Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

UPD Sky Broadband Top 6.1Mill Subs and Pushes Sky Q TV via the Internet

Thursday, Jan 26th, 2017 (7:58 am) - Score 3,560

Sky has today published their latest results to 31st December 2016, which reveals that in the last six months they’ve added +140,000 new Sky Broadband subscribers in the UK and Ireland to total 6.1 million (up from +70K added in H1 2016). Plus you’ll soon be able to get Sky Q TV via broadband.

Over the past few months Sky has experienced a number of big developments. The first was the long-awaited launch of their new O2 based Sky Mobile service (here), which has turned the operator into a quad-play provider. The second was the sudden decision to start promoting “average speeds” on their broadband packages (here) and they’ve also sneakily stopped selling to people with slow sub-2Mbps lines (here).

Today Sky has also announced that their premium Sky Q TV service will no longer require a Satellite dish to be installed on the side of your property. Instead you’ll be able to access the same content via a broadband connection and a new set-top-box, although this isn’t due to launch until 2018.

Advertisement

Stephen van Rooyen, CEO of Sky UK, said:

“This year is about giving our customers even more quality, choice and value. We’re planning to launch our Sky TV service without the need for a satellite dish for the very first time, giving millions more homes the chance to enjoy TV with Sky Q. We are continuing to build our European TV production studio, with 100 original series going into production. And with innovations like the My Sky app, we are finding new ways to make our customers’ lives simpler.”

Naturally that’s going to put a strain on your Sky Broadband line, particularly where 4K is required, although we don’t yet know the final details or performance requirements. On the other hand Sky aren’t doing anything that they haven’t already been playing with via NOW TV. Likewise BT TV has had a similar solution for awhile and they tend to require a speed of 44Mbps via FTTC for 4K support (this includes a bit of overhead for normal-ish Internet use to occur at the same time).

However the biggest development, at least on the business front, has been 21st Century Fox’s (Rupert Murdoch) new attempt to takeover Sky (here); including its divisions in Ireland, Germany and Italy. Admittedly this deal is still subject to some politically divisive regulatory approval, but Fox tends to be much more interested in Sky for its TV / broadcast business than broadband and telecoms. Quite what this means for the future is hard to know.

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s Group CEO, said:

“We have delivered a strong first half performance across the group, continue to make significant progress against our strategy and remain on track for the full year.

We remain confident in our strategic plans and have made significant progress against them. We’ve launched Sky Mobile in the UK, delivered further enhancements to the customer experience across the group and extended our reach in Europe’s largest TV market with the launch of Sky Sports News free-to-air and Sky 1 in Germany and Austria. Whilst churn in the UK has remained higher than planned, we have a full set of actions to address this, including replicating the success of our Italian loyalty programme which has resulted in reduced churn.

We enter 2017 focussed on giving more quality, choice and value to our customers. In the UK we plan to launch our Sky TV service without the need for a satellite dish for the first time, at the same time as pushing ahead in the £15 billion mobile market.”

As usual we don’t get a lot of detail on the broadband side from Sky’s report, but they do reveal a few small bits of fresh financial information. For example, Sky’s churn rate is 11.6% (up from 11.2% six months ago) and their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) remains flat at £47 per month.

Sky UK and Ireland also saw six month revenue of 4,267m (up from £4,072m in the first half) and their operating profit delivered £620m (down from £756m in the first half). See the full results.

Advertisement

UPDATE 27th Jan 2017

Both Sky TV and NOW TV look set to lose 12 channels, including some very popular ones, from 1st February 2017 unless a last minute deal can be reached. The channels due to be chopped are as follows: Animal Planet, Discovery HD, Discovery History, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Science, Discovery Shed, Discovery Turbo, DMAX, Eurosport1, Eurosport2, Investigation Discovery, Quest and TLC.

The impact from this could be quite significant and Sky will need to think carefully, although at present neither side appears willing to budge. Discovery want more money and Sky doesn’t wish to pay what is being requested, but losing some of the broadcasters most popular channels would be very risky and will hit NOW TV’s more focused user-base particularly hard.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Sky UK ISP Logo
Sky £26.00
145Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £19.00
300Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6046)
  2. BT (3644)
  3. Politics (2723)
  4. Business (2443)
  5. Openreach (2410)
  6. Building Digital UK (2333)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2153)
  8. FTTC (2086)
  9. Statistics (1909)
  10. 4G (1824)
  11. Virgin Media (1771)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1588)
  13. Fibre Optic (1470)
  14. Wireless Internet (1464)
  15. 5G (1414)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon