MySky, phone home

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freitasm

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#54415 1-Dec-2006 18:59

Kiwi Pete: Just phone Sky Customer Services where the Technical Advice woman basically told me that I was "talking through a hole in my head" and that the My Sky decoders never phone home. She talked to her supervisor who said that they had never heard of such a problem

I beg your pardon? If a rep talk to me like this I send then marching - and keep my money away from their pockets.

The funniest part of the conversation was when the customer service person told me that the next time I thought the phone was trying to dial home I was to call Customer Services. She could not understand that the My Sky would have the phone line tied up! Has anybody found out what the problem really is, and what the fix is?

grant_k

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#54447 1-Dec-2006 23:41

Kiwi Pete: Has anybody found out what the problem really is, and what the fix is?

I have disconnected the phone line. Sky can miss out on PPV revenue until they get this sorted

cokemaster

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#54448 1-Dec-2006 23:44

Well I have noticed my box 'phoning home' every so often (at least 5 times over the last couple of months) , usually late at night.... and I haven't ordered any per pay services. So I wonder what else it needs to phone home about...

Demographics?

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manaia

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#54466 2-Dec-2006 10:45

All SKY decoders (except those on accounts which have opted-in to audience measurement) are designed to call back once a month. This is mainly to report back on PPV purchases - if you buy a lot in one month this may trigger an extra callback. If the box can't get through, because the phone line is not connected, there is a line problem (like a toll bar that blocks even free calls) or there is a problem at the SKY end, then the box goes into a pattern of retries. All SKY decoders should hang up the line immediately if someone picks up another phone extension. Callbacks are staggered through the month and there haven't, to my knowledge, been any changes to the numbers called by MySKY recently.

On the MySKY the 'system test' option under 'system settings' in the 'system setup' menu under the 'Active' key starts by testing if a phone line is connected, but I don't think that this does a full callback. AFAIK the installer tests callback on installation by calling SKY CS and getting a request for callback sent to the box. SKY checks the logs a day or so later to see if the box called back OK.

There was a problem at SKY in the tail end of last week (30 Nov-1 Dec, or maybe earlier) which stopped callback information from being recorded properly, but JohnPorter's problem has been going on a lot longer than that. I've been trying to find out the actual number called - if you dial it from your normal home phone and get the 'overloaded' message then that eliminates the MySKY as the problem. The problem then would be genuine overloading (unlikely to extend as long as you say), a weird problem with your line setup (e.g. telecom rejecting 08.. calls from a third-party provider) or some problem with the SKY backend.

Manaia

JohnPorter

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#54470 2-Dec-2006 12:06

I tried dialling the 0800 number provided earlier from my computer, and it connected ok, so it's not Telecom preventing modems from using 0800 numbers. I'll try dialling it during the 10 minute period in question.

JohnPorter

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#54479 2-Dec-2006 14:04

Well, that was interesting. I called the 0800 number starting at 1:45, and it was usually busy. After 1:50, I started getting the "overloading" message. This is the same number I called previously (both myself and computer modem) and got through easily.

Interestingly, sometimes a modem answered. It happened twice when MySky dialled, and once when I did. When MySky reached the modem, they chatted for a while, then it hung up and tried again. It is possible that my being on the line affected their chatting, but I think it is much more likely that it would have happened anyway.

At 2:02, I dialled in 3 times in a row and got the modem each time.

That narrows it down a bit!

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cyril7

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#54481 2-Dec-2006 14:21

John, I hope you are preparing Sky an Invoice for this :)

Cyril

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#54627 4-Dec-2006 17:11

Just on the off-chance I plugged the phone line back into MySky earlier today and managed to successfully complete a "NEW INSTALLATION TEST" using the procedure posted earlier on this thread. What's more, it completed successfully on the first try so I figured that this might mean an end to the repetitive "phone home" retries seen last week.

Sure enough, it's now just after 5pm (when the retries would have been in full swing) and not a sign of any dialling activity from MySky...

Fingers crossed that it stays this way

JohnPorter

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#54631 4-Dec-2006 18:19

If it retries at 4 hour intervals, then doing the new installation will have changed the timing of it.

It will be interesting to see if it does work though. I would have thought that if it did work, mine would have worked one of the times when it connected before during the busy times.

JohnPorter

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#54857 6-Dec-2006 22:13

It seems they have fixed it. My box is no longer calling out, and I dialled the 0800 number multiple times during the time in question, and got a modem immediately each time.

I did do a soft reboot to try to clear a bunch of failed recordings ("Failed - no signal", all on TV1 and TV2 - anyone else getting those?), but the fact that the modem answered promptly indicates all the other boxes stopped calling in too, so it wasn't the soft reboot that fixed it.

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