HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

We have been having problems with our connection recently and Sky and their contractors are at a loss as to what is wrong and are passing the buck to each other. Last month Sky sent someone from their contractors round and he fixed the problem by doing something to the connection outside the house saying rain was the cause. Everything was fine until the issue came back with a vengence last week. It is not continuous with the connection being strongest in the evenings and during the weekend. Sky sent someone from the contrators round today and he said there is nothing wrong with the Broadband connection and the problem is with the wifi, most likely stemming from the Sky Q Box. This seems strange because when I go to settings the on screen message says the wifi is fine and there is a problem with the Broadband connection. When he left I phoned Sky as advised, followed their instructions but got nowhere. They are sending a wifi engineer round in a week and a half but I am not optimistic as from the messages on the tv and devices the problem is the Internet connection and not wifi. Not happy and might have to change my ISP if the issue is not resolved.

I know someone with a similar problem;

Rural-zone house, internet is ADSL connection via phone-line.

When it rains (hard) water can leak into the phone line beside the road and the phone connection gets audible distortion - sometimes failing completely. Internet becomes patchy.

Recently the phone company have (finally) fixed this but now a new problem appears - Internet speed.

She says that her wifi is very bad - so with my smartphone I measured the wifi strength - which was fine. BUT when I did a speed-check on the internet link from the provider, that was horrendously slow.

Resetting the modem speeded it up a bit, but not much.

Also a new housing estate is being built near her house and as more homes are hooked into the Net, the slower her access speed is. Also evenings and weekend have less business users (certainly with the video-conferencing links of recent months) and at these times her data-speed is better.

I think her connection has a very low priority in the neighbourhood switching unit and her link rarely gets a chance at a fast internet linkup.

Don't know if this helps. Do try and check your in-house wifi strength against the speed of your external connection to the provider. They are not the same thing.

The risk with switching ISP now is that you are just restarting the same conversation, from scratch, with the new company. If you've already put a large amount of time and effort in then I would sit tight until all possibilities have been investigated. I have been with Sky Broadband a couple of times (I flit around to get the best deals) and I would put them alongside PlusNet as the two that are easily best for customer service.

Thanks for the responses. I was not at home when the first person came round unanounced and did the repair from outside last month. Our connection is via a phone line and things going wrong again coincided with more rain. Did not have this problem during the long dry spell. I think increased Internet traffic during the day because of lockdown could well be a factor because the connection was ok over the weekend. I dont think the person who came round today and said the phone connection was ok was as clued up as the previous one who came when only my wife was home. He did not check outside. Will have to see what the person from Sky says next Thursday and how things are in the mean time.

I actually had the reverse problem of wired internet being fast but crap in-house wifi. Thick walls in a 300 year-old farmhouse.
A second wifi access point to improve coverage fixed that. Fine now.

The situation improved after my previous post and seems to be sorted following the visit of the Sky engineer. The wall socket was a problem and he replaced it with something far more solid with seperate connections for the phone and Internet instead of a splitter. He also thought connecting the Sky Q box to the switch might be problematic. The box is now connected directly to the router/hub with everything else connected to the switch. The Openreah contractors who came round previously should have picked up on these things.

savvypaul wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2020 6:36 pm I have been with Sky Broadband a couple of times (I flit around to get the best deals) and I would put them alongside PlusNet as the two that are easily best for customer service.

This is no longer the case. Both are now a nightmare to deal with. So, my (revised) advice is just go with whoever is cheapest for the service / spec that you want. They are all abysmal. A massive cockpunch to the lot of 'em.

Another reason to stick with physical media.
Hopefully I can sort out shipping all my vinyl to Thailand (and persuade my wife that I need an airconditioned listening room).

The internet there is utterly useless anyway, so switching to streaming could never be an option.

I've nothing but compliments for sky broadband . Gone down twice in 8 years ( first router ,then connection) both fixed within 24 hours .

Every ISP I've interacted with has been shit. It's just been a case of how sloppy the shit is.

It's what happens when you have a mass market where the purchase is decided on cost. And senior executives that are out of touch with the consumer experience.