have you thought about not paying anything for your TV at all (except licence fee and the one-off cost of a combi box ofc).

You can buy a combi box which will organise all the Free to air UK sat channels and home channels on one menu.

RTE1
RTE2
TTV3
TG4
e3
RTEJnr
RTE news channel.
BBC1
BBC2
BBC3
BBC4
BBC news
ITV
ITV2
ITV3
CH4
E4
More 4
Film 4
Channel 5

CNN
Euronews
Sky News.

And loads more.

More below on these combi boxes (sat and terrestrial digital combined)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055792912

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056284276

ShamoBuc

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Hey OP have you thought about not paying anything for your TV at all (except licence fee and the one-off cost of a combi box ofc).

You can buy a combi box which will organise all the Free to air UK sat channels and home channels on one menu.

RTE1
RTE2
TTV3
TG4
e3
RTEJnr
RTE news channel.
BBC1
BBC2
BBC3
BBC4
BBC news
ITV
ITV2
ITV3
CH4
E4
More 4
Film 4
Channel 5

CNN
Euronews
Sky News.

And loads more.

More below on these combi boxes (sat and terrestrial digital combined)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055792912

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056284276

Couldn't agree more. It's what I have and no more bills for TV.
Broadband and phone for about 40 a month from Vodafone.