Broadband - are sky and BT really slow?

[JLH]

My virgin tv/deal is coming to an end and they aren't budging with offering me a better deal so Ihave given notice. I want to go back to Sky but my boys are insisting the broadband speed isn't good enough for gaming and streaming. They have offered to pay for the broadband in order just to keep the virgin broadband which I think is very expensive on its own but for me its a matter of principle if virgin want to keep customers offer them what a new customer is offered ! Would having sky broadband with their wifi boosters make any difference? There must be people on here that have non virgin broadband that have gamers and netflix on in their family with not many problems surely.

[ROBBOTOO]

Can’t comment on gamers as we have none in our house, but we have Sky broadband and have no problems at all with Netflix.

[Ben1993]

Any provider other than Virgin will be using the same Openreach (BT) line, whilst Virgin use their own cable. So in theory you should get the same line speed no matter who you went with depending on which category of fibre you opt for with the provider, obviously there's some variation with router quality etc as well though. I had Virgin for many years but switched to Sky at my new house as Virgin wasn't available there and it has been flawless.

[Floridarules]

I have Virgin fibre and it is expensive, I pay £50 but there is nothing comparable.
What about cancelling in your name and setting up in your partners name- could also get cashback from Top cashback?
We had Virgin everything but reverted to Sky for TV and kept Virgin fibre👍
Friends who have gamers in the family always say that Virgin Fibre is best for them.

[Danex]

We have just recently moved from Sky to Virgin broadband and the difference is amazing.

With sky we always had problems if more than one person was using it.

Almost useless for gaming, YouTube was patchy at best, and Netflix would frequently buffer.

I couldn’t wait for our contract to end so we could leave them.

We did have a tv package with Sky, but we have taken the Virgin fibre on its own as we don’t watch live tv any more.

We used to have BT before Sky and we didn’t have any problems with them apart from when our contract was up the price they wanted was far too expensive so that’s why we moved to sky.

[BevS97]

We always had Virgin until we moved house. When we first moved here we couldn't have fibre and the internet was unusable, however, since we upgraded to Fibre (and it's the most basic fibre they offer), I get 50Mbps which is all I pay for, and I honestly have no issues at all.

We don't have big gamers, but we stream A LOT, normally, 2 devices and the TV are streaming something, plus I will be on my phone at the same time, we have had loads of Netflix / zoom etc over lockdown and I can honestly say we find it fast enough.

We did have an issue, and I raised it on the bt app and it was fixed remotely.

My only gripe is that when I signed up it was £25/month, but now that my deal is over it's £50. But as I am happy with the service, I am nervous to change it.

[JLH]

Originally Posted by Floridarules

I have Virgin fibre and it is expensive, I pay £50 but there is nothing comparable.
What about cancelling in your name and setting up in your partners name- could also get cashback from Top cashback?
We had Virgin everything but reverted to Sky for TV and kept Virgin fibre👍
Friends who have gamers in the family always say that Virgin Fibre is best for them.

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I may try that and disregard my annoyance that they are not trying to keep me As my boys are offering to pay for it I should let them have what they want I guess.

[cartoonp]

Virgin is the cost he most but is the fastest brother got but sometimes have problems. I find bt fiber very good and fast enough for me to stream ect I all so have 2 TVs a games console and I pad running so wi fi is very good sky broadband a friend had this for a week and said that it was rubbish very slow kept dropping out no WiFi ect so went back to bt (just a note here I know some people on here have sky broadband and find it very good but I just going on what a friend told me)

[MariaLynda]

We have recently switched to Virgin as we were with Sky (only the basic broadband), and were getting horrendous speeds and with wfh it was impossible. We were barely getting speeds of 10 upstairs on a good day.

Virgin (touch wood) have been great so far. Went for there lowest package think it is speeds of around 50... no issues at all! best thing we have done, don't know why I left it so long. I did go through top cash back as they were offering £130 at the time, surprise surprise it didn't track, raised a claim but not hopeful... was very cross!

[MK_club1987]

I have just moved from Sky to BT (Can't get Virgin), and finding BT much better, overall speed is faster, and the Wi-Fi has much greater reach.

My average speed near the router on Sky used to be 35-40mbps, BT I get 50-60mpbs, but the biggest jump is upstairs in the office which is the furthest room away from the router, I used to get 2-5mbps on Sky, it was awful, but on BT I'm getting 35-40mbps which is amazing, and the ping remains extremely low upstairs which is great for gaming.

I'm a big gamer, and have absolutely no issues on BT, had no issues downstairs on Sky but it was impossible upstairs unless it was wired through a TP Link, we also stream netflix a lot both downstairs and upstairs, again no issues on BT, but Sky did have some issues upstairs with dropping connection.

Overall my experience is BT is a lot more stable than Sky, with a much better wireless router. I did look into the Sky Boost Guarantee, but if you read the small print they only guarante 3mbps in each room, which is pathetic really.