Sky Mobile UK Add Ultrafast 5G Plans At No Extra Cost for VIPs
Sky (Sky Broadband) has, after a short delay, finally made ultrafast 5G technology available on their Sky Mobile plans at no extra cost (with VIP), which as part of their existing Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) agreement is based off the new network being deployed by O2 (Telefonica UK) in the 3.4GHz band.
At present O2’s 5G network is already live in busy parts of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Slough and Leeds (October 2019), which was followed by Leicester and Lisburn in November 2019 and earlier this month those were joined by Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford, Sheffield, Coventry, Nottingham, Norwich, Bristol, Derby and Stoke. Check out O2’s roll-out plan for 2020.
Sky Mobile’s 5G service was due to go live in November 2019, although clearly it took a little longer than originally planned. The SIM-Only plans start at £6 a month for 3GB of data (mobile broadband) and go up to £25 for their top 25GB data allowance (all plans include unlimited calls and texts). Handset bundles also exist and they have several 5G capable phones on offer (e.g. £28 a month for the Samsung Galaxy A90 5G with 3GB of data).
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Oddly though you can only get 5G at no extra cost if you join Sky’s free VIP service via the My Sky app, which is somewhat of an irritating requirement. All VIP does is offer customers some extra benefits, plus access to exclusive screenings, sports events, Sky VIP experiences with sports stars and celebrities and a few other things. Customers not signed up to Sky VIP will get 5G free for 1 month and then pay £5 a month after that.
Paul Sweeney, MD of Sky Mobile, said:
“We’re excited to be launching superfast 5G on the award-winning Sky Mobile network, and even more excited to be offering it free to all Sky VIP customers. Sky Mobile is the ideal choice for anyone who wants a faster mobile connection and great value.”
As you’d expect Sky’s 5G supporting plans will continue to support all of their existing mobile features (e.g. data rollover, Sky Watch for unlimited video streaming via any Sky app and Swap that lets users upgrade to a new handset whenever they like etc.). To celebrate the launch Sky is running a competition until 5th March 2020 with Sky VIP to give customers the chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G and a Sky Mobile data plan for 1 year.
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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Interestingly, online when adding 5G to your account Sky presents the following warning:
“Please note: If you don’t have a 5G-ready phone and choose a 5G add-on, the quality of your 4G service will be affected.”
I wonder what exactly they’re planning on doing to your 4G connection.
That’s a head scratcher 🙂
Very odd. I presume part of the cell equipment/mobile standard spec is to negotiate the connection characteristics of the device trying to connect. Once it establishes 4G (for example) as the maximum, that’ll be it. I don’t see how speed could be impacted if it wouldn’t try and force an out of spec connection on a device.
I was curious so I asked them. One advisor seems to think that 4G customers will get ‘priority’ on 4G, whereas 5G customers get priority on 5G. Sounds like traffic management will be coming into play.
A month on and it now says 4G will be severely degraded if you add 5G t your plan. The irony being that in my area even degraded 4G is 5 times faster than fully functional 5G!
I got a smashing little SIM deal off them when I renewed my TV contract the other month – £6 sim for £3 a month – 3GB data, unlimited calls and texts. It was ideal for my second phone I have for work no tie in minimum contract term. I was spending £6 a month on Giffgaff, so I was very pleased
The VIP thing is a bit of a gimmic but I am on the top layer of it and you often get free box office movies so it’s not worth forgetting about. It will be a good few years before I have a 5G phone though