Sky Broadband UK Remove 900Mbps Gigafast FTTP Plan from Sale UPDATE
A number of our readers have noticed that UK ISP Sky Broadband has, in the past week, removed their top 900Mbps (90Mbps upload) “Gigafast” package from sale to new customers, which was being sold over Openreach’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. Capacity issues could be the cause.
The top tier package, which only launched back in April 2022 (here), was last week still being sold at £51 per month for the first 18-months of service (£60 thereafter). But anybody trying to order it today will be left disappointed, as the top FTTP plan on Sky’s website is now their 500Mbps (60Mbps upload) tier for £45 a month.
Some customers who called Sky to enquire were, perhaps comically, told that the package had “sold out“, while a few others were still offered the chance to sign-up when they called. Suffice to say that, at the time of writing, it appears as if Sky’s front line support staff don’t really know what’s happening either (not uncommon). But the Gigafast plan has clearly been scrubbed from their website and online ordering system for most people (we ran several randomised checks to confirm).
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According to our own sources, the issue may be network / capacity related. Sky Broadband are currently known to be working on some upgrades and optimisations for their network, which is due to take a few months and is a regular cycle that ISPs typically go through every few years in order to keep pace with rising demands.
The result of that upgrade should ensure that Sky have plenty of capacity for the future. However, for whatever reason, this also appears to have necessitated a temporary pause on sales and marketing of their Gigafast package. Such upgrades would not normally require the removal of a headline broadband package, and doing it around the Black Friday weekend is particularly odd.
We have contacted Sky for a comment, but in the meantime, our sources indicate that Sky will reintroduce the Gigafast plan at some point during the early New Year.
UPDATE 12:50pm
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Sky has confirmed the pause, although they didn’t say when it would end.
A Sky Broadband spokesperson said:
“Providing a fast and reliable service is our number one priority. We are currently optimising our network and have temporarily paused new sales of Sky Broadband Gigafast while we do this. Existing Sky Broadband Gigafast customers are not impacted.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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My building was enabled for fibre a few weeks ago and weirdly I could only get that 900mbps product if I ordered Sky Stream. The maximum I could upgrade to without it was 500.
I don’t think Sky’s front-line systems are all that well integrated, so sometimes when there’s a product change we’ve seen that there can be a bit of a disjointed implementation period. This can happen with new product launches too.
Sky won’t sell the package as their hardware will only run to 500mb. They are getting too many call out as the router can’t handle the speed. This is due to chip suppliers.
Our Sky Ethernet circuits are getting very regular maintenance periods for capacity upgrades currently, perhaps they’re reserving the capacity for their more profitable business Ethernet products?
As daft as it might first sound, “sold out” is a reasonable analogy for this. If they cannot sell you the service because they’re out of capacity to do so, then it is sold out.
I agree. They cpuld be looking at overall backhand capacity vs guaranteed rate. If they see that they are close to guarantee rate across all subscribers, it makes sense to keep new subscriptions guaranteed at a lower rate.
I also can’t see the need for 900Mbps in the hpuse yet.
Most likely not enough people buying that tier connection as its excessive for most . Slower better priced connections are far more popular
how can they be out of capacity? how does that even work? can someone explain that to me please?
Their backhaul has a limited capacity, if they have too many users at the highers tiers then they’ll need to upgrade their backhaul.
They’re presumably keen to avoid congestion, or (if it is already occurring) to not make the situation worse by continuing to sell high-capacity connections to customers, before they can upgrade their network to support the new customers.
So it makes sense; when you see ISPs with peak slowdown issues who continue to sell to new customers (look at, say, Three mobile – congested in some areas, still selling cheap unlimited sims). This is the ‘correct’ alternative, if demand is outstripping their ability to get upgrades installed.
It’s worth noting that the chip shortages are very real; lead times for some routers and switches from Cisco are close to a year. So “hur dur they should have upgraded well in advance” is a simple thing to say, but in reality, not easy to actually accomplish at this time. Pair that with extra demand from lots of ISPs ripping out Huawei kit to replace it, and it’s presumably a bit of a crunch time for lots of providers!
Very few, if any, residential users require 900mb download with 90mb upload and the vast majority wouldn’t see the difference with 500mb download, 60mb upload, anyway.FTTP isn’t currently available on our road, but we’re managing fine with our FTTC connectivity.
Its a similar situation with 5G, I’m in no hurry to replace my 4G mobile with a 5G mobile, as I don’t currently see the point.Why pay extra for something that isn’t currently required?
Some people want higher upload for a variety of reasons – whether streaming their own media from their own server, copying large files off site for backup, syncing to cloud storage and more, here most ALTNETS give BT a beating as they are symmetric.
Some people have quite a few people in their house with multiple streaming games or movies/TV. Some might even stream UHD.
Not everyone fits into FTTC being good enough and choice should not be restricted to those willing to pay more for it.
“Some people have quite a few people in their house with multiple streaming games or movies/TV. Some might even stream UHD.”
4K Streaming uses about 25mbs, so in a household of 4, all streaming 4k films at the same time, they’ll utilise around 100mbs of their bandwidth, therefore 500mbs download leaves plenty of spare capacity under those circumstances.
“Some people want higher upload for a variety of reasons – whether streaming their own media from their own server, copying large files off site for backup, syncing to cloud storage and more, here most ALTNETS give BT a beating as they are symmetric.”
How many home users fall into that category? Hardly any would be my guess. What you’re talking about there, is business customers exchanging files between local servers and cloud based servers, requiring reliable fast connectivity for providing services to external customers; A leased service with guaranteed SLA’s would likely be more appropriate for what you’re describing.
Granted an FTTC connection wouldn’t serve a heavy usage household, streaming multiple 4K content continually, but the main point I was making is that 99.99% of residential customers wouldn’t notice the difference between a 900mbs and a 500mbs connection.
Something else to consider is that the access network is only a small part of the network connection; Realising full capacity on the access connection, requires all the content servers, network routers and backhaul connections to handle the capacity of each user simultaneously without bottlenecks. The access connection is only a small part of the pie, without a good Cloud/Backbone network everything slows down as more customers go online.
I dont see the argument that most people dont need 900meg as 500 would do. If it is a Sky capacity issue then surely 500 meg tiers would have been affected as well. In one hand you are saying most people dont use the full 900, yet you insist the 900meg customers are essentially affecting skys network. Do you see what i mean? If the 900 meg tier is suspended then surely than means it was affecting the network? (from being over used?)
“In one hand you are saying most people dont use the full 900, yet you insist the 900meg customers are essentially affecting skys network. Do you see what i mean? If the 900 meg tier is suspended then surely than means it was affecting the network? (from being over used?)”
I didn’t say 900mbs access is affecting Sky’s network, my argument is that generally most home users wouldn’t notice a difference between the 900mbs and 500mbs service.
I have no idea why Sky have suspended the 900mbs offering; If I was to hazard a guess, it may be clocking/processing/bandwidth capacity issues on their Access/Edge Routers, rather than issues in their core, but who knows? If it is Edge router capacity issues, then clocking customer facing connections at higher rates could in itself strain the processors, without customers necessarily passing more data. If the Edge routers aren’t up to the task, then Sky may have to add things like new processor modules,more memory, or whatever it takes to deal with the increased data rates.
There are no ‘clocks’ on customer facing connections. They’re packet switched so the only load is when packets are actually passing.
On the routers they use processing mostly happens on line cards and to upgrade them means swapping line cards. Cool stuff is handled by ASICs that generally aren’t upgradable: they have the resources they need to provide the capacity they are specified for.
Likely bandwidth as that’s the only difference between 500 and 900 in terms of hardware load and to upgrade it they need new hardware as they’re out of line card slots or need new chassis as they’ve hit limits on backplane/fabric. Their backhaul suppliers may have hit issues delaying delivery of extra capacity, too.
Kit isn’t the easiest thing to get at the moment due to supply chain issues so anywhere in the chain could easily have had an order with the vendor delayed substantially.
Not selling 900 makes sense with this in mind: they want to keep service quality high and need to have average peak usage + 900 Mb free to do so. Only selling 500 gives a bit of breathing room that is worth having when a number of exchanges end up sharing 10 Gb.
Rearrangement and optimisation of the network may potentially be things like where a group of exchanges are in a ring splitting them in different directions across the ring, where they’re daisy chains breaking them so fewer exchanges share a port, and moving exchanges from full POPs to others in their network that have capacity. The last two both require new backhaul.
From BT Wholesale down the big networks have all hit issues in their time where capacity on circuits was monitored just fine but the hardware’s capability to add new circuits wasn’t.
I’m in no hurry to replace my 4G mobile with a 5G mobile, as I don’t currently see the point. Why pay extra for something that isn’t currently required?
just because you don’t need 5G doesn’t mean I don’t either I do want 5G phones and speeds ect .
“There are no ‘clocks’ on customer facing connections. They’re packet switched so the only load is when packets are actually passing.”
I used the term loosely, in the same sense as clocking up mileage when motoring, I didn’t mean in the master/slave or Network clock sense, as used in synchronous connections and networks. I would think the cards/ports will still have to organise the packets/frames into order and clock them in and out of buffers before transmitting to line, with more packets allocated to the higher data rate customers, requiring more processing as data rates and demand increases.
I definitely upped our home Internet connection so it’d have enough upload capacity – my furry art communityserver alone uses 8.5 Mbps upstream on average, with peaks of 35-45Mbps over five minutes daily, and there’s a Bitcoin full node here too. Yes, I’m in the 0.1%, but then it’s us who’re the problem.
I agree, some people get it because they can, not because they really need it. I think that even with 100Mb/s as second for some people, I doubt many people would ever hit anywhere near it, even with a couple of people using the network at the same time. A large family may if they have a fair few people using the network at the same time with 4K streaming.
‘I used the term loosely, in the same sense as clocking up mileage when motoring, I didn’t mean in the master/slave or Network clock sense, as used in synchronous connections and networks. I would think the cards/ports will still have to organise the packets/frames into order and clock them in and out of buffers before transmitting to line, with more packets allocated to the higher data rate customers, requiring more processing as data rates and demand increases.’
The routers large scale ISPs like Sky use can handle line rate on every interface on every card across the board. They also don’t care about arranging either frames or packets in order: neither Ethernet or IP have any concept of it. It’s left to the client and the server to be concerned by the order in which things arrive.
With all due your statements suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how the carrier-grade packet switching kit and Ethernet works and I don’t have the time to go through it in full and would probably get bits wrong. The shared resources that are relevant relate to hierarchical shaping/QoS, however this is managed by having a maximum subscriber count per card / chassis.
Nothing is allocated to users until they start actually using. Across the customer base that would be terminating on the edge routers Sky use selling 900 is inconsequential.
The issue is almost certainly bandwidth with either a lack of ports available, whether due to line card or chassis shortages, to provision more, or backhaul delivery being delayed, so individual links handling exchanges or groups of exchanges are under duress.
It’s quite possible that this is more with the switches in the exchanges rather than the edge routers. It would make a lot of sense to withdraw 900 if the issue is on these skinnier, shared links.
I’m.lucky I’m in a 3 5g area so use the 5g hub. Tenner for 6 months then 20. Speeds are great and I can’t fault the service. Regularly touching 700 mbs. For 20 quid that’s amazing
If only other providers were as responsible at not overselling capacity.
Sky should be praised for this.
Praised for having a crappy core network? They always have, remember when they couldn’t sell more than 40Mbps VDSL2? Others were selling the 80Mbps package.
Sky’s core has never been ‘crappy’.
It’s not just Sky, Vodafone when selling on Openreach infrastructure will in places limit their available speed packages to 200M due to lack of local backhaul capacity. This is partly due to them provisioning their own circuits to connect up Openreach exchanges whereas many other ISPs choose to buy capacity from the Openreach backhaul
Vodafone use the same mix of backhaul others do.
Their network was in places pretty old. Mobile and fixed line were very recently on different networks most of the way. Fixed line relied on some kit from way back, purchased as part of Cable and Wireless Worldwide in 2012 and once used to power Bulldog.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/14009350387.png – This from 4G mobile to PC from EE network. These are fastest enough for me.
I tried to upgrade to the 900Mbps package when my 150Mbps connection was up for renewal in October.
Sky’s website kept throwing an error message, so I phoned them.
The sales droid I spoke to told me that I could ONLY keep the 150, not even upgrade to the 500Mbps!
Sky moving backwards in technology direction.
Got to milk the cash cow on the lower tariffs first before offering anything half decent.
Just look at their TV. Most channels are still in SD format.
Bahahhahahahhahahha
720p 5mb
1080- 10mb
4K- 25mb
This is the same for twitch uploads.
The PE Nodes load balance all users.
40 1Gb users on a 10Gb PE link is normal.
Stop speed testing every 5 mins to check the pipe you ain’t actually using. This just fks it for the normal guys that want Netflix and an online gaming experience.
AND FFS. STOP ENTERTAINING THE RUSSIAN CHESS GAME OF POWER CONSUMPTION.
Reduce, reuse, relax.
Ex Telecom Engineer quote:
“Some people want higher upload for a variety of reasons – whether streaming their own media from their own server, copying large files off site for backup, syncing to cloud storage and more, here most ALTNETS give BT a beating as they are symmetric.”
“How many home users fall into that category? Hardly any would be my guess. What you’re talking about there, is business customers exchanging files between local servers and cloud based servers, requiring reliable fast connectivity for providing services to external customers; A leased service with guaranteed SLA’s would likely be more appropriate for what you’re describing.”
Erm – just WHY should it be business package?? Thats old school BT ‘milk the cow’ thinking.
Modern world. Don’t need business grade SLA for doing this as don’t need those guarantees. On an ALTNET I can easily do this with symmetric and static IP.
Another correction for cloud based services. Most operating systems sync to OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, iCloud etc. Why should a home user ahve to pay business package for that? Again, old school thinking typical of a BT engineer (??) when the world has moved on and this stuff is everyday stuff now not future in 200 years….
It think more and more users will be aware and want a faster upload.
More and more people work from home, host their own content or upload constant they have created to the Web.
I think Openreach will get left behind it the alt nets become big enough and keep offering a symmetric link and Openreach stick to they old asymmetric view of the world
in every normal country gigabit is a norm. I guess in the uk 24mbps is considered fast haha.
If that’s the case the quality must be awful given the Ookla averages. Haha.
I’ll be honest I work for Sky on the phones and only found out about this through here lol. Only on Friday did we get a one sentence mention of it in our weekly briefing pack regarding offer changes.
When i renewed my contract i wanted to include the gigafast as my BT contract was up was half the price with sky. While on the phone with sky i was offered 4 months free if i went will the ultrafast package and that i could then upgrade to gigafast for an extra £5/month, then noticed that sky have removed all mention of gigafast. Phoned them up to upgrade only to be told they dont’t do a gigafast package, when i pointed out that they did, all i got was its not on there system. 4 transfers later and was told they had reached capacity
I have 6 people in my household uses internet
PlayStation 5
And 4 tv of 4k sometimes running same time
I really can do with 900mbps