I'm currently with o2 for my phone line and broadband, only reason I did this was due to living in a crap area for broadband and the price. Currently pay £19.50 which includes line rental, evening and week end calls and unlimited broadband (slows down if downloading). Got this as a special offer for being a o2 customer for over 2 years.

Now what's worrying me is that sky is in the process of taking o2 over for home phone and broadband, can they raise my bill to sky level which is just about double the price? Plus I'm on a year's contract so will I be stuck with it?

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Be interesting to see what happens - I am in a similar situation, I am with BeThere for broadband and Phoneline and it is a great package, particularly the phone package.

So like you I am now part of Sky, Fibre is available in my area but I didn't migrate because the BeThere combined deal was so good. We can make inclusive international calls 24/7 to Spain and Canada where we have relatives.

If Sky offer a good combined deal I will make the switch to Fibre, time will tell.

Nothing is going to change straight away.

Paul

I'm currently with o2 for my phone line and broadband, only reason I did this was due to living in a crap area for broadband and the price. Currently pay £19.50 which includes line rental, evening and week end calls and unlimited broadband (slows down if downloading). Got this as a special offer for being a o2 customer for over 2 years.

Now what's worrying me is that sky is in the process of taking o2 over for home phone and broadband, can they raise my bill to sky level which is just about double the price? Plus I'm on a year's contract so will I be stuck with it?

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The same package with sky isnt double the price though. Its about £21.50 and their broadband never slows down. This is only if they have fibre in your area though. This is the deal i have with my SKY tv on top of this.

The same package with sky isnt double the price though. Its about £21.50 and their broadband never slows down. This is only if they have fibre in your area though. This is the deal i have with my SKY tv on top of this.

likewise, I was with Sky LLU and now fibre (BE and O2 said I couldn't get broadband in my area!). We have the £5 option for free international calls and we have fibre. My wife now works for Sky so we get the staff rate which is £10 a month, but normal fibre price is £20. As has been said, it never slows down, has never dropped out. 40 Meg down stream, 10 meg upstream. If that's not enough you can pay more for the "fibre pro" version but I don't need that.

Does that include line rental?

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Apparently of you have BT broadband or that Infinity fibre one you get that new BT Sport for "free". Still looking into what the catches are but MotoGP has moved there for next year. I'm considering changing as Virgin keep capping my speeds. Built a new PC and of course everything needs updating. Some of this is GB's worth of updates. Virgin's limits aren't for the modern day Internet user so takes ages to do. Not only that I have 4 devices using wireless too which it's also going slow for. If BT Infinty is as good as people are saying and not restricted in any way we may be making the switch.

Apparently of you have BT broadband or that Infinity fibre one you get that new BT Sport for "free". Still looking into what the catches are but MotoGP has moved there for next year. I'm considering changing as Virgin keep capping my speeds. Built a new PC and of course everything needs updating. Some of this is GB's worth of updates. Virgin's limits aren't for the modern day Internet user so takes ages to do. Not only that I have 4 devices using wireless too which it's also going slow for. If BT Infinty is as good as people are saying and not restricted in any way we may be making the switch.

So for example if your on 30mbit (quite a low end package) and you download more than 2.75GB in an hour of 'updates' and get throttled to 20mbit for an hour. its hardly 512k now is it? You must have a hell of a lot of 'updates'. That said I remember the good old days of truly unlimited on virgin and I still miss them.

Anyway for the op Sky or BT fibre are where you want to be, Sky can't alter your contract without giving you notice and the option to terminate it, your contract probably includes a set definition of what price rises they can push though. They can't double the price overnight OFCOM (as was) hit the mobile providers for it last year and Sky prefers not to attract regulatory attention. The service in LLU area's is unlimited, fibre is fast and consistent and no throttling or capping and the 40/10 package is decent value especially with the new customer deals (£100+ cash back on a triple play install). Either way sit back and relax, it's very unlikely anything significant will change during your contract.

So for example if your on 30mbit (quite a low end package) and you download more than 2.75GB in an hour of 'updates' and get throttled to 20mbit for an hour. its hardly 512k now is it? You must have a hell of a lot of 'updates'. That said I remember the good old days of truly unlimited on virgin and I still miss them.

Its just just simple limits its also application throttling i.e. torrents. When i had virgin I was hitting problems as they were throttling me getting hold of some linux ditros. They used Bit torrent to distribute but we all know thats evil so Virgin screw you over. You certainly don't get throttled to 20Mb thats for sure.

Regarding the original post. AFAIK all original contract remain so what ever you are currently on you will stay on. They will not be upping your price (if they do you can get out of the contract). Obviously if you want to make any changes then you would be in the new Sky world

So for example if your on 30mbit (quite a low end package) and you download more than 2.75GB in an hour of 'updates' and get throttled to 20mbit for an hour. its hardly 512k now is it? You must have a hell of a lot of 'updates'. That said I remember the good old days of truly unlimited on virgin and I still miss them.

An update for Battlefield 3 on Steam was 6GB. Updates for some PS3 games go from a few MB up to about 3GB. Hitman Absolution was free on Playstation Store and was 17GB. That's why I'm being throttled.

Does that include line rental?

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yes

I was with O2 and moved to plusnet (in progress) because Sky Broadband is awful. I was paying £15 pm, inclusive of line rental. They told me that prices were going up to £24 pm. So basically, they weren't including the line rental anymore.

Plus net are charging what I pay now but am getting £60 back through quidco.

Its just just simple limits its also application throttling i.e. torrents. When i had virgin I was hitting problems as they were throttling me getting hold of some linux ditros. They used Bit torrent to distribute but we all know thats evil so Virgin screw you over. You certainly don't get throttled to 20Mb thats for sure.

Regarding the original post. AFAIK all original contract remain so what ever you are currently on you will stay on. They will not be upping your price (if they do you can get out of the contract). Obviously if you want to make any changes then you would be in the new Sky world

Torrents were/are? traffic shaped but again how many distro's do you download so that it becomes a significant issue? I know people who've hit 30TB in a month just by making a few simple changes to the way they download and that was in the days of 50mbit.

An update for Battlefield 3 on Steam was 6GB. Updates for some PS3 games go from a few MB up to about 3GB. Hitman Absolution was free on Playstation Store and was 17GB. That's why I'm being throttled.

PS3 updates/downloads are generally a one off and nothing to do with reformatting a PC. Steam game updates shouldn't need doing more than once as you back up your steam folder surely? All you need to do is limit your usage at 'peak' times or accept you get 30% speed reduction on a 30mb package I used as an example. Its either that or upgrade to a package with a higher speed/limit or switch to Sky who have no caps or traffic shaping or BT who claim the same on caps.

I haven't had Steam long and never had to back it up. May consider it but when the time comes I'd need to format and start again next, there will be lots of games I won't play anymore anyway.

It's good practice to have your OS and data on different drives or at least partitions however as drives get larger this is sadly less common as people and OE's are lazy. A small fast SSD for example is ideal for a boot drive but not ideally suited to store your photo's, movies and music which are usually relatively static so you gain very little by being able to read those files very quickly, the cost per GB to store the data also makes no sense. This would be where local (mechanical) storage is more appropriate, or depending on the usage a NAS.

For example my personal PC that I use for work stuff has a 120GB SSD to boot from, that holds my OS, office, Corel Draw and a few other things that I use that benefit from high read performance, this gives me great boot/load times but I don't need an overly expensive large SSD. For storage I have a traditional mechanical drive, this is where my dropbox syncs to, steam folder and work graphics files are saved and downloads go. Yes, I could improve load times slightly in some cases by moving games and jobs to the SSD but as the drive hasn't got the application/OS overheads it's more than quick enough. My HTPC on the other hand has a small SSD then reads everything from my unRaid server, gigabit is capable of 120MB/s so its perfect for playback of even BD ISO's, no mechanical drive keeps things cool and near silent. Going back to your setup you can move your steam folder quite easily and removal of games isn't difficult but by doing so you'll save yourself re-downloading data again Keep an eye on UKHD for deals to add games cheaply, it's amazing what pops up for next to nothing on the likes of Gamers Gate or Green Man Gaming that'll activate on steam but costs you a fraction of the rrp or steam price.

I already do this. 128GB SSD with a 2TB mech drive for everything else. Backups on external drives