Sky Ireland Fibre Broadband

airuser

Nonoperational wrote: »

It's an absolute disaster to be honest. The attitude to it is worse. Constantly fobbing customers off with nonsense about "testing" and pushing the date out further and further when they clearly are just picking dates out of the air to keep people happy.

It seems they are after the low hanging fruit, people who don't know/care about speeds. I'd imagine it may be to do with the requirement to provide vectoring and VOIP compliant modems and engineer installs. At the moment we are just an extension of the UK broadband operation. Send out a Sky hub and that's that.

Sky contacted boards a few months ago and provided a statement which was again a load of crap. They obviously don't like people talking about it. I left their broadband service a few months ago for Vodafone and would highly recommend anyone else that's on the fence to do it if fibre is available to you.

Maybe be you have hit the nail on the head. Certainly they put little effort into providing the internet here. A little testing with NGA a few testing customers and in 3 months they were up and now it's a little more work.
I can remember that they did say something on this forum, probably they were testing and would provide something in the future etc.
Nothing did happen or will happen.
They pinned there own forum on fibre.
What will they do now about fibre comments.
Repeat what they have been saying for the last several months. Or possibly ask for this forum to be pinned.
Sky the matter about providing fibre for you customers and retaining them is in your hands.

Kenny Logins

Nonoperational wrote: »

That's what people are doing, but there's a year contract with Sky and it would be nice to get some sort of deal with TV and BB.

Sorry, yes, I didn't think of that for some reason. I'm with Sky but I don't have a contract.

airuser

Have no contract with Sky either. Just a matter of calling the others. I have a good phone package with them(SKY). Just trying at this time to work out the others.

None of the are the same.

Would very muck like SKY to publish their intensions..

Are they going to continue offering "TalK" and Internet services or what?

If one could get replies to this one could may informed decisions.

Sky are prepared to do more on the TV service here. How about Internet?

I will not hold my breath

SpaceTime

Shop around a bit.

We have broadband only (no phone service) and use VoIP from Blueface for the landline.

Working out great value and ironically, Sky On Demand in HD is outstanding over eFibre lol

I have no idea what they're up to though! Seems utterly daft! Also this 'testing' line they keep coming out with is ridiculous at this stage.
The technology is in place and working absolutely solidly for months.

degsie

I doubt that we will ever see Sky fibre tbh. The current sky router (hub) is the same one as used in the UK and just so happened to suit the Irish market. The new fibre hub used in the UK will not work here due to requirements of 'vectoring'. I think it unlikely that Sky will develop a new fibre hub just just for the Irish market given the relatively low customer numbers.

fat-tony

degsie wrote: »

I doubt that we will ever see Sky fibre tbh. The current sky router (hub) is the same one as used in the UK and just so happened to suit the Irish market. The new fibre hub used in the UK will not work here due to requirements of 'vectoring'. I think it unlikely that Sky will develop a new fibre hub just just for the Irish market given the relatively low customer numbers.

The newer modem/router SR102 model is supplied for the UK market and supports vectoring there, I believe.
Surely a firmware mod specific to the Irish market would be the way to go? I can't see SKY cutting themselves out of a revenue stream.

airuser

Believe that SKY may not have the numbers to support them going over to Fibre. However, if they do not they will be loosing more customers.

Also further revenue.

Another matter on the own site, many if not all the coordinators are UK based. So they have a forum where their employees do not know the market here. Many of us know that CS work off scripts. Therefore problems here are may differ from UK. Did see one coordinator ask was West Cork in ROI. Also they were asking for post codes.

keno-daytrader

airuser wrote: »

Believe that SKY may not have the numbers to support them going over to Fibre. However, if they do not they will be loosing more customers.

Also further revenue.

Another matter on the own site, many if not all the coordinators are UK based. So they have a forum where their employees do not know the market here. Many of us know that CS work off scripts. Therefore problems here are may differ from UK. Did see one coordinator ask was West Cork in ROI. Also they were asking for post codes.

Adsl will have moved on to Vdsl (FTTC) in the next year for a majority of dsl broadband customers, so Sky will be left behind. Why would I pay Sky for 11mb dsl when Eircom , Vodafone and others offer 70+mb on the same line for relatively the same price?

So within a year they will have to decide, for business reasons, to offer fibre or exit the broadband market in Ireland.

One wonders why they entered the broadband market last year and have no plan in place for competition to UPC or Eircom Fibre.

Bizzare.

SpaceTime

If they wanted to, they could just use a different modem instead of the Sky Hub. There's no particular reason they need to use that particular one.

airuser

They did not not see what was coming down the road. Has equipment in UK and a tie up with BT agreed.

Therefore with the Satellite Service accepted here, in my opinion, thought it may be extra revenue.

UPC and Eircom spent millions in upgrading their structures, market the product extensively with much success.

Sky may not have enough subscribers to go to fibre. Wholesale prices might make not not worth their while.

Can remember that the ISP's and mobile phone companies used to publish their figures on what they gained over a 1/4 so. Have not seen them for a while.

Have been talking to friends and the majority are with Eircom or UPC. Very pleased with the service.

Must look around my estate on see how many wifi I can come across and who their with and the sat systems. They could be freesat as well as Sky.

airuser

Just to finish off this morning. If SKY do not want to supply fibre. They will slowly loose the customer base they have and possibly leave the phone side of their business just like BT did a while back

It will be interesting to see what occurs over next few months. Their last few weeks advertising their bb and phone might bring in a few more clients.

Good night.

SpaceTime

Just in case you think Sky have it in for Irish customers ...
Here's a wonderful ADSL2+ Sky connection in London I'm stuck using at the moment.
Up to 24 Mbit/s apparently!

airuser

SpaceTime wrote: »

Just in case you think Sky have it in for Irish customers ...
Here's a wonderful ADSL2+ Sky connection in London I'm stuck using at the moment.
Up to 24 Mbit/s apparently!

Have poor speeds for several weeks some months ago, until SKY fixed the problem thought their wholesaler.

AlanS181824

Can't wait until I can get Vodafone, fed up waiting for Sky at this stage.

airuser

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Can't wait until I can get Vodafone, fed up waiting for Sky at this stage.

For SKY one will be waiting along time. That is if they stay.(Talk and BB)

helimachoptor

airuser wrote: »

Yes,

Sky has pinned the forum. Testing for the last 10 months, but what ?

Unfortunately its not as simple as deciding " ok lets sell fibre"

Internal Systems need to be changed which takes a lot of time & lot of money

Commercial agreements need to be made which again take a lot of time

airuser

helimachoptor wrote: »

Unfortunately its not as simple as deciding " ok lets sell fibre"

Internal Systems need to be changed which takes a lot of time & lot of money

Commercial agreements need to be made which again take a lot of time

SKY have been testing for nearly 12 months. Vodafone have a system up and running other company's are supplying fibre.

Any commercial company in this field would be looking to the future and would be talking to their wholesaler and putting systems into place.

If SKY have any problems with the infrastructure they call on Eircom.

Surely a company the size of SKY have their people in place to set up these deals. SKY have been dealing with the main Telecoms company in the UK and NI.

IF SKY were prepared to supply Fibre at this time. It would have completed the needed work

degsie

I hardly think Rupert Murdock (Net Worth; $13.6 Billion) will loose any sleep if Sky BB ceases to operate in Ireland. I personally think that Sky have made a misstep in not giving ANY indication as to their intention towards fibre rollout other than the "we are trialling" nonsense. Unfortunately our small population size has positioned us as a mere extension to Sky's UK operations and so we will always be treated as such.

Thank goodness for competition....

airuser

degsie wrote: »

I hardly think Rupert Murdock (Net Worth; $13.6 Billion) will loose any sleep if Sky BB ceases to operate in Ireland. I personally think that Sky have made a misstep in not giving ANY indication as to their intention towards fibre rollout other than the "we are trialling" nonsense. Unfortunately our small population size has positioned us as a mere extension to Sky's UK operations and so we will always be treated as such.

Thank goodness for competition....

Totally agree.

The company I retired from recently, ROI although a company in it own right was only the Finance side the size of Lancs/Yorks.

Our sales figures were an extra bonus to the UK.

They could have closed us down at the stroke of a pen. Maybe Sky could do the same with the BB and phone side. Not making the figures close it.

markad1

I gave up on sky and signed up to vodafone last evening.
If Sky gave a date I would have hung on as I couldn't fault the service. The lack of information and the Sky forums locking threads is not giving me a warm fuzzy feeling Sky fibre is coming anytime soon.
Vodafone wanted 18 - 24 Month contract....no way.... 12 Month cost €70 for modem and installation.
Sick of these "service" companies wanting looooong contracts. Provide a good service and they won't have to "lock" customers in. simples :rolleyes:

jca

markad1 wrote: »

I gave up on sky and signed up to vodafone last evening.
If Sky gave a date I would have hung on as I couldn't fault the service. The lack of information and the Sky forums locking threads is not giving me a warm fuzzy feeling Sky fibre is coming anytime soon.
Vodafone wanted 18 - 24 Month contract....no way.... 12 Month cost €70 for modem and installation.
Sick of these "service" companies wanting looooong contracts. Provide a good service and they won't have to "lock" customers in. simples :rolleyes:

Can Vodafone see your line? I had terrible problems trying to move from sky to Vodafone. Vodafone kept telling me my line wasn't suitable for BB:pac: I gave up in the end and went with Eircom.

markad1

They couldn't see the line last week. Even when I did the line speed test on Vodafone and Eircom it came back with an error.
I tried again the other day and both worked.
My current BB speed with Sky is 1.2Mbps. The Fibre speed projected is 24Mbps, a big improvement for me.

ED E

Its pretty simple if you look at skys history. Theyve always been hesitant to take customers with no line in place as they end up paying the line provisioning costs. Instead they tell potential customers to go to eircom and come back in 12 months.

They're doing the same now, letting eircom and vodafone pay for all the installers to fit vdsl and in 18months they'll start "stealing" customers from them. No need for jumpering so transferring a vdsl user over is a matter of a few clicks, very cheap.

airuser

ED E wrote: »

Its pretty simple if you look at skys history. Theyve always been hesitant to take customers with no line in place as they end up paying the line provisioning costs. Instead they tell potential customers to go to eircom and come back in 12 months.

They're doing the same now, letting eircom and vodafone pay for all the installers to fit vdsl and in 18months they'll start "stealing" customers from them. No need for jumpering so transferring a vdsl user over is a matter of a few clicks, very cheap.

One does not know what they are doing. The customer base for those who are in a position to switch and do so. Will further reduce SKY customer base.

The amount of money it would cost them in the short time would be small compared to the value over the long term.

Look at the money SKY have invested in upgrading their infrastructure over the last few years

ED E

Residential DSL isnt a big money business, despite how high your bills might be. An install will cost at least as much as 3 months bills. Considering only a small percentage of each bill is profit and the fact that the chances of having problems are considerably higher at the time of first setup means new customers are expensive.

Theres no way I can back up my claims but this follows their previous behaviour and there are few other reasons not to take up VDSL. Its faster, more reliable, shorter lines are less prone to faults, new sockets prevent other equipment from interfering, IPoE connections join the public net earlier and require less backend, allows for HD ondemand services from their own set top boxes.

SpaceTime

It's pretty bizarre as they're up against a Triple-Play (TV, broadband & phone) cable operator capable of delivering 200Mbit/s and eircom is quad play with TV, phone, broadband & mobile...

It's likely that UPC will launch a mobile brand soon too.

I'm not sure what their strategy is but, they're going to lose customers for broadband and find them difficult to get back without heavy discounting ...

If they go to UPC, they're possibly losing TV customers too and eircom may yet improve their IPTV offering... At present is very basic.

jca

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's pretty bizarre as they're up against a Triple-Play (TV, broadband & phone) cable operator capable of delivering 200Mbit/s and eircom is quad play with TV, phone, broadband & mobile...

It's likely that UPC will launch a mobile brand soon too.

I'm not sure what their strategy is but, they're going to lose customers for broadband and find them difficult to get back without heavy discounting ...

If they go to UPC, they're possibly losing TV customers too and eircom may yet improve their IPTV offering... At present is very basic.

The backbone of sky's business is their top class tv service. UPC's 3 services penetration is quite low in national terms and they don't seem to be interested in either upgrading existing tv customers or moving into other towns. Eircom could be their biggest worry as their penetration would be on a par with theirs especially if eircom improve the channel selection and carry utv. Interesting times we live in.....

SpaceTime

jca wrote: »

The backbone of sky's business is their top class tv service. UPC's 3 services penetration is quite low in national terms and they don't seem to be interested in either upgrading existing tv customers or moving into other towns. Eircom could be their biggest worry as their penetration would be on a par with theirs especially if eircom improve the channel selection and carry utv. Interesting times we live in.....

There are currently 341 219 cable broadband subscriptions in Ireland vs 701,005 DSL subscriptions.

At the time, Comreg stats put VDSL2 / e-fibre at 74,540 but eircom Wholesale unit press released that it had hooked up its 100,000th customer in March (that would include the other ISPs using it)

That actually gives UPC a huge level of penetration and eircom's connected 100,000+ customers in about 3 months to fibre for their own retail and various other operators. If they continue at that pace, they'll be on half a million+ before long. That's switching 10% of their customers over in just a few months! That's actually impressively fast.

Sky's completely out of the game if they don't speed things up!

ED E

What the stats there wont tell you though is that where UPC arent present Sky dominates for TV. Maybe sky are betting on holding customers for TV (eVision doesnt match up to it), losing them for BB and then getting BB back in a while when they start using VDSL.

airuser

airuser wrote: »

One does not know what they are doing. The customer base for those who are in a position to switch and do so. Will further reduce SKY customer base.

The amount of money it would cost them in the short time would be small compared to the value over the long term.

Look at the money SKY have invested in upgrading their infrastructure over the last few years[/QUOT

Sorry, I should have said UPC in my post.

One has to invest to progress.