ISP Sky Broadband Launch 500Mbps FTTP Broadband Package
UK ISP Sky Broadband (Comcast, Sky TV) has today launched a new 500Mbps “Ultrafast Plus” package for consumers, which as leaked last month (here) is based off Openreach’s 550Mbps (75Mbps upload) capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) product tier and will cost customers £45 per month.
Naturally, you’ll only be able to take this product if you’re covered by Openreach’s new full fibre network, which is currently available to 5 million UK premises and should reach 25 million (c.80% of the country) by December 2026. Sky’s launch also follows shortly after Openreach unveiled major new discounts for their wholesale ISP partners (here).
The new package is intended to complement Sky’s existing “Ultrafast” (145Mbps) package, which itself costs from £35 per month for the first 18 months of service (£40 thereafter). By comparison, customers of “Ultrafast Plus” will pay £45 per month during their initial contract term (£50 post-contract), plus a one-off £19.95 setup fee.
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As usual, you can also expect to receive their latest Sky Broadband Hub (SR203) router, a VoIP based home phone service, parental controls and unlimited usage. The new package also comes attached to Sky’s Speed Guarantee, which will enable customers to claim money back if the connection performance drops below 400Mbps (for 3 consecutive days or more), starting from the first 14 days after activation.
Aman Bhatti, Director of Propositions at Sky Broadband, said:
“Today’s Ultrafast Plus launch reflects our commitment to providing customers with the fastest and most reliable broadband speeds possible. This is why Ultrafast Plus comes with the UK’s fastest Speed Guarantee, so our customers can game, stream, download and work from home seamlessly.”
We should point out that Sky Broadband has previously also been linked to exploratory talks with CityFibre and Virgin Media (VMO2) over gaining wider wholesale access to those networks, but it remains to be seen what – if anything – will actually come of that.
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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Wonder if Virgin Media will now start a price war to undercut BT Openreach and its associated ISP’s that utilise its network?
M500 is currently delisted this morning on the VM site
That’s not the case. M500 is still there, you just have to look under “Broadband with Oomph” or Broadband & Phone. This hasn’t changed today, it’s been like this for a while.
I’m referring to broadband only
I have FTTP available – but Sky only shows me the superfast packages, talktalk is the same, with BT i can see upto 900
Sky and TalkTalk can be a bit variable on the availability of their highest tiers, which may be related more to either local capacity or some restrictions in their ordering system. It’s often hard to know.
I would speak to Sky – took me ages to get them to recognise the GFast option on my line. Once they did, installed no problem at all.
Typical. I got Sky’s 145Mbps service installed just last week.
Still, at least I now have an upgrade path should the need arise.
You have 14 days cooling off period with any provider.
I just rang BT as I had 100mbit FTTP added yesterday, to see if they’ll match the sky offer.
Closest they could get to it was £63/mo for 500/70 package.
I’ll give it a week or so to settle in and see if that changes, else i’ll cancel and sign up to the sky offer.
(Sky is a short contract, better speed, and higher guaranteed speed – seems a no brainer)
I’d be inclined to Ring Sky retentions and see if they’ll move you if you’re interested in going up in package.
@Matt
BT offer me Full Fibre 900 (no landline) for £59.99 from URL https://www.bt.com/products/broadband/deals/ or https://www.bt.com/products/broadband/affiliate-offers/
so avoid that £63 for 500Mb
@occasionally factual
Thanks for that, this lines actually a backup to a Virgin 600mbit line for me(because their network is unreliable), so I’m not after top tier speed – it’s just a bit of a no brainer for £5 to go to 5x the speed and get a higher guaranteed speed of 400mbit.
Cheers for the detail though 🙂
Sky let you upgrade anytime so you don’t need to worry about the contract really just call up and get a new contract on the faster speed
From Sky’s T&C’s
“Not available to customers without a mobile signal at home or reliant on their landline for emergency services.”
“Prices may change during your contract”
Both worth bearing in mind.
Would that be a Sky Mobile signal? O2 is a bit flakey at my address, but other networks are available (as they say)
“Prices may change during your contract” – could mean it may reduce when Openreach amend their pricing later this year.
@Christopher – It says what it says. You must have a mobile signal as the Sky VOIP service is not 999 compliant. There is no legal requirement in the UK for a VOIP provider to allow access to 999 and it looks like Sky don’t. So you need to be able to contact the emergency services using a mobile phone.
@JamesP – I love the optimism but I’d put money on it being an increase like every provider does. As for the new FTTP wholesale prices, from the wording it is only on new FTTP contracts starting after the September date. Also the price cuts aren’t approved yet and I can see some companies (Virgin, CityFibre, etc) objecting as this is going to hit their sales. All these companies have form in this area and have used the courts to stop BT group in the past.
The thing with the mobile signal is because of the voip phone as if the power goes out the landline dies, Sky are working on a battery back up solution but it’s not readily available yet. You need to have a mobile signal to ensure that if the power or broadband goes down that you still can call 999. This is something the customer declares and takes responsibility for. It’s just a safety measure
I’d like to think VMO2 could launch wholesale by Q4 2021 into Q1 2022, inline with there Docsis 3.1 upgrade. Would be great to have a choice of providers than just Virgin Media.
I’ve seen Analyses stating that CTV upgrades, via the Docsis route, isn’t a good long term strategy, and going to a full PON infrastructure would have been better. Docsis might currently allow cheaper fast speed upgrades, but VM will require a lot more on street power requirements, and maintenance, than the very simple PON access network that Openreach is building. PON is more easily upgradable, from a bandwidth perspective, requires less maintenance, and mainly doesn’t require powered street cabinets. There’s an argument that VM should have gone for a complete network replacement, upgraded to PON, and scrapped their legacy network which is effectively what Openreach are doing.
All of Virgins expansion via its Project Lightning is being done via fibre.
It’s FTTP using RFOG (Radio Frequency over Glass), basically DOCSIS down fibre.
In all of these areas (a few million homes) they can easily switch the network from RFOG to PON based.
However as far as power goes, the RFOG is basically passive from the main cabinet.
It’s the consumer that powers the converter at their property.
To change their existing HFC network to a PON would have cost similar amounts to a nationwide FTTP rollout.
I haven’t seen anyone suggesting switching their HFC to PON would have been cheaper than upgrading to DOCSIS 3.1.
I’d love to see these “Analyses” that say PON would have been “better”.
What does better even mean?
It certainly wouldn’t have been cheaper to deploy.
Yet again, chance would be fine thing!:(
Just signed up to this alongside a TV package. I’m glad it came online today as my BT FTTP is due to activate tomorrow (over a week late). Really wanted Sky TV but the 145Mbps Fibre previously was just too slow, so this is ideal now (shame there’s not a 900/110Mb option with Sky).
How can 145Mbps be too slow? Is it wireless coverage thats the issue rather than the service or is the 145Mbps contended at peak times. The ASA states a provider has to meet the 50% at peak times for consumer 8pm-10pm so you should achieve 72.5Mbps on average. Thats a lot of video streaming at the same time? From my experience most slow connections are due to the wireless home network or lack of it. Just curious.
@Neil
I do a lot of 4K video editing, sharing, online cloud backups etc.. Add in PC gaming (often multi-hundred GB downloads and patches), and the 145Mbps package was too slow for me to even consider. It is the poor upload speeds that are really killer.
I was basically in a situation whereby it was BT 900/110 package or pay a very expensive rate for 500 / 70 with Zen. Thankfully, this Sky package came online in time. 500 down and 70 up is very good (I’d rather something like 300-400 symmetric, but hey ho) until hopefully one of the alt nets delivers symmetric service to my house.
145 meg is way too slow. I am a photographer and upload several gigabytes at a time so i need the 900/110 to keep my sanity. Even if i wasnt doing photo work, my nephew downloads games on his xbox. So instead of waiting 6 hours for a game to download its done in maybe 20-30 minutes. He even downloaded 11 games on his xbox gmae pass while doing his homework. Impossible to do on 145 meg.
That’s a very good price if 500/75 cost £45 a month for full fibre
With TalkTalk openreach FTTP, it’s £35 per month with the first 3 months free. Also they have an exclusive customer care line (UK based), worlds away from their usual FTTC service!
Talk talk is £35 with first 3 months free, so effectively £26pm first year, for 506 mb/s
I spoke to them a minute ago and the guy said a 1gb offering was coming soon instead of 500 but he didn’t know price.
Hoping to take a punt on this in a new build house in a few months but do currently have sky fibre which has been very reliable.
I too was tempted by Talk Talk in my new build. But their useless address systems and call centre staff (UK and non-UK ones) couldn’t find my address despite a neighbour’s being on there. Kept telling me I only had FTTC despite not even having any line other than FTTP and speaking to their FTTP dept.
I gave up, which is probably a good thing. It is Talk Talk, after all!
“Naturally, you’ll only be able to take this product if you’re covered by Openreach’s new full fibre network, which is currently available to 5 million UK premises and should reach 25 million (c.80% of the country) by December 2026.”
Thought is was 7th July not April 1st?
Great to see faster services becoming available at a fairly reasonable price (compared to others). Hopefully we will see further price reductions from all the players later in the year when Openreach’ new pricing comes in to place.
Still, at this time, if I had the FTTP network available to me (planned for next 6ish months) then I would probably look at Talk Talk’s 500Mbps service at £35.