Its been over a year now since Sky Broadband has been widely available to the masses in the UK, so I thought I’d take a quick look at how its been doing generally, and how its been for me, as a user.

Until February 2007 I was with TalkTalk on their 512kb (£15.99 a month) broadband service. The service and reliability with TalkTalk had been generally okay – there were a few outages, normally for only a few hours, but nothing too bad. I had been out of contract for a few months with them, and it had got to the point where the deal I was on had become un-competitive, and unless I was prepared to sign up for another 18 month deal, it would have stayed that way.

It was about this time that I first read about the Sky ’3 for £26′ deal. At first I ignored it as it was one of those things that seemed a bit too good to be true – Sky TV, Wireless Broadband and free evening and weekend calls for £26? Being the suspicious girl I am, I had to find out more, and although sceptical, I really couldn’t find much to fault it at that time. So, I was seduced, and I took the plunge and applied.

The initial impressions were astonishing. I applied online on a Tuesday and I had a phone call that afternoon offering me an installation on the Thursday, thats two days later. Unfortunately I was at work that day, so I asked for the Saturday instead which they agreed! The chap came, installed the satelite dish in a descreet location, wired it up nicely (it must be the techie in me that takes notice of these things!), installed the decoder box, bade farewell and left. He even wore protective bags over his feet to prevent getting dirt on my carpets! Great stuff!

The installation of the broadband was also good. The wireless router arrived (a re-badged Netgear DG834GT) quickly enough, and the switchover happened on the day they said it would (albeit 9pm in the evening, just as I was starting to sweat!).

So far, things have been great with Sky Broadband. I’ve run numerous tests on the Speedtest.net website and the speed has been absolutely constant at 4.5Mbps, which is exactly what Sky they said it would be.

The general concensus on the web has been very positive as well – the general ratings are better than the likes of TalkTalk and BT for example, and despite some teething problems they had in the early days (late 2006), I’ve heard very little negative comments about them. And in the context of the web where people are more likely to complain than cheer, thats quite an achievement.

The only regret I have is not upgrading to a Sky+ satelite box (the one that records and pauses live tv – see here) instead of a normal satelite box.

So I would heartily recommend them as a Broadband supplier, but if you don’t have it already, their ‘Sky Digital TV, Phone AND Broadband for £26‘ is an even better deal.