I received the letter below from BT Vision this morning. From 12th June they're going to move Sky Sports 1 and 2 from the terrestrial broadcast channels to broadband delivery. Also, in the side-box, you will only be able to watch/record one of these channels at a time (due to bandwidth restrictions).
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| My letter from BT Vision |
Now, here in rural Wells, Somerset we have never been able to get BT Vision replay or on-demand services: they stutter and die. I get c. 20 Mbps down my copper line, but the exchange is just a few hundred metres away. The exchange access equipment is surely dimensioned for intermittent Internet browsing, and can't support high-speed video streaming. This new Sky-over-broadband proposal will trash the main reason I signed up to BT Vision in the first place: cricket, tennis and cycling on Sky Sports.
I called them.
The Indian call centre was just as rubbish as usual. They seemed to believe the letter was a mistake as I'm not in a 'BT Infinity' fibre optic roll-out area. I asked to cancel and got transferred to the Scottish people.
Carol told me it was all a mistake and I'd continue to get over-the-air Sky.
"That's not what the letter says."
She checks. After an inordinate amount of time she tells me "Yes, you're going to be switched, because the technical team has determined your line rate can support it."
I'm weary. The technical team don't understand that with copper, the line rate is hardly an infallible guide to real-time high-speed service delivery which can be screwed up by contention, DSLAM capacity limits, upstream fibre line-rate issues - lots of things.
I have cancelled: the last day of service is Friday 14th June. It's off to Sky now, and BT - this was an own goal, guys!
