Virgin Media vs. Sky Q

[Andy Banks]

At long last, fibre broadband comes to my area of North London in the guise of Virgin Media. Apparently we can now get near 200mb to the house as the fibre is now all in and the little Virgin Media junction boxes have appeared. I currently have Sky with; Sky Fibre Unlimited Broadband, Sky Q Multiscreen TV (no sports or movies), Sky+ HD Pack, Variety channels, Line rental and Anytime calls at just a over £100 a month (yes I know!!!)

 

So I think if I were to go down the Virgin Media route I'd plump for the Bigger Bundle with 100MB as:

 

• I don't see the need for 200MB; I'm not hosting anything, I do work from home and the boys do game, it's slow but it's "OK" now at 16MB so 100MB fibre should be well up to the job
• With Sky, it's Openreach fibre to the cabinet and we are some way from it so it's copper last mile and via telegraph poles which fail on occasion, and being last mile copper, crappy 16mb on a good day
• I've used the landline about three times this year, don't need one anymore
• I've been with Sky for a very long time, time for a change maybe...
• We won't miss any channels (even Sky Atlantic, Sky Sports F1) that we can't work around

 

I suspect as soon as I call Sky and tell them I'm off they will plead with me and offer a deal of some sort, it won't come with more reliable and 100MB broadband of course (that's my main draw away from Sky, as well as reducing the monthly bill by £30) so they really will have to offer something huge and reduce the monthly cost too for me to stay.

 

So, has anyone switched recently? What was the overall experience like? What do you miss about Sky? What's great about Virgin Media? Is fibre broadband as good I hope it is?

 

Ta muchly... 

[Steve (sdh2903)]

I cant help with comparison but I did go through the process of doing this with sky a while back after virgin had laid all the cables in our street and my initial deal ended. I ended up with a huge reduction in bill. 

 

Have sky Q. 2 mini Q boxes. Fibre unlimited. Any time calls. Line rental. Top package inc sports and movies and box sets and I'm under 95 a month now down from 135. I too have been with them a long time and were very keen to match virgin.

 

I have much better fibre with Sky than you though so can definitly see why you'd swap though. But for us it just came down to price. For starters I'd be ditching the anytime calls it's a tenner alone if your not using it (it was thrown in free for us but the landline never gets used)

 

[Dommo]

I did this, got the complete package from Virgin and went to cancel sky. They beat the price and for 18 months instead of 12 that Virgin were offering it for, but I kept the broadband move to Virgin. So TV with Sky, broadband and phone with Virgin. 350Mbps inc phone line is costing me £35 a month, Sky TV with the bells and whistles a bit under £70.

[Captain Colonial]

Short answers, Mr Chairman Sir, Lord of Us All, O Exalted One, ad infinitum, ad naseum....

 

Good stuff:

 

The broadband is very fast and they’re looking towards pushing it faster.  My wireless download connection speeds are consistently 40-55 Mb and it easily handles multiple device streaming.  The hub has good range too, mine is in my basement office and the whole house has good signal.

 

If you use a network cable to your computer, the download speeds are even quicker.  I get 150-175 Mb on my desktop.

 

Usual range of TV channels, not nearly as many HD channels as Why? but then that doesn’t bother me.

 

Easy to add or remove channels for 30 day periods - I do this with Sky Sports if there’s special events I want to see.

 

Less good:

 

The TiVo boxes can feel a bit clunky by comparison at times.  Also, the menus can slow down considerably around 5-5:30 PM M-F when people get home and immediately turn on the telly.

 

Regular price increases... but I’m betting Why? do it too.  Loyalty means nothing unless you threaten to leave.  You need to keep them keen.

 

HTH

[Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator]

I've ditched sky totally and gone for EE tv which has a few HD channels, Amazon prime with all its benefits as well as TV stuff, fire stick with smart TV app - saving a fortune 

 

All above  EE stuff  including fibre broadband unlimited,  land line rental, and 4 mobile phones -yes 4! (sim only unlimited calls and text and 12 gb to share)  on family usage I pay total £65 per month

[Kingster]

We ditched sky and use nowtv stick to get what sky used to provide - but at a fraction of the cost. Nowtv entertainment pack was only £45 for a year on a special offer compared to £45 a month for sky entertainment pack. Use TVs built in freeview and pvr for the normal channels and Netflix for other stuff. We have separate bb through the business. Recently came to end of the yearly deal and upon cancellation got nowtv for 50% off for three months. 

[Alan France]

I enjoy my 12 to 18 month discussions with Sky. I always finish up with the retention department. This year they wanted to increase from £87 a month to £145. Crazy people, back down to just less than £90 again. I ditched movies and went with Netflix through Sky and very happy.

 

We can’t get Virgin but Sky are much better than BT broadband for us.

 

From February next year I believe companies will have to formally inform when customers are going out of contract.

[Blatman]

16 hours ago, Captain Colonial said:

The hub has good range too, mine is in my basement office and the whole house has good signal.

 

There's two parts to wifi, not just the hub. The device in front of you (phone/tablet/laptop) needs to send a good signal back to the hub. This is the bit that usually fails when things start to go south and folks start to wonder about their wifi/internet speeds. Phones and tablets are generally half the transmit power of a "standard" wifi router  

 

I thought I was the last house in London to get "fibre". Can't believe parts of Norf London are still on poles, but I digress...

Sky fibre comes in on copper phone lines from the green street box. Virgin cable uses co-ax all the way to the premises, and whilst it's still copper, it's much thicker copper.

If I had a choice I'd go for Virgin Cable 100Mb and Sky TV. But I don't have a choice, so I have broadband and TV from Sky. I get a smidge over 70Mb/s most days which is fine and dandy.

 

If you want to try to avoid the arguments when leaving a contract, ask for something the current providers don't... er... provide. For example Sky don't do static IP addresses or "business" connections, so say you need to swap to a service that does provide those things.

[Simon Waterfall Syman84]

We had virgin in the street over a year ago. Tried to swap from sky and was a ball ache due to contractors not finishing the whole estate a long story. So switched to now tv for 12 months and was great came out of my 12 month deal and have now switched again to virgin.

We get full package 320mb all TV Inc movies and sports also includes the landline which only gets used if grandma calls for £75.

 

I will swap again back to sky or now tv when this deals up. Before this over the last couple of years we were with sky for 13years so you get nowt for loyalty these days.

 

Just be prepared to leave if you are haggling for a better deal.

[SootySport]

From what  info I have gleaned over the years from customers and friends is -

Virgin have the faster speeds but service is carp.

Sky have the best service but the speeds are variable due to relying on the Openreach network.

Trying Virgin for a year won’t do any harm ,  as you’re free to move to another service provider as you please.