Sky Mobile, coming to Ireland

A lot of the 086 prefix were never used by O2

Can only install it on one device so no you can’t

I wonder if they even support it?

@Brian201888 in Ireland only Vodafone offer eSim for Smartwatch, unfortunately. Look up Vodafone One Number. Would be great if Sky Mobile were to offer that eventually!!

does anyone have any Vodafone vs sky speed tests in the same place and time? Curious to see if we are getting the same speeds as Vodafone direct

Can you order a sim/phone from the Sky shops in shopping centers? Do they physically have them or is it just ordering and everything is sent to your address similar to ordering over the phone?

I still seem to be getting stuck on 3G and not sure why. Two examples over the last couple of days;

My wife and I were driving somewhere together, we both have an iPhone 15 with iOS 18 and eSIM. She’s Vodafone, I’m Sky and I was on 3G for most of the journey while she bounced between a bit of 3G but mostly 4G/5G.

I took a 15 min drive yesterday to the next town over and I was on 3G the whole time even though I know there’s 4G/5G on the route there and full 5G coverage once you get into the town. Didn’t get off 3G until I toggled airplane mode.

Anyone notice similar or know why this would be happening? My 48 sim should be here tomorrow so I’ll be switching back unfortunately because I liked the idea of unlimited roaming but it’s not worth it for me. If it wasn’t for the 12 month contract I’d be more inclined to hang on a bit, especially with Vodafone currently shutting down their 3G network and improving their 4G/5G but with no timeline and being stuck in a contract it’s probably best I port back for now.

Most O2 Staff (at the time) were against it as well. The funny bit was that Three customers (as opposed to "old O2" customers welcomed to the fold) continued to be provided with a worse network for several years until all the systems eventually merged.

I must say though, now, Three are by a country mile and a half the best operator. They managed their business post transition stupidly well, kept a good few very knowledgeable O2 staff and promoted a number of store managers from both sides of the business to HQ roles which is exactly how it should be. I got out of Telco but it's good to see them doing things right.

VF are vastly overpriced to the point where being with them can only be described as setting money on fire; and and Eir are still getting over their decade or so phase of virtually abandoning their customer base in terms of no customer care.

Sky would likely have no interest in becoming a 4th "full service" operator. They want the no frills of a VM. Being a real network would require a store footprint and the last thing they want is somewhere people can go and complain in person. Their customer service has fallen off a cliff since Covid while prices have simultaneously skyrocketed (see what i did there).

The only reason they have so much of the TV & BB market is because the competition is essentially limited to VM whose network still only really functions well in the cities.

In an area where there's actual real competition, they'd fall on their arse immediately.

(Edited for correction)

Finally got the sim card in the post today, ordered Wednesday. I've activated online and they are beginning to port the number. Anyone moved from GoMo know how long it takes?

(I suspect I will have to eat an additional monthly bill from GoMo with their 30 days notice thing)

In the end my SIM took six days to arrive, despite what was on the app.

Porting over was a little finnicky, the trick is to do it all on your mobile, do not go onto a laptop etc to do any of it as it doesn't generate a text message correctly.

But now that I'm up and running all is well. No problems so far with 2FA. Tethering my laptop to it works fine. Speeds up to 200mb/s so far on the 5G download, only 40mb/s on 5G at home but I've wifi anyway so thats fine.

Virgin (my old provider) need to up their game. Their 25e a month deal (10e more expensive than Sky) is slowing down badly and does not offer 5G at all.

100%. Sky are very much being brought under the Comcast Way of Doing Things ©

They are the US equivalent of Eircom - price it at a premium but service it on a budget - but on a far worse scale. Comcast have long been known as having one of the worst customer service of any provider in the US.

They (Comcast) dipped into the enterprise voice market here through their acquisition of Blueface and ran it into the ground (Blueface are closing this time next month) so I doubt they'll be entering into any arrangements to acquire an MNO license anytime soon.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the Vodafone-equivalent speeds currently being seen holding up into the future either.

They'll be paying Vodafone for access into the network, when there are very few subscribers as there would be currently then it's simple, easy and cheap to let everyone have at it, hence the Vodafone equivalent speeds.

Vodafone most certainly will not allow heavy users on Sky to undermine their own network's performance. Vodafone Group make no illusions that they see high speed data as very much a premium service and charge accordingly for it in all of their markets. Sky will no doubt be paying heavily for that bandwidth and as subscribers come onboard, and bandwidth usage increases, they're going to have to have some form of control to stop their bandwidth costs skyrocketing.

Even Sky themselves, are not going to let €15 a month SIM's in 4G/5G routers undermine their own, far more lucrative, fixed broadband offerings.

I could see Sky ending up somewhere between Vodafone and An Post Mobile - not as good as Vodafone in terms of headline speed but not as bad as An Post.

You have to add "mobile.sky" to the "Personal Hotspot" APN section in your Mobile Data Network settings on iOS.

That was it thanks

Yes I'm getting nearly 250mb/s down vs about 30mb/s down with GoMo at the same exact location. Upload is much slower for me for some reason but that's quite a difference.

One thing to be mindful of is calling non Irish numbers. 23c p/m to uk and eu numbers.

If you’re visiting Switzerland for example(Vodafone deal counts it as eu) you get charged €2 per minute for calling home or receiving a call from home. Same for US,Aus,NZ.

Has anyone heard any update on either of the 2 ongoing issues?

(1) 2FA SMS not being received

(2) No VoIP/WiFi calling

I'm not completely convinced that (1)is fixed for me, although it's much better than it was before porting.

(2) And I'm one of those still affected by these features missing.