Sky Broadband Likely to Launch Openreach FTTP Plans in H2 2019

The wait for ISP Sky Broadband to launch a new UK range of “ultrafast broadband” packages using Openreach’s network may soon be over. Several credible sources have indicated to us that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based packages will go live in the second half of 2019 and December seems most likely.

All of this follows last year’s report of a new wholesale agreement between Openreach and Sky (here), which appeared to cover both the operator’s “full fibre” FTTP and “hybrid fibre” G.fast products. Crucially this is not to be confused with Sky’s prior trial FTTH deployments, including their work alongside TalkTalk in the city of York, which were separate networks.

Since then several sources have indicated to us that Sky’s G.fast based packages might be the first to go live later this spring 2019, with FTTP set the follow at a later date, although this is all very tentative and until now we’ve had no luck getting a more solid launch window for the FTTP side of things.

Similarly Sky’s recent move to court alternative FTTP network providers (here), as well as the possibility of a further reduction in Openreach’s planned G.fast roll-out (here), has made us wonder whether the hybrid fibre solution is still part of Sky’s “ultrafast” plan or if they might delay it. Sadly we don’t have an answer for that, but four different sources have all now told us that FTTP is still go for H2 2019.

Most of those sources have been correct on prior product launches. In addition, one of Openreach’s recent speeches appeared to confirm Sky Broadband as an FTTP network partner “from December 2019.” Officially Sky are still in no comment mode and it’s worth considering that we don’t yet know if these launch windows are based on financial or calendar dates, but we believe they’re calendar orientated.

On top of this we’re still expecting Sky to launch a new broadband router (Sky Q Hub 2?) at around the same time as their new ultrafast packages go live, although so far we’ve not been able to find anybody who has been given one of those to test.