A quick word of warning for any customers of the Sky Connect broadband service, who might have noticed their broadband download speeds plummeting recently. Apparently Sky now use 'traffic management' at peak times - basically all evening on weekdays - for customers who either download a lot, or breach the terms of their contract.
Since the terms of said contract are woolly at best, and since Sky themselves decide what constitutes 'a lot', it's highly likely that large numbers of customers are being penalised, possibly unfairly. We found our download speeds had been reduced from the advertised 8 Megs a second to something under half a Meg a second. When we phoned to complain, we were told we were 'high users'. However, when we checked the terms and conditions of our contract, high users were defined as downloading more than 1.3 gigabytes a day, a vast figure that we honestly don't think we could ever get close to.
If you are noticing delays, slow downloads and the like, it's worth checking your own contract and phoning customer support to find out if 'traffic management' has been applied to you. If so, you might want to complain. We have, and haven't even received a reply, but the more customers who say they're unhappy with this discrimination, the more likely Sky are to do something about it.
Or, of course, you could just find another provider. We're already looking...
2 comments:
When we researched the reasons for similar problems in Portugal we learnt that most providers also reduce your speed if you don't use it much - for example when you've been away. Then it can be problematic to get back up to speed. We've been assured, by people who should know, that this happens throughout Europe. Obviously the consumer can't win!
Snort - yes, talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't!
BT may have cottoned on to what Sky are up to. They've suddenly launched, and started advertising, a product called 'totally unlimited broadband'!
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