Sky engineer wouldn't install Sky Q
Discussion
Having waited six weeks for installation the chap who turned up said he couldn't install as my router is in a different building.
The house has a gigabit switch in the same room as the main Sky box with cat 5 to all TVs. We have four hardwired Ubiquiti access points in the house ensuring perfect wifi everywhere. The sky main box would be in a room immediately above the bedrooms with two minis in. A third mini is further away and unlikely to work without a booster but cat 5 is there from that mini to the main box.
He said he couldn't install without sky boosters and they were special order so a new appointment would have to be made in a couple of days. He said if he tried to install, the sky boxes would take over our wifi and change the password.
Essentially he seemed to be saying he needed wifi access direct from the router to set it up, not from an access point or ethernet cable. I'm aware the Q system uses it's own wifi when setup.
Does this have a resonance of truth? On face value he looked lazy and pissed off, and it was wet and windy. Sky are now trying to reschedule for four weeks time which my teenage daughters are overjoyed about.
The house has a gigabit switch in the same room as the main Sky box with cat 5 to all TVs. We have four hardwired Ubiquiti access points in the house ensuring perfect wifi everywhere. The sky main box would be in a room immediately above the bedrooms with two minis in. A third mini is further away and unlikely to work without a booster but cat 5 is there from that mini to the main box.
He said he couldn't install without sky boosters and they were special order so a new appointment would have to be made in a couple of days. He said if he tried to install, the sky boxes would take over our wifi and change the password.
Essentially he seemed to be saying he needed wifi access direct from the router to set it up, not from an access point or ethernet cable. I'm aware the Q system uses it's own wifi when setup.
Does this have a resonance of truth? On face value he looked lazy and pissed off, and it was wet and windy. Sky are now trying to reschedule for four weeks time which my teenage daughters are overjoyed about.
Sky Q works on a mesh system through wifi, but you can connect the slave boxes to the master by cable.
If you have network points at your secondary TVs then this isn't an issue, if not you will need to use their booster system or homeplugs.
My installer had an issue setting the stuff up when I'd just changed the security on the supplied router, so you'll have no luck getting them to use an existing non-sky wifi set-up. You could disconnect your router. Let the Sky guy install his and then connect your slave boxes by cable, then when he's gone, swap the sky Router for your existing one and cable it to the main sky TV box.
Or you could contract an independent to set it up for you but that will cost.
To be honest the Sky mesh system is bloody good, the slave boxes are used as repeaters which you can then plug switches into.
If you have network points at your secondary TVs then this isn't an issue, if not you will need to use their booster system or homeplugs.
My installer had an issue setting the stuff up when I'd just changed the security on the supplied router, so you'll have no luck getting them to use an existing non-sky wifi set-up. You could disconnect your router. Let the Sky guy install his and then connect your slave boxes by cable, then when he's gone, swap the sky Router for your existing one and cable it to the main sky TV box.
Or you could contract an independent to set it up for you but that will cost.
To be honest the Sky mesh system is bloody good, the slave boxes are used as repeaters which you can then plug switches into.
C Lee Farquar said:
Every room has it's own access point and cat 5 cable, but I don't have the broadband through Sky so don't have their router.
Then as far as I can see all they should have needed to do was plug the main Sky Q box into your broadband router (via switch) and the slave boxes into the Cat 5 points.No need for passwords or anything else. Dunno why it was an issue unless there were problems with siting & cabling the dish.
Edited by hornmeister on Thursday 16th January 10:10
C Lee Farquar said:
No access issues for the dish, we have scaffolding up.
He maintained the problem was that our router isn't in the house.
In politest terms I expect he doesn't understand how this type of thing works and will have been trained to add stuff to their kit or when a customer has direct visibility of a router, we have Q going in next week, reading this doesn't fill me with a load of hope but I do at least have access to everything they might need. I would be onto Sky having a whinge in your case and suggesting I will take my money elsewhere!He maintained the problem was that our router isn't in the house.
Couple of things
The engineer stated boosters are special order - this isn’t the case so he’s either an in house engineer and lying as they keep them on the van or it was a subcontractor for sky (they’ve ramped up the numbers of them dramatically in the last few months as sky engineers have had a huge change in the way jobs are issued to them and they are doing less jobs meaning nationally they are hugely short of availability) I don’t believe contractors keep them and would just reschedule the job for in house engineer (not 100% on that bit mind)
The scaffolding can only be used for access if it has a scaffold tag, this is sky’s policy regardless of how safe it is. Not many domestic scaffold setups would have one
10 degree pitched roof, sky’s policy is anything 10 degrees or less can be treated as a flat roof and any engineer can access, anything over 10 degrees requires either a CAT ladder or in the case of roofs without a ridge line (think single story extensions) requires the use of a ladder setup called a DAT ladder which is essentially a hookless cat ladder bolted to the access ladder.
The sky system forms a mesh network and probably won’t work reliably over your existing ubiquiti access points, it’s quite fussy for no particular reason. Cat5 run from main box to mini would be fine though, sounds like it was a single engineer who was overwhelmed by the size of the property (making assumptions) and the complexity of the existing infrastructure
The engineer stated boosters are special order - this isn’t the case so he’s either an in house engineer and lying as they keep them on the van or it was a subcontractor for sky (they’ve ramped up the numbers of them dramatically in the last few months as sky engineers have had a huge change in the way jobs are issued to them and they are doing less jobs meaning nationally they are hugely short of availability) I don’t believe contractors keep them and would just reschedule the job for in house engineer (not 100% on that bit mind)
The scaffolding can only be used for access if it has a scaffold tag, this is sky’s policy regardless of how safe it is. Not many domestic scaffold setups would have one
10 degree pitched roof, sky’s policy is anything 10 degrees or less can be treated as a flat roof and any engineer can access, anything over 10 degrees requires either a CAT ladder or in the case of roofs without a ridge line (think single story extensions) requires the use of a ladder setup called a DAT ladder which is essentially a hookless cat ladder bolted to the access ladder.
The sky system forms a mesh network and probably won’t work reliably over your existing ubiquiti access points, it’s quite fussy for no particular reason. Cat5 run from main box to mini would be fine though, sounds like it was a single engineer who was overwhelmed by the size of the property (making assumptions) and the complexity of the existing infrastructure
Personally I would say that your Sky Engineer was talking rubbish.
We have Sky Q and two minis. We do not have a Sky Router or Sky Boosters. We have 5 Ubiquiti Unifi Pro access points all hard wired into two pro 8 port switches run through a cloud controller, in turn hardwired into a router in turn via an external Enterprise Firewall Unit into the Lease Line hardware. (We operate a B&B in rural area, so Lease Line and good coverage with a managed guest network separate to our personal network was necessary, as a normal home network powered by ADSL copper wire to the house would not have worked well enough to stave off the inevitable complaints about poor wifi)
It all works just fine. You just connect the Q boxes into your network, like any other wireless device.
We have Sky Q and two minis. We do not have a Sky Router or Sky Boosters. We have 5 Ubiquiti Unifi Pro access points all hard wired into two pro 8 port switches run through a cloud controller, in turn hardwired into a router in turn via an external Enterprise Firewall Unit into the Lease Line hardware. (We operate a B&B in rural area, so Lease Line and good coverage with a managed guest network separate to our personal network was necessary, as a normal home network powered by ADSL copper wire to the house would not have worked well enough to stave off the inevitable complaints about poor wifi)
It all works just fine. You just connect the Q boxes into your network, like any other wireless device.
Sorry for the lack of an update, we went away Fri night.
Friday's visit got no further than a phone call at lunchtime to say the engineer couldn't do the job as there were too many builders about.
Not quite sure what's going on as he hadn't been to the house and there are no builder's there. The chap on the phone said the engineer didn't have a tracker and wasn't answering his phone.
Another irate phone call and we have a £50 credit and free ongoing sky backdated to November.
New appointment for 4th Feb iirc
Friday's visit got no further than a phone call at lunchtime to say the engineer couldn't do the job as there were too many builders about.
Not quite sure what's going on as he hadn't been to the house and there are no builder's there. The chap on the phone said the engineer didn't have a tracker and wasn't answering his phone.
Another irate phone call and we have a £50 credit and free ongoing sky backdated to November.
New appointment for 4th Feb iirc
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