Sky UK’s New G.fast Ultrafast Broadband ISP Package is Live

UK ISP Sky Broadband (Comcast) has today officially made their new G.fast powered Ultrafast 1 (145Mbps) broadband and VoIP (SOGEA) phone packages available for both new and existing customers to order. Prices start from £39 per month and there’s a £39.95 one-off setup fee (we think it’s a free upgrade for existing customers).

The new G.fast based hybrid fibre plans were soft launched a couple of months ago but they’ve now become fully available to order. One catch here is that Openreach’s 330Mbps capable G.fast technology currently only covers around 10% of UK premises and future rollout plans beyond March 2020 are under review (here).

Curiously today’s announcement states that G.fast covers 2.5 million premises (i.e. we think they probably used the latest private Openreach data as the last / older public release was 2.2 million), although it then goes on to state that “thereafter, an estimated additional 390k households will be rolled out each quarter.” Except at present there are no agreed plans to rollout G.fast past March 2020 (pending review), so we think they might be factoring the future addition of FTTP. Either that or they know something new about Openreach’s G.fast future after March 2020 (unlikely since the review has only just started).

Otherwise customers of the new tier can expect to receive unlimited usage, the new Sky Hub SR203 wireless broadband router with built-in G.fast modem, a VoIP based phone service (SOGEA), unlimited access to WiFi hotspots from The Cloud, Sky Shield (Parental Controls and Anti-Malware), Sky Talk Shield (nuisance call blocking) and email.

The new packages also pledge to guarantee download speeds of 100Mbps, which means that if your speed falls below 100Mbps for three consecutive days then you’ll be able to exit your contract without early termination charges.

Sky’s Broadband and Phone Packages

Sky Broadband Essential
Average download speed 11Mbps
Setup fee of £19.95

PRICE: £20 a month for 18 months (£25 thereafter) – Excluding optional £5 Sky Boost Add-on

Sky Broadband Superfast
Average download speed 59Mbps
Setup fee of £19.95

PRICE: £27 a month for 18 months (£32 thereafter) – Excluding optional £5 Sky Boost Add-on

Sky Ultrafast 1
Average download speed of 145Mbps
Average upload speed of 27Mbps
Setup fee of £39.95

PRICE: £39 a month for 18 months (£44 thereafter) – Excluding optional £5 Sky Boost Add-on

We should caveat that for now Sky has chosen not to publish their full Ultrafast 1 prices on the public package list, which means that you instead have to run through their availability checker to see if you’re covered. Likewise the announcement only includes their “Ultrafast 1” package and we’re checking to see what has happened to the 285Mbps “Ultrafast 2” service (possibly due to Openreach’s future FTTP tier refresh or the difficulty of delivering on G.fast’s top speeds).

UPDATE 10:32am:

Sky now seem to be showing the pricing on their website and oddly the listed setup fee has just changed to £34.95. We think £39.95 may be the charge for new lines and £34.95 for the upgrade of an existing line.

UPDATE 11:59am:

Sadly Sky’s PR team still hasn’t responded to our hails. In the meantime some readers have also noted that Sky’s checker is returning misleading results for “ultrafast” availability (i.e. it doesn’t seem to matter what postcode is checked, it almost always returns “Ultrafast is coming soon to your area…” – even in areas where that is not likely to occur for years).