Sky Broadband slow, Sky admits, blames subscriber boost

Sky Broadband is struggling under the weight of new subscribers, Sky admits, resulting in slower-than-normal broadband speeds for customers.

Speaking to the BBC, Sky confirmed, "We are aware of capacity issues in a small number of exchanges," blaming an increase in Web traffic and "a high rate of new customer additions".

That's good news for Sky, then, but cold comfort for Sky Broadband customers, who may have seen sinking speeds spoiling their online jollies. The issue was raised by The Register, which reported Sky Broadband Unlimited customers in Doncaster, North Wales and Bristol were left with Internet slower than a sloth in syrup after Sky crammed too many customers onto its strained network.

We posed the question to our loyal Facebook fans, asking if Sky Broadband customers had noticed a drop in speeds recently.

"Snail like!" one commenter says. "Seems slower than normal," another notes. "Been quite bad lately," one person writes, while another says, "Mine is down from 28Mbps to 17 and upload is down from 9 to 7".

We couldn't publish every response in its original form, so here are a few more comments with swear words changed to the word 'quackers'.

"Total quackers. We switched from BT... nothing but regret", one says. "Quackers," writes another. "Mine has been consistently quackers since I got it," a third miffed commenter writes.

Some customers seem unaffected, however. "Seems fine just now!" one writes, while another says, "So far so good near CF82 (Hengoed, Wales). Still holding a good 12mb down, 1mb up."

How's the broadband 'round your end? Have you experienced speedy downloads with Sky, or is it frustratingly slow? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.