ISP Sky Broadband UK Discounts 59Mbps FTTC Price to £25
UK ISP Sky Broadband has shaved a further £2 off the already discounted price of their “superfast” (Average speeds of 59Mbps) Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service, which also comes with anytime UK calls and is now priced at £25 per month for the first 18 months of service (£32 thereafter). The one-off setup fee is also now free.
The new promotion is set to run for any orders made between now and 30th January 2020. As usual you’ll also receive unlimited usage, a wireless broadband router, Sky Talk line rental, unlimited access to WiFi hotspots from The Cloud, Sky Shield (Parental Controls and Anti-Malware), Sky Talk Shield (nuisance call blocking) and email.
In terms of the anytime UK calls add-on, this is free for the first 18 months of service but after that you’ll either have to remove it or the price will become £8 per month. Subscribers can also optionally add the Sky Boost add-on for £4 extra a month (£5 after the first 18 months), which ensures you get the best Sky Hub router, WiFi in every room, daily health checks on your line and the Sky Broadband Buddy app.
Take note that the setup fee is supposed to be free on all three packages (so we’re told), although when conducting a test other we found that for new lines it was still £20 on their ‘Essential‘ package.
Sky Broadband Essential
* Average download speed 11MbpsPRICE: £20 a month for 18 months (£25 thereafter)
Sky Broadband Superfast
* Average download speed 59MbpsPRICE: £25 a month for 18 months (£32 thereafter)
Sky Broadband Ultrafast 1
* Average download speed 145MbpsPRICE: £39 a month for 18 months (£44 thereafter)
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 and Linkedin.
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And I signed up about 10pm last night and paid £27 – bummer LOL
You’re still in the cooling off period and could cancel the switch. Might be worth giving them a call to see if they’ll play ball.
Cheers Mark, In the end I called anyway because they had a better package on the website. I didn’t need to cancel I got a deal so amazing I totally forgot to worry about the Internet price!.It’s since been installed and we have everything – and I mean everything for £66 a month!
The women I care for is paying bt 34 pound for 67 meg broadband and 10 pound for talk unlimited she will be dumping them when it goes up in march.its good to talk. What a ripp off.
Any update on SKY’s FTTP date? Thanks
I went with TalkTalk 67Mb/s package last night for £21.95 on a 24 month contract with free telephone line installation which will activate on 3rd of February. I needed new line for VDSL Faceplate plus I wanted a shorter line anyway and this ends up a better value than Sky.
The Sky discount is actually an illusion. Here’s why. Although the price drops to £25 a month, the Sky Boost goes £2 up to £4. So 25+4=£29 vs before 27+2=£29.
They dropped £2 on the Sky Fibre package but increased Sky boost to £4 from £2. The result is the same.
So by either having it at £25 or £27 you’re actually stuck with the old Sky Hub router with only megabit ethernet ports which is very disappointing considering the price you’re paying. The old Sky Hub router is suitable for ADSL packages, not VDSL.
So in order to get the better quality router SR203 / Sky Q Hub 2 with 4 gigabit ports you have to pay for the Sky boost an additional £4 a month which is very stingy.
The Sky Q Hub on the other hand is no good as it has only 2 gigabit ethernet ports and you need to buy a network switch if you have additional computers/consoles.
So all in all, you are getting a worse deal with Sky (unless you get a £50-£100 gift voucher). Now if you already have an aftermarket router then no point going with Sky. I’d recommend switching to AAISP, Cloudscape Connect, etc for similar price but better ratings.
Not to mention Sky will no doubt hike your prices mid-contract as per my previous experiences! It will not remain £25, after 6 months it will probably go to £27, £29, etc. It is something to be wary of. TalkTalk has no mid-contract price increases and already supply TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub with 4 gigabit ports all for just £21.95.
“So by either having it at £25 or £27 you’re actually stuck with the old Sky Hub router with only megabit ethernet ports which is very disappointing considering the price you’re paying.”
Sky have been providing dual band wifi routers with gigabit ports for some time now, both the sky q hub er115 and the previous sky Q er110 model had them, downside is they cut the number of ports from four to two – I believe the chip they use has two internal ethernet ports, so cutting the number of ports avoided the cost of having a gigabit switch chip, and I note you contradict yourself later by correctly saying it has two gigabit ports.
When I was with Sky I used my own router, much more user configurable than any router issued by the biggest ISPs, and it is now easy to set up as you no longer need a valid VDSL username or password anymore. Gigabit switches are not expensive if you want to stick with the standard sky q router.
My only experience of TalkTalk was after they bought out AOL, appallingly low speeds and congestion.
@Mel: Yes, that’s right Sky provide sky q hub er115 and sky q hub er110 both of which have 2 gigabit ports. The latest one has 4 gigabit ports. The problem is that Sky is the only provider that’s asking their customers to pay additional £2-£4 a month for their latest router.
I know we can use gigabit switches, but that’s spending another £20 for it, which may not seem like much. But when I only need 4 ethernet ports in a router, I don’t want to have to pay for an additional device just to let me have more ports.
I’ve never had FTTC, my area has only been upgraded with a Fibre cabinet in October 2019. I also use my own router but it’s an old Netgear DGN 2200 which is not suitable for Fibre. I figured out that spending £21.95 even if I lose a few megabits, it’s not a big deal when it is around £7 cheaper a month than Sky. Sky ADSL once charged me £33.75 a month secretly without letting me know. They are famous for hiking their prices and you have to be extra vigilant to look at the latest bills to find out.
My predicted speeds are between 68.2-80 Mbps. Even if I were to get only 60 Mbps that would be great compared to my current 12.30 Mbps with ADSL Plusnet and Sky services.
But if I do buy or need to buy a better quality router should I not be happy with the TalkTalk WiFi router, next time I would go with one of the smaller ISPs that don’t supply their free routers.
When I look at Sky vs TalkTalk bar chart of Overall Satisfaction and Reliability they are within 2% of each other https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps/compare?isp_21=1&isp_22=1&commit=Compare
So why pay extra for Sky when it is not guaranteed to provide you a better service! I also believe quality of service is very much area dependent. Some ISPs might perform better than others even under the same Openreach network.
“The problem is that Sky is the only provider that’s asking their customers to pay additional £2-£4 a month for their latest router.”
Don’t BT ask their customers to either pay extra for whole home wifi to get their Smart hub 2 router, or purchase it outright:- https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/11/bt-launch-new-smart-hub-2-broadband-router-and-complete-wi-fi.html
Sky simply seem to be copying BT, although maybe not as good.
I wonder what percentage of customers need a 4 port router, I was under the impression that many connect solely using wifi, and quite a few will have their dsl router in an inconvenient position to run multiple Ethernet cables to like in a hallway, next to their master socket.
Unless an isp router can be unlocked for any isp, or at very least allows more advanced user configuration, which the big ISPs routers never do, it basically going to end up stored in a cupboard during my contract, then in landfill, so as far as I’m concerned, it might as well be as low cost as possible to keep package prices down.
I’m looking forward to a future driver update that will allow me to use all 5 ports on my router, as I have my master socket conveniently near my TV. I also use an old router as a gigabit switch and access point as well, so 4 isn’t nearly enough for me.
Incidentally, be wary of using old routers, I’ve been told at least one of the DGN series of routers was vulnerable to my password bypass exploit: http://pathogenrush.blogspot.com/2018/06/netgear-dg834-router-series-password.html
@Mel: Well at least BT offer the latest Smart Hub router for the Superfast packages. The Wi-Fi discs are optional upgrades that most people do not need.
Most flats and even houses with the exception of the maisonette flats/houses don’t require Wi-Fi and it is pretty easy to use Ethernet cables.
I have a 2 bedroom flat, it’s more like 3, exceptionally big for Central London. I live with my parents so with the 3 of us we need 3 computers and 1 ethernet goes to the satellite receiver which doesn’t support wireless.
We drilled a small hole to the bottom corner of the walls and a 10-15 meter cable travels from the bedroom to the living room. The cables are nicely tucked to the edges of the walls so they are not visible and don’t damage the aesthetic looks of the flat. Before my mum used Wi-Fi USB adapter and it had problems such as lower speeds, higher latency, constant disconnections causing the need to reconnect it every once in a while to reconnect. For 2 years she has gone through this frustration. We finally had enough and bought an Ethernet cable and drilled a hole and the problem instantly disappeared.
For gaming Wi-Fi is generally a bad idea. I’m also an online chess player and consistent connection is important. Latency is also important for 1 minute bullet chess games.
Fortunately for me 4 ports is just enough as I don’t own a gaming console, I’m a PC Gamer and have no brothers or sisters. But I can imagine what’s it like for a bigger family.
Definitely there’s no point buying the latest ISP routers separately for £80-£100 that would be a big mistake as the router will be locked. If anyone is looking to buy the latest Sky router or any other ISP router, it is better to buy a proper Netgear or other branded router that is unlocked for all ISPs so when you switch provider the money will be well worth it.
Okay – well I will throw this back at you.. I got
FTTC 80/20 sync with best router they do. . Anytime Extra calls via VoIP. Sky Entertainment – Movies- Sports- HD – Kids – Q experience so UHD as well.- ultimate on Demand – Sky Boost – 25GB Mobile SIM – 1TB box and a Mini box and Sky Protect.
All for £66.75 a month.
Just for calling them before install to ask for a better package than I signed up with. And all installed and all working fine
So NOW tell me they are ” not good value” if you dare.
You know I could have hought that migh ER 203 unit had four gigbit ports on it, thank you for correcting me …
I could also have thought that I regularly got over 75 Mbps down and over 18 Mbps up too …
I need help here, just moved into an area FK2 8JR that has no fibre optic and i believe BT are in the future thinking of upgrading FTTC, and i will no doubt be anywhere near the cabinet, i am used to virgin fibre optic, i stream a lot and my son has a PS4 for gaming, we both need a fast connection any advice on the way to go or recommendations on provider..thanks …