Sky Broadband to Have Tens of Thousands of CityFibre Users by May 2025
A newspaper report has claimed that UK ISP Sky Broadband (Comcast) could have “tens of thousands” of customers on CityFibre’s alternative Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network as soon as May 2025. But the “full scale” roll-out is allegedly not expected to be completed until just a little later (H2 2025). Packages have yet to go live.
In case anybody has forgotten. Sky (Sky Broadband) currently only sells broadband packages via Openreach’s national network, which covers around 18 million UK premises for FTTP (many more if we factor FTTC/SOGEA). But this is due to change after last year’s announcement that CityFibre – an alternative FTTP network that covers 4.4m premises (4.2m RFS) – had signed a “long-term partnership” (wholesale) agreement with Sky (here).
The deal to secure support from one of the country’s largest three retail broadband providers is seen as being key in helping CityFibre to secure additional funding of around £1.5bn from investors (c. £500m as equity and £1bn as debt), which is something we’ve covered before (here). CityFibre already works with big names like Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen Internet and tens of other ISPs.
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Sky Broadband’s customers should also benefit from gaining access to faster (symmetric) speeds and at lower prices in CityFibre areas, although Sky has yet to formally launch their products and prices. Nevertheless, the latest FT (paywall) report indicates that the commercial launch is getting very close, and our own industry sources suggest the same.
Officially, neither CityFibre nor Sky are ready to say anything beyond what was already said last year. But according to ISPreview’s sources, Sky Broadband is already fully enabled across CityFibre’s entire footprint and recently completed the software side development. We’ve also seen evidence of some staff trials, which appear to have recently completed.
Sky’s next task will be to test live customer journeys, which is where the FT’s mention of “tens of thousands” of customers probably comes from (it’ll be in the low tens of thousands). Sources suggest the process could start this month and continue into May, beginning with new provisions and moving into migrations (e.g. re-contracting users). But bulk migrations of users on existing Openreach lines is unlikely due to the need for an engineer visit to install new ONTs (optical modems) inside homes.
In theory this means that Sky Broadband could be ready to launch their first CityFibre based broadband packages by around June 2025. This is also roughly when we expect the network operator to complete its upgrade to 10Gbps capable XGS-PON full fibre technology (here). Good timing.
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Sky are no doubt planning to officially launch all of this in the near future, although it’s not yet known if that will initially be a soft-launch or a live product launch on the same day. Either way, we’re looking forward to seeing how they’ll price their packages, what router they’ll bundle (it may need something better than the ‘Sky Max Hub‘ – pictured) and whether they do anything a bit different from other providers on the same network.
CityFibre currently still aspires to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their new full fibre network – representing c.30% of the UK. But their original target of hitting that by around 2025 will not be achieved, and the operator has instead indicated a desire to boost their growth via M&A (mergers and acquisition) of smaller alternative networks (here). They also hold ten state-aid funded Project Gigabit contracts, worth nearly £1bn.
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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Do we think CF will be impacted doing their debt refinance this month with the markets currently collapsing?
No
Great news for Cityfibre, a big step forward. Congratulations.
(Of course DF won’t like it!).
More competition on CF is always a good thing
Hopefully those in areas with Openreach and CityFibre coverage have a choice in taking service via CityFibre or not. Not everyone will want an additional line installed.
The vast majority of users are driven by price and speed the extra line being installed is neither here nor there.
The question is, will packages on CityFibre be cheaper than Openreach? I know on Vodafone this is the case.
I would assume that RRP of each stays the same with CityFibre being symmetric and any savings that Sky are making by using CF only becoming apparent if people are after a renewal deal or responding to a promotion.
Looking at their packages I’m being offered 500Mbps for £28, if the CityFibre service is the same price and symmetric that’s quite an appealing option considering you get IPv6, a real IPv4, and it’s DHCP.
I wonder if the future will be Comcast buying CF? There must be an attraction to Sky “owning” the entire end to end broadband and ITPV transmission – not mention the opportunity for backhaul capacity AND the revenue they’d generate if they kept wholesale agreements in place….
Even if Comcast were allowed to buy Cityfibre this would not prevent Ofcom from regulating it, and Ofcom wants transparent pricing by Cityfibre for its ISP users and thus protect consumers from anti-competitive behaviour.
There will be less of an incentive to own the whole stack as the number of main providers is reduced to three.
Hi.
When did Ofcom mention regulating CityFibre to ensure transparent pricing? Not aware of any wholesaler besides BT Group and KCOM being regulated like that as they don’t have Significant Market Power.
CityFibre negotiate prices in commercial confidence with their customers individually.
I take it to mean that it opens CF up to regulation. Openreach receives special treatment because of its common ownership with a major retail ISP, as well as the size of its network.
At which point does the seesaw finally tip and Ofcom either regulates the hypothetical Sky-CF/the very real VM-Nexfibre, or decides that OR can deregulate and set its own terms and pricing?
@Polish Poler:
Changes to regulation will come as the big three fill out their networks and provide a more competitive alternative to Openreach.
To let others wel ahead
Mark is right to be doubtful over the XGS upgrade claims, 40% by end of 2025 and 100% by mid 2025 are wildly different, and if the latter is true it means they only have about 2-3 months to get it done which seems over optimistic.