Sky Broadband’s New 900Mbps Gigafast UK Package Goes Live
As first predicted on Monday (here), UK ISP Sky Broadband has today officially confirmed the launch of their new Gigafast Package for homes, which offers average download speeds of 900Mbps (90Mbps uploads) via Openreach’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
The details of this are exactly as we described on Monday. Customers will pay £55 per month on an 18-month term for the service, rising to £60 thereafter. The package also includes free setup, a Sky Broadband Hub router (SR203 / Hub 4.2), support for Sky’s VoIP based home phone service, parental controls and unlimited usage.
The new package also comes attached to Sky’s usual Speed Guarantee, which enables customers to claim money back if the connection performance drops below 600Mbps (for 3 consecutive days or more). The only real annoyance here is that Sky’s SR203 (Hub 4.2) router is starting to feel a bit underpowered for their new top tier. Hopefully a Wi-Fi 6 capable device is on the way.
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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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Having 900mb with WiFi 5 is like having a Ferrari and only driving around at 30mph
Only if you are using the WiFi on the hub. There is also this thing called “Ethernet”.
Actually you CAN hit around 900 Mbps over Wi-Fi 5 but you need a 4×4 Wi-Fi 5 client (as well as s 4×4 Wi-Fi 5 router of course) and there’s not many of those around, eg Asus PC-AC88 pci card. Otherwise you’re looking at around 500-600 Mbps tops using 2×2 or 3×3 clients. But yeah you really need Wi-Fi 6 to consistently get close to gigabit speeds wirelessly.
If you want proper WiFi performance you’re not going to use an ISP router anyways…
@Joe Smith
One could even suggest that it’s quite a clever / devious way of Sky managing their network load!
£55 a month and then £60 after contract? Way too expensive for the likes of Sky! TalkTalk do it for £49, EE do it for £50 if you have mobile with them, BT do it for £55 with 12 months Xbox Game Pass Ultimate worth £120. Who the hell is gonna pay Sky £60 a month at the end of the contract when you can have Zen for the same price?
It’s £55 per month. Zen is £60 per month plus £10 per month if you would like line rental too. Who cares what the price is after the contract ends? That’s when you shop around for a new deal. They all in the same ballpark. Personally I would pay the extra for Zen, but the average person would probably like to save a bit and have the one bill.
So in answer to your question, probably quite a few people.
I’m with Zen, same package is equivalent to £52 a month due to 3 months free offer. It’s 24 month contact, but no price rises, even when ends. Would believe Zen would be cheaper!
This is because there are fewer ways to differentiate pricing between FTTP providers on Openreach’s network. Back in the old FTTC/ADSL days, we had LLU unbundling and that created quite a big gap between ISPs.
Probably the type of people that already pay Sky through the nose for TV.
I love how out of all the providers mentioned, all Bob seems to care about is Zen. Think he must be a disgruntled customer.
Are you still prevented from using your own router with Sky?
You can use your own, but you may need to google around a bit to find the correct settings for DHCP Option 61 on Sky (not all routers work with this properly).
It looks like it’s changed at some point – having a router that can do IPv6 and pull a prefix will then also get assigned an IPv4 address
https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Broadband/Using-3rd-Party-Router/m-p/3651705#M242413
Indeed Mark – it’s a little bit of a fuss.
I’ve configured both Google Wifi and a Ubiquity Dream machine on Sky broadband.
In both cases, the wizard set up failed when connected direct to the Openreach ONT.
Solution is to connect to Sky router for initial set up, and then go into devices to configured IPv6 correctly, then you can ditch the router and connect the devices direct to openreach ONT.
I just went to the upgrade page and I’m being offered the new package for £52 a month (for 13 months – which is to the end of my existing contract). I’m currently on their 500mbps package for £42 a month. Like many home workers, I’m more concerned with the upload speed, that is the limiting factor for me but unfortunately I’m not in an altnet area with symemetrical download speeds
Out of interest, what part of your home working requires an upload of more than 90 Mbps?
@WINSTON
There are people who need fast upload speeds like that. If you are a photo/video editor it enables you to work from home if you can upload your work in minutes to your boss/customer. I am a qualified photographer and upload gigabytes at a time to the cloud. I also have several CCTV systems and run a Plex media server over the cloud. 50meg upload would be too slow for me too, especially if you consider modern cloud services like adobes photoshop tools etc. And thats before you add in kids xbox gaming and such like.
@Winston
I’m a computer programmer in health care and connect using a VPN. I compile code day in day out which needs to be copied to servers, network shares etc. I also run and publish huge data extracts, reports etc etc. I could go on. We’re talking gigabytes of data every day. The limiting factor in much of my work is upload speed, copying large files is painfully slow compared to a gigabit ethernet office network.
@SaintMatt
Really, why would your employer be so stupid, you should be doing the bandwidth intensive work on a device in the office/comms room via a remote session and only putting it on a laptop when you need to work offline.
I checked my sky account. They are offering it to me for £52 a month, and have stopped offering the 500mbps package.
I upgraded, £10 a month extra isn’t to bad – £2.50 a week. Very rarely need this speed, but its nice to have it there when I do. Speed test I am getting 822mbit down and 78mbit up. I don’t use Sky’s router, I have two AmpliFI Alien points, both hard wired.
Not too bad. Is the incoming line speed the full 900Mbps?
Also on the Alien’s, if you use wireless backhaul between the Alien router and the satellite, what can you get on the satellite? As in if you wire your device in to the satellite.
That’s doing speed test from the AmpliFi. Both the Amplifis are hard wired.
Yes I understood that. I was asking if you use a Wireless backhaul between the two Aliens (NOT hard wired backhaul between the router and the satellite), what is the speed you get at the Alien satellite?
Does the satellite get that high speed with wireless backhaul?
Hi Harold. No I don’t use wireless at all. So the satellite Alien is always using a Cat6 backhaul.
I know that. I was asking what speed you get at the Alien satellite IF you did switch to wireless backhaul! To try to see the difference versus wired.