[GLLUG] Broadband: Bethere -> Sky

[James Hawtin]

I am very happy and with BE* currently and am being switched to Sky on 
the 14th of this month. I am not to happy being a Murdock customer but I 
am happy to give them a chance because:-

1) Currently I have ADSL and onyl gets 6mbs, sky overed me up to 80mbs 
FTTC for the same price (for a year). I have considered doing this 
before but this allows me to switch to FTTC for zero money.,
2) Sky will give me a static IP.
3) I do not have a tie in contract with SKY so can switch after SKY get 
my FTTC sorted.
4) Cheap price for 1 year ... so gives me some time to mike my mind up 
if I like them.

Downsides I have seen about SKY:

a) FTTC is now self install, this means all you get in an all in one modem.
   This could be a good thing in some ways, exisiting FTTC should use 
the openreach modem, where as for self install openreach stops at the box.
   To mitigate the all in one sky hub, I have bought an openreach modem 
from ebay (the irony from the above statement). I can then use my own 
firewall (openbsd) with my service, you have to do a little packet 
capture to get the DHCP user/password fields, but that is easy. The Sky 
box also can be plugged into the Open Reach modem to make supported 
system should I need someone to fix it.
b) After a year it goes up to 15 pounds more than what i was paying. Sky 
actually estimate I will only get 55mb of the 80, so it might be worth 
switching down to the 40M service and saving me some money.
c) No reverse lookup :-(

James