I would first like to start off by insulting BT, but I won’t despite the poor connection and general service, as in the end, they’re alright to most other customers I know. Then I want to introduce Sky Broadband. These guys are great. Built from the (as you can see below) Easynet infrastructure, they provide tonnes of bandwidth, on an incredibly fast connection.

7148kb/s is pretty impressive considering I am 50 miles from the exchange on a 8Mb/s connection. Technically speaking, they’re doing the impossible! I realised you probably wouldn’t enjoy another quick post, so I’ll write up the optimistic side of the horror story.

We spoke to Sky, BT and a couple of others, and all of them were pretty sure that the best they could serve is 6.5Mb. I admit, we first started with BT, a few years ago, when we moved. I have to be honest with you, and when using their, and an independent speed check, it struggled to peak at not 5Mb, not four, not three, not two, not even one megabit. Half it? Still no. Only when you half it a further two times will you be close to the near dial-up speeds we got. Naturally, being BT, we telephoned them, they came out, and blamed it on the line. Did their work, replaced the modem, still same problem. They gave up, so we cancelled our contract and began the pain-staking search for an alternative supplier.

Our saviours, Sky, were great from the outset. They started by giving us a fantastic router, made by Netgear (thankfully not a ugly rebranded Viking system like that of BT (Voyager 2500V), which was a breeze to set up in the first place, thanks to the video-based (full-screen Flash extractor, actually) installation guide. Literally required two quick plugs and we were off. No more wireless issues for me (thank goodness).

I still cannot believe it was just £5 a month, provided you have a TV contract with them. The TV contract was also incredibly cheap (£10 to £15), when you buy the simple package (everything you need).

They have, ever since then, provided us with increasing (don’t ask how) speeds of up to the physical limit (probably a fluke but I’ve witnessed over 8Mb/s occasionally) that is reality. I think this post is the least I could do to thank them, and I truly hope that this has helped you decide on your next ISP, as I recommend this to anyone. Any questions, just post as comments!

Oh and no, I’m not getting paid to write this!

If you want to know what inspired me to post this, it was Atmasphere complaining about free broadband speed.