Sky Broadband’s UK G.fast Packages to Go Live as FTTP Delayed

UK ISP Sky Broadband is this week expected to put their new range of G.fast based “ultrafast broadband” packages live for everybody, which follows an initial soft launch in August (here). The bad news is that those waiting for FTTP (Openreach) to be supported may now have to wait until Q1 2020.

Sky informed us earlier this year that packages based off Openreach’s (BT) Gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology would go live sometime in H2 2019 and we expected this to occur just before Christmas. Credible sources now inform us that this won’t in fact be ready until sometime in Q1 2020 (calendar).

We wouldn’t be at all surprised if this related to Openreach’s recently unveiled plan to launch several new consumer focused FTTP tiers, including a headline grabbing 550Mbps (75Mbps upload) and 1Gbps (115Mbps) service, on 23rd March 2020 (here). The operator also reduced some of their wholesale prices. All of this is likely to be something that Sky will need to factor into their launch plans.

Meanwhile their G.fast hybrid fibre based Ultrafast 1 and Ultrafast 2 packages, which were soft launched in August, are later this week expected to go live for everybody to order (it’s possible this may be delayed again to next week, but we’ll know soon enough). At present this technology only covers around 2.2 million UK premises and future rollout plans are under review at Openreach (here).

Now a quick reminder of how they’re positioning these below (pricing from the soft launch).

Assuming the G.fast packages do go live later this week then we’ve heard that they may come attached to a £100 setup fee for new customers, although existing customers on slower packages who have been with the ISP for several years should be able to get this for free. Speaking of upgrades and setup fees, Sky is doing free ADSL to Fibre (FTTC) activation for existing customers.

Otherwise the new packages will include all of the usual features, as well as guaranteed download speeds of 100Mbps (if your download falls below 100Mbps for three consecutive days, you can exit your contract without early termination charges) and Sky’s new Hub router with a built-in G.fast modem (aka – Sky Q Hub 2 / SR203).

The new router is of a similar size to the current Sky Q Hub, albeit with 4 x Gigabit LAN ports (the Q Hub only had 2) – one of which is for WAN – 2 x Telephone ports (VoIP connection via older analogue handsets – SOGEA) and 8 antenna. The WiFi performance is understood to be comparable to the BT Smart Hub 2 router, although Sky has declined to reveal the official specification list for their device (we have asked.. repeatedly).