New & Improved for who? Certainly not me!

Sky have just announced that they’re changing their Broadband Packages, replacing Mid with Everyday & Max with Unlimited (Base remains the same).

They key points of these changes are that the speed of Mid & Max are increasing, from “up to 8Mb” to “up to 10Mb” & from “up to 16Mb” to “up to 20Mb” respectively. However, despite living in London (where you would imagine you will get decent speeds in comparison with rural areas), my line is capable of only 5Mb. So this speed increase will be totally irrelevant. The emphasis on all broadband packages is the term “up to”. If your line doesn’t support it, you will not ever get close to these “up to” speeds.

What IS relevant however, is the change in usage allowance. The new Everyday package has had it’s monthly download cap reduced from 40Gb to just 10Gb. That’s a 75% cut in allowance!! Unlimited is as it states.

With people downloading more & more online content, this is a very clever marketing ploy by Sky (a money making exercise?) – they know that many people will think the extra speed is something good, without realising their lines will not support the higher speeds, but the usage cap WILL affect some users, who will have to switch to the Unlimited package, or start paying extra charges.

What a scam!

I’ve written to Sky to let them know what I think – however, as with all these corporations, it won’t make the slightest difference. Time to start looking around again to see if there’s a better deal out there.