Sky Broadband ISP Customers Suffering Slow Speeds and Latency Woes

An unspecified number of Sky Broadband (BSkyB) customers are currently being affected by “intermittent connection issues“. The problems, which typically manifest as slow speeds and high latency, are especially common during peak periods.

Sky has apologised to “anyone experiencing connection problems” and published a list of affected telephone exchanges. Unfortunately most have been given a “target resolution” (fix) date of between mid-March and the end of April 2012. That’s a long wait.

Sky Support Statement – 29th Feb 2012

We have been working hard to resolve the intermittent service issues being experienced by customers on a small number of exchanges.

Sky claims that the problems are caused by “congested exchanges“, which often means that customers have been sucking up all the spare bandwidth and forcing overall performance down. The problems are apparently only affecting a “small number” of their customers but there’s no way to know what that really means.

Unlike other ISPs we have to give Sky some credit here for being fairly open and honest about the problem and how long it will take to fix. Sadly some other providers would not be quite so forthcoming.

Sky’s List of Problem Telephone Exchanges
http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broadband-Setup-Cabling/Intermittent-Broadband-service-issues..