Why do you need a landline for sky?

saralou2011

I saw on their website you need an active landline. does anyone know why or will they set it up without one? I really want to get sky but don't want a landline that i'm not even going to use, plus an extra bill!

DubCul

AFAIK it is only for multiroom viewing

MidlandsM

I've sky, and no landline........you don't need one.

saralou2011

Thanks for clearing that up. I'll give them a ring in the morning and get it set up.

watty

It's to stop fraud on multiroom.
Also for ordering PPV sports or Movies.

icdg

saralou2011 wrote: »

I saw on their website you need an active landline. does anyone know why or will they set it up without one? I really want to get sky but don't want a landline that i'm not even going to use, plus an extra bill!

The original reason was that it was the trade-off for the British Interactive Broadcasting subsidy, the deal was you connected it to a phone-line and got £200 off the £450-odd list price of the Digibox. The idea was that BIB (which was part-owned by BT) would earn back revenue but it never took off.

At one stage Eircom and Sky partnered up (around the same time that Sky began subsidizing Digiboxes in Ireland) and it was made a requirement at that stage that you connect your phone line to an eircom landline. Sky Digital was being marketed in Eircom's now defunct Eircom Store chain. That's long gone but the requirement has stayed.

Its long forgotten that Sky Digiboxes were £450 in Ireland when Sky Digital first launched, and there was no free installation either...

Yawns

Dunno about that icdg it may well be true, not gonna try dispute it.

IF you call sky they will tell you it's ok not to have a line for the main box if it's the sole box in the household. The engineer will sort it out at installation.

You need a telephone line for ordering movies from box office etc.

If you have multiroom they require the boxes to be connected to a line so that they can ensure the boxes are in the same household and not given to friends. They do checks on boxes from time to time and if not connected to a line they will temporarily deactivate the card that corresponds with that box.

You will need to reconnect the line or ring them to re activate the sub on that box. I had it happen on 2 different occasions. I had the boxes in other rooms and had removed 1 of the lines(it was a line running from another room at the time). They didn't go at same time and it seems to be random checks. I didn't notice the first time as the box was off for a few weeks, the second time I was watching another box, but had been in kitchen when it happened and I realised the wire just wasn't plugged in at the back, it was there but not in the jack. It was prob only gone about 1 - 20 mins when it had deactivated. I simply put the wire back in, waited a few seconds and it came back as normal. Was fine conditions so wasn't box moving and I had almost full signal and quality on the line test and all other boxes in house were functioning fine, only difference was this phone line was out.

That's just my experience. So no line needed unless your taking out multi-room.

Cantona's Collars

UK customer service for Sky will try and charge a "no landline fee" of €37.50.

The Irish call centre is easier to deal with as they understand that the majority of people have no landline.The other method is to order through a reseller such as one of the kiosks you find at your local Tesco,they generally waive that fee and won't worry about you having no landline.

As was said before you do need one for multiroom and trust me,Sky are getting a lot stricter on this.

anxie

re: multiroom:

If you have multiroom they require the boxes to be connected to a line so that they can ensure the boxes are in the same household and not given to friends. They do checks on boxes from time to time and if not connected to a line they will temporarily deactivate the card that corresponds with that box.

I have 2 boxes with Sky at the moment. I used to get letters about the second box not being connected and that I needed to run a manual call back...
but last year they simply started charging full price for the second box when I moved it and lost the phone line to it.
So, if you are getting multiroom make sure you leave the lines connected up!

watty

Actually the majority do have a landline, but it's at about 63% vs 82% when Eircom was privatised.

But the essence of what you say is true Zerks.