Sky Fibreoptic Broadband Beware

I realise that my experience with Sky may well apply to other providers but it acts as a cautionary tale for anyone feeling seduced by the flashy adverts for super fast fibreoptic broadband. I certainly was and was on a waiting list for Fibreoptic once it reached our house in East Sussex.

So when Fibreoptic became available last year promising stratospheric download speeds I thought my days of waiting interminably for data to come through were over. However, this was not exactly what happened. Sure, I did notice a slight increase in speed but the service was still by no means 'super fast' and no more reliable than it used to be.

Eventually I did a speed check myself, there are several services available online. I found out two things. The first was that my average download speed was between 4-6 MB per second, really marginal for modern media. Second that if I took off the faceplate from my telephone point and plugged the router lead directly into the BT outlet the speed more than doubled to 13MB per second, in no way 'Super Fast' but better.

So I called Sky and this is the interesting bit. During the conversation it was explained to me that although our exchange does have fibre, the fibre ends in the road near our house and that the signal completes its journey by copper wire. This is why the speed I get is barely different from non 'Super Fast' broadband. Of course once the copper wire is replaced with Fibreoptic cable I will get the promised speed but there is no timescale for this big job to be started, never mind finished.

The very helpful Sky rep offered to downgrade my account if I wanted as it would mean I would pay less than half. However no offer was made to refund me what I had already paid. In my opinion this is yet another misrepresentation scam. It is misrepresentation by omission, not what they say but what they don't say. It is clear Sky are aware of the risk, hence the helpful attitude. I have just found out 'Which' is on to this abuse but the program I saw did not point out the actual technical reason for the problem which is really what customers need to know.

What any provider can do is tell you what you personally can expect from their service irrespective of the claims of maximum speeds. This has to be made clear before orders are taken and mislead clients need to be refunded.