UPD2 Sky Launches New UK Superfast Unlimited Fibre Broadband Service

Sky Broadband (BSkyB) will tomorrow launch its new superfast Unlimited Fibre broadband package, which uses BT’s Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology to deliver internet download speeds of up to 40Mbps around the UK. The service costs £20 per month alongside a £50 one-off setup fee that includes the needed connection hardware and an engineer installation.

As usual both new and existing customers will need to bundle the Sky Talk (£0 or £5 a month) and Sky Line Rental (£12.25 a month) services alongside the new fibre package which, provided you only take the ‘Sky Talk Freetime’ (free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines) option, would push the total cost up to £32.25 a month.

Skys Broadband Unlimited Fibre (£20 Per Month)
* Download speeds of up to 40Mbps
* Truly Unlimited Usage
* Included Evening and Weekend calls to UK landlines (Add £5 for Unlimited Anytime calls)
* 24/7 calls to Sky contact centres at no extra cost
* Included Connection Hardware
* Sky Line Rental (£12.25 Per Month)
* 12 Month Contract

The new package continues Sky’s tradition of offering a truly “unlimited” service without a Fair Usage Policy (FUP). At present the service is only available to over 30% of UK homes (i.e. mostly in line with BT’s FTTC roll-out programme) and this should improve by the end of 2012 when around 40% (10 Million UK premises) will be able to access it, which will rise to 66% in 2014 or possibly 90% by 2015 (depending upon government support).

Sadly Sky told us in January 2012 (here) that they have “no other plans to announce” in regards to whether or not they will upgrade their fibre service up to 80Mbps as BT deploys a similar change, though Sky isn’t likely to give their competition a lead in top speed for long.

Sky are also extending their unbundled ( LLU ) network footprint to bring their traditional ‘up to’ 20-24Mbps ADSL2+ based broadband services to 88% of the UK by June 2013 (currently 82%). Take note that Sky are currently updating their site to reflect the new package and as a result it might not show up until later today.

UPDATE 11am

Sky is now expected to update its website with the new packages tomorrow (i.e. 13th April, delayed from 12th this morning).

UPDATE April 13th

The service is now available to order.