Anyone know anything about Sky doing broadband from June?

babygirlz

Sorrry if this is the wrong forum.

Sky guy called last night to upgrade the old sky plus boxes to facilitate broadband which is available in June, that's all the info he had.

Anyone know anything about it?

Dman001

Sure it wasn't Anytime+? Even if Sky Broadband was coming, I don't know why you would need to update your Sky box?

babygirlz

It wasn't anytime +, as I said it was broadband.
Seemingly you will be unable to get broadband on the older (silver) box, you need the newer black one.

Cantona's Collars

babygirlz wrote: »

Sorrry if this is the wrong forum.

Sky guy called last night to upgrade the old sky plus boxes to facilitate broadband which is available in June, that's all the info he had.

Anyone know anything about it?

Sky are upgrading old Thompson boxes for compatibility with Anytime+,you need broadband for Anytime+ which is only available in UK to Sky broadband customers for the moment.
Broadband will not be launched by Sky in Ireland anytime soon so don't believe what anyone tells you unless you get official correspondence from Sky.

harry21

I would be delighted if they did! Plus I have the black HD sky+ box (though not the HD sub.)

Finally we would have an all in option for TV and broadband. I couldget rid of the landline!!... or could I??

Cantona's Collars

harry21 wrote: »

I would be delighted if they did! Plus I have the black HD sky+ box (though not the HD sub.)

Finally we would have an all in option for TV and broadband. I couldget rid of the landline!!... or could I??

They are only updating Thompson HD boxes-not all sky boxes.This is the first I heard of it happening in Ireland,it's being done in the UK at the moment.
Thread on digitalspy http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1475559

macjohn

babygirlz wrote: »

Sorrry if this is the wrong forum.

Sky guy called last night to upgrade the old sky plus boxes to facilitate broadband which is available in June, that's all the info he had.

Anyone know anything about it?

Did a random guy just call to your door at night time offering to change your sky box???
Or had you had a letter/phone call from sky?

NewHillel

zerks wrote: »

Broadband will not be launched by Sky in Ireland anytime soon ...

Depends on your definition of "soon".

Marco85

NewHillel wrote: »

Depends on your definition of "soon".

i had a sky installer in the house during the week fitting a new box and asked him about the broadband. he said there was a meeting with all sky installers last week down in wicklow and thats its defo on the way but cudnt say when. something bout whoever owns the cable networks looking for to much money for sky to get access to them but said they are negotiating on it!!!!!!

NIMAN

I am not a fan of Sky having been a UK customer in the North for many many years, but a bit of broadband competition in the South would be welcomed.

The prices, packages and service offered in Ireland is pretty poor.

NewHillel

Marco85 wrote: »

i had a sky installer in the house during the week fitting a new box and asked him about the broadband...

It is coming very soon but, AFAIK, the exact date is still to be finalised. (BTW, Sky are competitors to cable and will not be using their network.)

Tazz T

I was included on a survey on this a few months back when they were trying to see what speeds/download limits/price people would pay for the service.

From what I know it looks like you will need a landline for it.

NewHillel

Tazz T wrote: »

I was included on a survey on this a few months back when they were trying to see what speeds/download limits/price people would pay for the service.

From what I know it looks like you will need a landline for it.

Yep.

watty

It doesn't use satellite. It's DSL via eircom land line. Average speed is 3Mbps.

About 40% of households don't even have a landline anymore. This is nothing to get excited about.

It's not any "extra" or new broadband. Only a reseller.

JDxtra

If you currently can only get DSL, are a light broadband user, and Sky offer this for free - then the savings are something to get excited about. Might not happen though as they'll have to a deal with Eircom (who will lose direct customers because of it).

Cantona's Collars

JDxtra wrote: »

If you currently can only get DSL, are a light broadband user, and Sky offer this for free - then the savings are something to get excited about. Might not happen though as they'll have to a deal with Eircom (who will lose direct customers because of it).

This might sound harsh but fuck Eircom-they sat on their laurels and let their network degenerate while UPC built their own.
If Sky do a bundle deal the same as the UK, I can see their business booming.Their basic package gives free broadband to their tv customers in the UK,that would be a huge draw,even if it isn't lightning fast.

Sky are currently in talks with Eircom about getting the use of their lines for Sky Broadband, that's coming from an installer and a Sky rep that called to my door last week.

Dman001

watty wrote: »

It doesn't use satellite. It's DSL via eircom land line. Average speed is 3Mbps.

About 40% of households don't even have a landline anymore. This is nothing to get excited about.

It's not any "extra" or new broadband. Only a reseller.

Agreed, no different to what BT/Vodafone are doing. But it might just mean we'll get Anytime+ at some stage soon, and some sort of cheap Broadband package for existing Sky subscribers.

Wow, never knew such a large population didn't have Landlines.

bk

I would not be at all surprised if Sky are talking to Eircom about doing BB in Ireland over Eircoms lines.

Sky are coming under big competitive pressure from UPC with their shiny new cheap broadband products at 100Mb/s and saorview/freesat. Sky badly need to enter the triple play market.

However the problem they face is the high prices Eircom will look for, I don't think sky will be able to hit the low prices they offer in the UK.

But I'd welcome them, the more competition the better.

watty

Dman001 wrote: »

Agreed, no different to what BT/Vodafone are doing. But it might just mean we'll get Anytime+ at some stage soon, and some sort of cheap Broadband package for existing Sky subscribers.

Wow, never knew such a large population didn't have Landlines.

Practically the highest line rental in world, and now places like Mongolia, Kenya etc getting a better infrastructure.

No net investment (over €2 Billion of "stripping" since privatisation) and hardly more than slapping DSL into exchanges, maybe 1/2 the DSL is obsolete kit that can only use 1/2 the possible speed of line on average.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Tazz T

The pricing on the survey I did looked high. I wouldn't have went for any of the options quoted (even if I had a landline).

Kensington

bk wrote: »

However the problem they face is the high prices Eircom will look for, I don't think sky will be able to hit the low prices they offer in the UK.

I don't think Eircom can afford to demand high prices tbh, they are losing entire landline subscriptions left right and centre. Eircom have far, far more to lose than Sky do by not arriving at an agreement.

Sky have a superior TV service by far so they will always maintain a customer base as that gives them the upper edge over UPC for TV.
UPC have the upper hand on broadband and phone - both for price and for quality - but the inferior television service will see many avoid going "triple-play" with UPC.
Sky TV bundled with UPC phone and broadband is the best package around tbh.
Eircom however, quite literally have nothing. They would be better off getting a "lesser" income from sky resale than getting absolutely nothing at all. They might as well be getting some money from the thousands of miles of copper lying around the country, rotting.

Ridiculous price gouging and refusal to leverage with third party suppliers is what saw people flocking to alternative operators at the first sniff of competition and contributed to the mess the company is in at the moment. If they continue to price gouge then their demise is even more inevitable.

200motels

Kensington wrote: »

I don't think Eircom can afford to demand high prices tbh, they are losing entire landline subscriptions left right and centre. Eircom have far, far more to lose than Sky do by not arriving at an agreement.

Sky have a superior TV service by far so they will always maintain a customer base as that gives them the upper edge over UPC for TV.
UPC have the upper hand on broadband and phone - both for price and for quality - but the inferior television service will see many avoid going "triple-play" with UPC.
Sky TV bundled with UPC phone and broadband is the best package around tbh.
Eircom however, quite literally have nothing. They would be better off getting a "lesser" income from sky resale than getting absolutely nothing at all. They might as well be getting some money from the thousands of miles of copper lying around the country, rotting.

Ridiculous price gouging and refusal to leverage with third party suppliers is what saw people flocking to alternative operators at the first sniff of competition and contributed to the mess the company is in at the moment. If they continue to price gouge then their demise is even more inevitable.

I hope there demise is swift.

Irishbar

200motels wrote: »

I hope there demise is swift.

Do you really?? Another 6,500 people unemployed - just what we need.

Personally I think they are about to turn a corner but all depends on STT's strategy and how many €'s they are willing to invest.

2.5 billion debt pile doesnt leave much room for investment!!:rolleyes:

bk

Kensington wrote: »

I don't think Eircom can afford to demand high prices tbh, they are losing entire landline subscriptions left right and centre. Eircom have far, far more to lose than Sky do by not arriving at an agreement.

The problem is they can't afford low prices either. They have to pay off the €4 billion debt and interest on it some how. To date the only way they have maintained this debt is via the ridiculously high line rental charge.

They were able to get away with this because Comreg were asleep at the wheel and they faced little competition in the BB market.

But now UPC and the mobile operators are destroying that.

The problem is they are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don't drop the line rental they will continue to hemorrhage customers to UPC, et al, but if they do drop the line rental, then they won't be able to finance their debt anymore and will go broke.

Funny thing I predicted all this 8 years ago. But no one was interested in listening.

Kensington wrote: »

Sky have a superior TV service by far so they will always maintain a customer base as that gives them the upper edge over UPC for TV.

If I was Sky, I wouldn't be underestimating UPC.

Until now UPC have been correctly focusing on building up their phone and bb business. But now that they have effectively demolished all the competition in this market, they now will likely turn to improving their TV service.

In the next year we are likely to see these swish new UPC Horizon media hub boxes which will likely not only be far superior to the current UPC boxes, but also far superior to Sky boxes.

Then add true VoD and IPTV and Sky TV service could start looking very last century very quickly.

I'm sure Sky know this, it is already happening in the UK, with Virgin Medias fantastic new TiVo boxes and VoD services putting real pressure on Sky.

Crackity Jones

bk wrote: »

In the next year we are likely to see these swish new UPC Horizon media hub boxes which will likely not only be far superior to the current UPC boxes, but also far superior to Sky boxes.

Then add true VoD and IPTV and Sky TV service could start looking very last century very quickly.

Man, I look forward to this. Have UPC Broadband but Sky TV and I'm sure there are a lot in my situation.

Poster King

Can someone please explain why Sky cannot offer broadband via the satellite? If they can stream me movies in HD via their Anytime service, surely they can send me send me web content - or is it the uploading that is the problem?

How does it work in the UK?

Kensington

Poster King wrote: »

Can someone please explain why Sky cannot offer broadband via the satellite? If they can stream me movies in HD via their Anytime service, surely they can send me send me web content - or is it the uploading that is the problem?

How does it work in the UK?

Capacity and latency. Providing broadband to 10m subscribers isn't feasible over satellite, there just isn't enough bandwifth. Satellite broadband also has horrendous latency, in the order of 700ms+ as it it needs to travel a large distance into space and back.

Anytime doesn't stream either, it records the content to a reserved section of your harf disk when your box has a free tuner.

Sky do broadband in the UK through a combination of DSL over unbundled BT copper in areas where Sky have their equipment in local exchanges and BT DSL resold. Their on-demand Anytime+ service, which does stream, uses unbundled DSL from Sky. If sky wanted to do BB here, they could either set themselves up as an ISP here or buy out an existing LLU ISP eg. Magnet , Smart.

greendom

It'll be great if this does happen. Sky customers in the UK get broadband for free. Of course we're likely to pay more than that but it's likely to end up a lot cheaper than I'm paying at the moment for Sky and broadband at the moment - he says hopefully

greendom

Kensington wrote: »

. If sky wanted to do BB here, they could either set themselves up as an ISP here or buy out an existing LLU ISP eg. Magnet , Smart.

They probably don't want the latter as then they'll end up with a lot of non Sky tv customers which I'm pretty sure they don't want. If they did then they would have bought BT's business when they sold their residential service to Vodafone.

lawhec

greendom wrote: »

It'll be great if this does happen. Sky customers in the UK get broadband for free.

Only if you don't mind a 2GB per month data cap.

Ash.J.Williams

hellboy99 wrote: »

Sky are currently in talks with Eircom about getting the use of their lines for Sky Broadband, that's coming from an installer and a Sky rep that called to my door last week.

that's me f**ed so

watty

We have highest line rental. Sky can't fixed that. You will need an eircom line.

The AVERAGE speed is about 4Mbps (so you have 50% chance of less) and only about 60% of households even have an eircom line anymore.

If you have UPC, Magnet, Digiweb/Smart you are likely better sticking with what you have.

greendom

watty wrote: »

We have highest line rental. Sky can't fixed that. You will need an eircom line.

The AVERAGE speed is about 4Mbps (so you have 50% chance of less) and only about 60% of households even have an eircom line anymore.

If you have UPC, Magnet, Digiweb/Smart you are likely better sticking with what you have.

Sky coming in though could force Eircom to bring their line rental down. That's what competition is supposed to do anyway.

John mac

how would it ? sky would still have to pay eircom for the lines.b (unless they put their own lines in )

greendom

John mac wrote: »

how would it ? sky would still have to pay eircom for the lines.

Sky are a hugely profitable company - they could offer a much reduced line rental as a loss leader to get more people taking their tv service - Eircom would then have to respond bringing line rental down to a more acceptable level

NIMAN

babygirlz wrote: »

Sky guy called last night to upgrade the old sky plus boxes to facilitate broadband which is available in June, that's all the info he had.

Halfway thru, and heard nothing except on this thread, so someone was lying?

NIMAN

greendom wrote: »

Sky are a hugely profitable company - they could offer a much reduced line rental as a loss leader to get more people taking their tv service - Eircom would then have to respond bringing line rental down to a more acceptable level

Would they?

I have been holding off getting BB at home as I was thinking VF and Eircom would surely have to make BIG price reductions considering UPC now offer superfast BB at much cheaper prices than them.

I'm still waiting! No movement on pricing.

watty

Eircom SET the line rental in agreement with Comreg. Only non-eircom lines like Magnet Fibre, UPC cable or Digiweb Metro can have lower or no line rental.

Sky would only be reselling eircom. Eircom can't offer a better deal to sky than anyone else that's reselling (vodafone, UTV etc).
Eircom revenue is falling and they have massive debts to service.

lawhec

For Sky to provide such a service in the Irish Republic similar to that in the UK, it would have to be done via the unbundling of telephone exchanges where Sky can install their equipment. In the UK, Sky's own network covers about 2/3 to 3/4 of the population. Line rental is £12.50 a month and with this you can get free evening & weekend UK landline calls and (up to) 20Mb ADSL2+ broadband - however as I mentioned previously this is capped at a measly 2GB a month which is useless unless you do nothing much more than just do some general browsing and checking emails a few hours a week. Additional stuff costs extra. If you are outside of Sky's LLU network, you can still take advantage of Sky Talk but you can only get the Sky Broadband Connect service with is £17 pm, maximum speed of 8Mb and a 40GB cap. You also cannot avail of the Anytime+ service.

In Northern Ireland Sky has an LLU presence at 32 exchanges, apart from the Eglinton exchange which serves around 3,200 premises all of the exchanges they are present in server at least 9,000 premises which should give you a rough idea what in conjunction with BT Wholesale and Ofcom what Sky determine to be a "viable" exchange - exceptions like Eglinton can come about because of the general affluence of the area served (hence costs can be quicker recuperated) or that for some reason the installation cost is unusually cheap and/or worthwhile to use, for example the Newtownstewart exchange has less than 1,900 premises served (less than the one I'm linked to!) yet has two LLU providers with Talk Talk and Orange!

To operate in the Republic, Sky would have to (a) buy landline rental from Eircom on a wholesale basis, (b) note where the rings of commercial fibre connections are to link together, and (c) along with the basis on the first two determine which exchanges are viable to install their equipment in. I'm not too sure just exactly how many exchanges there are in the south, but if you were to compare it with the UK, Sky will probably reckon that it would need about 8,000 to 10,000 premises connected minimum in most cases for them to consider an exchange viable for them (and of course the amount of premises that can get a reliable ADSL(2+) service from that exchange.

Davexirl

I asked this to Sky on Twitter today

@skyhd will Sky be offering phone and broadband services in Ireland??? UPC in my area now and ate offering good packages on TV, phone & BB
Twitter for iPhone • 06/07/2011 08:22

And skyhd replied

@davex2irl I'm not aware of any plans at present, sorry. MM
HootSuite • 06/07/2011 08:24
*

ZOLTAN28

Where did this rumour start? - I did an online survey earlier inthe year that compared UPC, Sky and Eircom all offering tv, phone and broadband bundles - I was hoping this meant that Sky were considering joining the Irish broadband market as I already have the tv with them so a bundle could work out well for me - however they obviously have no plans or thy would be advertising it?

NewHillel

ZOLTAN28 wrote: »

Where did this rumour start?

Don't give up, yet!

ZOLTAN28

ZOLTAN28 wrote: »

Where did this rumour start?

This is what I was told back in May by a Sky Rep and an installer:

hellboy99 wrote: »

Sky are currently in talks with Eircom about getting the use of their lines for Sky Broadband, that's coming from an installer and a Sky rep that called to my door last week.

ZOLTAN28

hope it happens - getting very close to getting rid of eircom for once and for all

Sunny!!

it would be great to get more competition. UPC have very good deals atm, but if sky bring in the broadband and phone i think they might have to reduce there prices, which will benefit all. Eircom are just appaling, no other word to describe them.

kerryman

I do some installs for sky and we were at a meeting with sky and the question was asked when will sky be offering broadband the the answer we go no there are no plans at the moment