Any way to check when fibre will be available in my area?

Yeah, I was going to say something like that but it's really none of their business although I realise that they're presumably told to get a reason if possible so wouldn't hold that against the individual on the phone.

ClubMan said:

The poor guy really wanted a specific reason for why I was cancelling but I had to keep saying that I preferred not to say and just wanted to cancel.

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Why not the truth ? It's not a competitive enough price for me or because you won't give me the same deal as new customers.

elcato said:

Why not the truth ? It's not a competitive enough price for me or because you won't give me the same deal as new customers.

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Because I've told them that for years and it made no difference. They never give existing users the same deal as"new" customers. And if you tell them that you're not happy with the price and/or are moving to another provider then they give you a sales pitch, bad mouth other providers' services, and keep calling back even if you tell them not to. I didn't want this time wasting (my time as well as theirs) and hassle.

So, got Sky fibre 500Mbps @ €30 p.m. for 12 months installed yesterday. The installer (Circet on behalf of OpenEir on behalf of Sky... ) missed the scheduled morning slot and rocked up at 3pm after I had made my first complaint to OpenEir who passed me on to Sky. They opened a ticket for my complaint but I have no idea what happened with that.

The first time installation of fibre is a bit of a pain with them having to drill through the wall, bring the cable in, and install the fibre terminator box and the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box inside the house.

According to the installer guy, other fibre providers can reuse this setup if I ever switch to them but Virgin will install their own stuff (hopefully just the ONT and not another cable?) if I ever go back to them for fibre broadband.

Anyway, the new Sky service was working yesterday and earlier today but this evening I noticed the LOS (Loss Of Signal) light flashing red even after a power cycle and a service check on the Sky app says that there's a fault external to the house which needs an engineer to visit. I've made a second complaint online to Sky about this and definitely won't be paying them for the time without any service.

Good job that the VM cable broadband is still working for another two weeks but will finish on the 22nd. I'm half thinking of cancelling Sky within the 14 day cooling off period and signing back up to VM as a new customer after the 22nd - not sure if that would be as a cable or a fibre customer though.

So, Sky still not working today and the attempts to get support over the past few days were so frustrating that I've cancelled it within the 14 day cooling off period. Back to VM after my current contract/service ends I guess.

When on the call the Sky rep was explaining how I can't have two broadband services on the go at the same time even though my cable VM is working fine and the Sky fibre was simultaneously working briefly on Friday.

ClubMan said:

the Sky rep was explaining how I can't have two broadband services on the go at the same time

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That's a pity that Sky couldn't get the service working for you
But I would think the rep is wrong here, I think he might be correct if you were on one of the other providers like Eir or Vodafone
Virgin media run an independent system for their TV and BB to everybody else so its possible to have the two running at the same time
It's the same as saying once you've Sky TV you can't have Virgin TV running at the same time,

Cervelo said:

But I would think the rep is wrong here,

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They were. I suspect that they were thinking that having two WiFi routers would be a problem but even that isn't a showstopper - they will be competing for the same 5GHz/2.4GHz bandwidth but automatic channel selection should mitigate any issues. (And, in any case, most of my use inside the house is wired via powerline ethernet and WiFi usage is marginal). Otherwise there is absolutely no issue with having VM cable broadband running in parallel with fibre broadband from another provider.

They were also insinuating that my Sky service had failed because I also had VM running even though their own service checker said that the fault lay outside the premises and there is simply no inherent conflict between cable and fibre.

If their support was even marginally better I might have persisted and given them time to fix it but they were so frustrating and annoying to deal with that I just bit the bullet and cancelled.

Couldn't recommend them based on this experience to be honest.