Sky broadband on BT landline

[Griffin78]

Hi,

I'n posting on behalf of my parents are are elderly and struggle a bit with these conversations. My knowledge of set up etc therefore may be slightly sketchy.

They have had a full Sky package for 20+ years, includes broadband. They have had a BT line forever and want to remain loyal to that. I don't think at any point in that approx. 20 year period they have had anything approaching a broadband service, it's 1MB if you're lucky whenever I have tested it. They don't need much, bit of internet surfing, emails and then the biggest, now downloading content from Sky Q.

I believe Sky are providing the speeds they advertise but for some reason, it's not happening, possibly due to some kind of line issue.

I have just looked up their exchange - Staines Gsc. I notice this says 'not enabled' in the Sky LLU table row so is this the issue? Should they in fact, not be getting/can't have Sky broadband or is it worth contacting BT to check the line?

Thanks

[Keith_Beddoe]

@Griffin78 

You would need to raise this issue on the Sky forum, as Sky rent the line from Openreach not BT Retail.

https://helpforum.sky.com/

BT Retail cannot check the line, its up to Sky to contact Openreach.

[imjolly]

so your parents currently have sky broadband and BT for home phone so the get billed from both BT and SKY  that is unusual but with very old accounts possible.  if they are having broadband problems then you need to report that to your ISP sKY

there will come a time when BT move them to digital voice as that requires the use of the BT SH2 which will not work on SKY broadband  and at that time they need to be either BT or SKY customer for broadband and phone

[iniltous]

You probably need to check exactly what your parents have , although relatively common decades ago , someone having ‘line rental’ with BT ( and paying BT for that ) and separately paying Sky for broadband is now pretty rare , for one thing Sky had an active program to move their broadband customers from BT line  rental onto Sky line rental, Sky were pretty insistent at the time that ‘their’ broadband customers should change to Sky for both services …so are they on a legacy package ( a BT bill for the ‘line’ and a Sky broadband bill ) or are they someone who mistakenly still refers to a ‘BT line’ when BT have absolutely nothing to do with their supply ?

TBH , if the are on this legacy package they will be paying a pretty uncompetitive price , as BT for both services or Sky for both services will be much cheaper than paying separately on this basis.

If Sky are your parents ISP , and the issue is with the broadband speed they receive ( and you believe that’s below what they should get ) then that’s  got nothing to do with BT , even if they are on a legacy ‘line share’ arrangement, if there were a fault on the ‘line’ affecting broadband , then BT are not responsible for that , Openreach are , and if Sky agree that the performance of the broadband is below the guaranteed speed they quoted , then they can get Openreach to investigate.

If they  are on a line share ( ‘ SMPF , shared metallic path facility, ) and the  problem was with phone calls , calls cutting off , noisy calls  , unable to make or receive calls etc , that’s  when BT should be contacted.

[Griffin78]

Thanks for the comments. They definitely get billed by BT and Sky. When I recently helped them upgrade to Sky Q they were adamant that they didn't want Sky to take over the line, so they didn't.

I'll contact Sky about the broadband, I think I did this years ago and they said I need to contact BT and then BT said I need to contact Sky! I'll go with Sky based on your advice, thanks.

[iniltous]

If they are on SMPF , hopefully you would agree a call to BT ( the ISP ) rather than BT the phone supplier , complaining about broadband speed would be pointless , probably getting the response , ‘we don’t supply you with broadband’ obviously if you called Sky and got the same response that would be ‘odd’ but between your parents and Sky .

Some may suggest falsely reporting the phone service as having a problem , for example saying a noisy line , even if the line were not noisy , hoping that BT would  get Openreach involved and in the process of looking for a noise issue , they get the broadband speed fixed ,  but all that probably would achieve is more delay , Openreach probably saying the phone is OK , your parents saying to the engineer ( if it resulted in a home visit) , that the broadband is still poor , and the tech saying they were not asked to look at broadband problems, so they would have to contact Sky anyway.