The Group CEO of Sky (Sky Broadband), Jeremy Darroch, has quietly revealed to Comcast’s investors that their ISP division will debut “our broadband product to businesses” in the United Kingdom “later this year“, which will be followed by a full launch in 2021.
The plans were revealed this week in a very low key way, while Jeremy was speaking to investors as part of Comcast’s (parent company) latest results announcement. Sadly, the information provided was extremely vague and, so far, Sky have not been willing to help ISPreview.co.uk fill in the blanks, but we can speculate.
At present the separate Sky Business division already sells high speed Ethernet services to larger businesses, as well as a business broadband solution for supplying residential lettings. In our view the new product thus seems likely to be a range of business broadband services for smaller businesses (i.e. the business equivalent of Sky’s FTTC, G.fast and FTTP based internet access packages for homes).
All of Sky Broadband’s major ISP rivals in the UK have been offering similar packages to SME businesses for many years, but for whatever reason Sky itself has tended to only focus on the residential market. Moving into the business sector would thus be a logical, if long overdue, step by the provider. As above, we’ll find out more when they soft launch it (whatever “it” is) “later this year.”
So static IP’s for home office users is on the way?
Apparently you can already phone Sky and ask for a static IP address now.
@Tom
You used to be able to get a static IP on a broadband package called BB Unlimited Pro or Fibre Unlimited Pro. They still sell these but don’t offer Static IP as part of the packages anymore. Only those who were on those packages and have already been set up with a static IP can have it.
So Sky buy Easynet, drop UKonline soon after, then sell Easynet, and now are going to start their own broadband service using all of Easynet backbone.. talk about a roundabout way of doing things.
If you think of it as Comcast selling business products using the network and branding they acquired from Sky it becomes far less roundabout.
Previously the telecom products Sky sold were in support of their main (and most profitable) product, Sky TV.
Growth in the UK pay TV market is limited so it makes sense for Sky to now move into the business telecoms market.
And their parent company Comcast are very big in the US in business offerings so Sky will be able to leverage their expertise.
Those selling Sky in shopping centers, their days must be numbered.