Apologies, first, if there’s recent advice herein, but I couldn’t find any.
Sky are about to raise their broadband prices which gives me the opportunity to get out fee-free ahead of contract end.
I need reliability and, particularly, coverage across the house but I don’t have the need for speed. Anything leap out?
Obliged in advance……
Have you been happy with Sky? If so, haggle with them and get it cheaper.
If they use openreach literally any provider will be almost identical, just go with the cheapest after cashback.
I will give the same advice I do every time, whoever you go with step 1 is put the router back in the box once the connection works. Get a new router/mesh system, as “internet not working” is not the same as WiFi slow speeds.
I’m afraid that ship has sailed. I’ve done some deals with them, but choosing to leave Sky TV in the months to come hasn’t strengthened my hand.
Thanks. This is new territory for me but one I’m happy to explore.
For what it’s worth I have plus net ( I used to have BT until their prices went high ) I get 80/20 so the fastest that’s available to me.
Price is under £30 per month and have had no issues since day one.
If you really really want to get ‘into the weeds’ on finding out what you can get, start here
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/availability
That will show you wish technical options you have in your area - Virgin Cable, Openreach FTTC/FTTP or TalkTalk/Sky LLU (as well as ‘standard’ broadband).
Virgin Cable and Openreach FTTP should be the most reliable (with least amount of drop outs etc) as those services give you a nice fibre optic cable from your house all the way to the telephone exchange. It does also give you the most ‘flexibility’ in terms of once it’s installed (you will need to have an engineer come around and install it if your current Sky package isn’t already FTTP) you can pretty much pick a speed between about 40Mb all the way up to 1Gb that’s right for you. I’d suggest going for around a 100Mb package to start with. If you decide you need more, most providers are happy to upgrade (although that might restart your contract) although not happy to downgrade.
FTTC isn’t quite as good - you’ll have a fibre connection from your street (ish) back to the telephone exchange, but from the box on your street (ish) you’ll still be using the old copper wire from (probably) the 1970s. (btw - I’m saying 'street (ish) because those boxes are not necessarily on your street - especially in rural areas).
I’d ignore LLU - that was going to be the ‘big thing’ to break BT’s dominance in broadband provision in the 2000’s, but hasn’t really made much impact. Technically, it means you still use a BT line from your house to the telephone exchange, but it hits the LLU provider equipment in the telephone exchange itself, rather than then go across Openreach equipment at that point. It means if there’s a fault, Sky or TalkTalk could have their own engineers fix it, but I think both of those just use Openreach for everything now anyway and you wouldn’t see any difference.
Other things to consider though - what other ‘technical’ services do you have from who? Most (all?) Mobile phone companies now offer broadband as well, often discounted for their mobile phone customers so you might want to check out their packages. If you’re cancelling Sky TV, are you getting any other TV package to replace it? Now TV for example (which, ok - also from Sky) but they also do broadband. (Now Broadband, powered by Sky Fibre is £25 a month for a 100mb connection).
Also, as it’s been mentioned, to get good coverage around the home, you probably need to put the router you get with the connection away once you’ve been setup and go and buy a specialist one.
Good question. I’ve already purchased a Freesat box and found it simply uses the Sky cables - and it works ! So that’s in my back pocket come D-Day. I’ve signed up to Now TV too, but hadn’t thought of them as a Broadband provider 
.
(I’ve excluded Virgin as I don’t want the driveway disrupted again.)
Really helpful thanks.
Ultimately I’ll need WiFi access in the two bedrooms and same in the kitchen & lounge. The simpler the better, but I guess the starting point will be seeing what a new provider’s router performs like and take it from there?
That’s why it might also be worth looking at NowTV’s broadband service though - it’s also provided by Sky so, from a performance wise, should be very similar.
However - it’s also cheaper than Sky (just like how NowTV is cheaper than Sky TV).
Looks like NowTV broadband is £24 a month for 100Mb - Sky Fibre is £28 per month for 100mb.
The downside of NowTV - 100Mb is the maximum they offer whereas Sky have much higher speed options as well.
Thank you everyone. Most helpful.
For now, I’m staying put. I may be dumping Sky TV, but I’ll stick with Sky Broadband.
Yep. Now TV is a definite. I no longer fear leaving Sky TV (after 23 years).
Whilst this is true reading the OPs post it doesn’t sound like this even comes into it. If all you want to do is watch iPlayer, browse the web and load YouTube the above will make no difference in real world use but the price of sky compared to another provider will matter more.
I’ve found you can haggle and get good results with Sky near to the end of your contract. However, I’ve found they won’t move on the annual inflation increases. Personally, I’ve found Sky to be good and they’ve got an accessibility department which I find useful due to deafness issues.
I tend to always assume the ‘coverage guarantees’ offered by Sky and BT are not really worth the paper they’re written on but I’ve never even bothered to try and get them to support it.
If you do have dead spots at home with the standard router they provide, it’s probably worth investing in a separate off the shelf home router instead like the eero from Amazon, or the orbi from Netgear.
Has anyone here actually tried to get Sky/BT to honour their coverage guarantee? What do they do?
Yes. I’ve just spoken with CS and hit a 20% reduction on my Broadband bill, even though I’m terminating Sky TV in October.
(My ship hadn’t sailed quite as far as I’d thought, @Revels ).
Good conversation everybody. Thankyou.
Sky do oversubscribe their service. All large ISPs do.
In fact I think AAISP is the only one which doesn’t but that comes at a price.
One weakness with Sky is their lack of resilience in their backbone where a fibre cable going out of service can affect services on multiple exchanges
Sky use the old Easynet LLU network that they purchased. As such Sky’s issues are their own and not down to Openreach. It’s also why their network resilience is less vs Openreach in the case of physical damage to their network.
I’ve seen several ISPs limit new customers/products to ensure sufficient network capacity is present in the past including BT and Vodafone
And finally I’m free !
Sky box gone, replaced by a Freesat box and a Firestick - all bases covered.
That’s a load off (and a load saved p.m. too ).
Thanks for the advice….
I very nearly did the same this month but then saw that there are picture problems with the 4K Freesat box and my LG TV.
In the end I haggled like hell with Sky for over 2 hours and got a deal with which I’m happy.
There’s no doubt, Sky are happy to try and do a deal with customers. It was only that I had totally decided to have a different setup that stopped me saying “Yes, ok then !”