Sky Broadband Launch WiFi 7 Router and 5Gbps UK Broadband via CityFibre UPDATE
Internet provider Sky Broadband has today gone fully live via CityFibre’s growing Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based home broadband network. The change is being launched alongside a new Wi-Fi 7 router – “Gigafast+ Hub” (SCER11BELUKS) – and two new packages – Full Fibre 2.5 Gigafast+ (2.5Gbps) and Full Fibre 5 Gigafast+ (5Gbps).
The agreement with CityFibre was first officially revealed in August 2024 (here) and this finally progressed to the customer pilot phase in May 2025 (here). But it’s taken the ISP this long to introduce the new network and packages because they’ve had to get all of their systems, support and services ready to cater for the added complexity of working with two different networks (Previously, Sky only sold packages via Openreach’s network).
As previously reported, ISPreview has long expected Sky Broadband to benefit from the new partnership with CityFibre by virtue of the fact that they would be able to launch faster (symmetric speed) and more competitively priced full fibre broadband packages into areas currently covered by the operator. Today’s announcement confirms this.
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The 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps speed packages will be delivered by Sky’s new cylindrical Gigafast+ Hub, which leverages tri-band WiFi 7 technology (Sky says it is “capable of delivering speeds twice as fast as WiFi 6“) and has been developed in collaboration with parent Comcast. The router also features 2 x 10Gbps Ethernet ports (1 x WAN and 1 x LAN) and “optimises internet traffic to avoid congestion between connected devices in the home“, although we’ve yet to be sent a detailed spec sheet (a request has been made).
Prices start at £70 a month for Full Fibre 2.5 Gigafast+ and £80 a month for Full Fibre 5 Gigafast+ with the WiFi Max add-on available “at no extra cost” (worth from £4 a month). The latter guarantees WiFi coverage in every room or money back (you also get better security, parental controls, device priority, convenient engineer visits and back-up Sky Mobile data for unplanned outages).
The new packages can be purchased today in Sky stores and via Sky’s call centres, as well as online by all eligible customers via Sky.com from the 15th July 2025 (you’ll also be able to get it in Curry’s stores “soon“).
Sophia Ahmad, Chief Consumer Officer at Sky, said:
“We’re proud to be setting a new standard in UK broadband. With speeds up to 5 Gbps, our new Full Fibre Gigafast+ packages make Sky the UK’s fastest major broadband provider. Combined with our existing full fibre range, we’re offering more choice than ever before. Powered by cutting-edge WiFi 7 technology, these plans deliver smarter, faster, and more reliable connectivity to homes across the country.”
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:
“Sky is making the most of CityFibre’s full fibre network to offer its customers fast and reliable Multi-Gig speeds and an outstanding online experience. This partnership is bringing more choice and better broadband to millions of homes on CityFibre’s nationwide, growing network – vital for how people live today and helping to deliver a healthy, competitive market for the long-term.”
Just to be clear. CityFibre are also supporting Sky’s slower FTTP broadband packages and the prices of those remain roughly aligned with those on the Openreach side of Sky’s network, much as they have been through the pilot phase too. Cityfibre’s tiers are still a bit cheaper, as well as being faster, at wholesale than Openreach’s and so Sky’s revenues may benefit.
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At present Openreach can’t match CityFibre’s speeds, although they do appear to have plans for symmetric speeds of up to 3.3Gbps via their new XGS-PON based FTTP network (here). But the operator has yet to begin customer pilots of the new tiers, and the service itself doesn’t currently seem likely to launch (commercially) for ISPs until later in 2026.
The announcement of Sky’s partnership with CityFibre going live also means that the latter should imminently be about to follow it with confirmation of a new £2bn+ funding deal (mix of debt and equity). CityFibre will use this to continue their operations and fuel another round of network consolidation, with several more altnets expected to be acquired in the next few months.
The launch may of Sky’s new products may of course worry Openreach, which has previously worked hard to keep Sky Broadband on their side (the earlier Equinox discounts on FTTP may have played a role in that effort). The operator now risks losing more market share to alternative networks and at an increasingly rapid pace.
However, the growing competition could also make it easier for the BT Group to argue with Ofcom that Openreach should be allowed to respond with greater FTTP discounts or softer regulation, which may become a factor in the current Telecoms Market Review (TAR) process.
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UPDATE 10:13am
We’ve managed to get a few more specs for Sky’s new router, which we’re told is currently ONLY available to those taking out Sky’s new 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps packages via CityFibre.
Gigafast+ hub features
WiFi 7 Tri-band (802.11be)
2.4GHz (gigahertz)
5GHz
6GHzInterfaces
Ethernet
1 x 10 GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) WAN (Wide Area Network) Port
4 x LAN Ports (Local Area Network)
1 x 10 GbE LAN
3 x 1 GbE LANVoice
Single RJ-11Dimensions
125mm x 241mm (W x H)
UPDATE 11th July 2025
We’ve got a picture showing the back of Sky’s new router.
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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That is an unexpected speed! Kind of want to move back to my old house where CF was available!!
Here’s hoping Vermin release Gig5 on nexfibre to compete with a big household name offering 5gbit.
Good news, anything that makes the Openreach ISPs ask why they can’t compete with Sky’s offerings will drive services forward for everyone.
it’s no secret that Openreach are preparing to launch multi gig symmetric services over XGSPON.
Though just as when the small fry ISPs like YouFibre have done it, the question remains – what is the actual use case for a 5Gbps residential services other than bragging rights. I guess someone will pay for it and Sky are perfectly entitled to take their money.
Exactly, I’m sure Sky aren’t going to complain at taking £80 off someone for 24 months for a service that might burst over 20Mbps a couple of times a day for a few minutes.
BT Ivor says “it’s no secret that Openreach are preparing to launch multi gig symmetric services over XGSPON.”
lol. Its no secret it will take forever with trials and pilots, and Netomnia moved onto 50PON ALREADY, you know, that “small fry”.
Its also no secret that the upload is in tiers of speeds with upcoming BT offering, making it expensive, hence the tiering.
So the typical arrogance of “small fry” from BT luvvies, is laughable because they (Netomnia) are already ahead technically as its deployed, and BT languish on GPON.
Another typical BT fan telling us “what is the actual use case for a 5Gbps residential services” – Just leave to the people paying for it. Perhaps they are running servers, and don’t want an expensive business leased line or SLA, and/or doing large media file offsite backups and offsite OS backups. They may be filmmakers or photographers and several in the household, some downloading and playing games. This is what is so wrong about the “BT model” and why I love the ALTNETS. Before competition, BT were peddling that FTTC was fast enough and people didn’t need speeds of FTTP.
Indeed, so why won’t Openreach take Sky’s money so that Sky can take that end user’s money?
Not the job of infrastructure providers to care why customers may want to pay for things, their job to provide them if there’s a commercial case to do so.
At some point sitting on GPON was going to start costing money and maybe we’re there. Selling frankly insultingly asymmetric products over a standard that was superceded over a decade ago was eventually going to run out of steam.
By my calculations it will only affect about 15% of Sky customers anyway so I doubt if Openreach will be quaking in their boots just yet, it will need some rapid consolidation once the refinancing deal is done.
“Fanny”:
Most if not all ISPs would insist on that being conducted using a business grade service, and that should be a leased line with an SLA if it is remotely mission critical, or at least PON with some kind of enhanced care level. So I ask again – what is the use case for residential service?
Would be especially hard to run servers on it when the vast majority of residential services are either dynamic IP or – spit – CGNAT.
Do you know of a family of Spielbergs in the making? Multiple filmmakers per household? Yeah ok sure.
As I said to you before, we don’t know the pricing for the future Openreach service. We do know that symmetric is in the mix.
Openreach has always been the largest FTTP operator in the UK. And of course the only one that seems to be financially successful too (without EBITDA games), even with Ofcom continuing to tie their hands behind the back through PIA and price controls.
Hello BT Ivor,
Most Altnets allow you to run HOME servers at least and most don’t care unless you start expecting an SLA for the service. This is an old BT Ploy statement to get as much business from business broadband or leased lines. Those days are OVER, it’s no longer the case. For a business that needs availability then sure, those other offerings are valid.
There are lots of people who film weddings and other events and do photography. We aren’t talking of highly compressed media here. We are talking of master copy stuff. Any idea how much uncompressed Intra format video takes up? clue anywhere from 200mbps/sec+. people share stuff with others or upload off site.
BT may be the largest incumbent, but in terms of customers and revenue, it will decline as competition takes hold. BT too slow to innovate; this is not the world now.
@Ivor the use case is pretty obvious and mentioned here loads of times: if you need to upload large files on a regular basis it has tremendous value. Now obviously the upgrade from 2.5 Gbs to 5 Gbs is not as game changing as the jump from 100 Mbs to 1 Gbs or 2.5 Gbs but it is something especially if your files are measured in 100s of Gigabytes.
For me personally the diminishing returns over 2.5 Gbps don’t make it worth £80. But if Zen offered it for an extra £5, I’d probably upgrade.
This really hurts as CityFibre cable and a cabinet is in place here, but it’s been abandoned since September 2023!
I’m hoping they will start bringing streets like mine live and getting some return on the work.
The funny thing is on their website it says “announcing” like they haven’t even started building yet.
Same Cuckoo have abandoned Midhurst since 2022
I want fibre
Openreach is building fibre in midhurst currently, we’re getting the spine cables from the exchange (I’m currently installing them) the business is expecting customers to start going live in Quarter 3 so towards the end of the year
If CFs refinancing is imminent then hopefully they will be able to acquire All Points Fibre’s network which I still can’t apparently get connected to with Cuckoo! Unfortunately my current contract with BT is up in November and if anything is in the offing it’s likely to be too late this time around.
If they do due diligence of the APF network, certain parts of it at least, they may decide against it!
Wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve noticed several properties round here that have had APFN then within a month or two an Openreach splicing box had appeared.
We’ve come a long way from the old US Robotics 14.4k days.
I went to school with one of the founders.
But is it better?
I had a supra 2400, but that was before the days of the internet with my Amiga and when I got my Amiga 4000/030, I had a U.S robotics Courier, still got it, great modem and used it for a bit with my PC when I went for a PC and then eventually got an internal one. I was doing some sorting out today and found a couple of internal modems, one of them have pci56pvp on it.
Sure we have gone from dial up to ADSL, to FTTC and super-duper speedy broadband and while we can do more, the community spirit has gone and is more commercialised.
For once, I agree with BTIvor, what is the point of 5Gb/s for households? Most can cope with less than 200Mb/s. No doubt is it a look what we can do.
I am pretty sure if Bopenreacyh have done it first, BTivor would be so happy and say it is a great thing.
Sadly, there will be people who will pay out for this because they think they need it and will never ever get the most out of it.
Like someone I know who was going to get 1Gbit broadband, because they were told they needed it, in the end I got them to go for a slower speed, and they saved £15 a month.
They do everything they need to do
This is good stuff. Sky should make use of other altnets especially in London. It could create conditions for Community Fibre to restart its build.
Shame the new router only available on their new speed plans. But personally I think the new plan names aren’t great. Doesn’t roll off the tongue like their legacy ones
Pretty sure if Community Fibre can wholesale at right offering for Sky, they may bite as they are pretty much across London and parts of Essex these days.
As someone wanting to escape Open reach ISPs when my contract comes up for renewal, another Cityfibre ISP is welcome news & choice for customers.
Yep, choice is normally good, sometimes there is too much, but other times, not enough. With broadband networks, there is certainly not enough for some people.
Why is northern Ireland Belfast not getting these speeds 2gb 3gb or 5 GB per second broadband from sky city fiber
Cityfibre have no network in Northern Ireland
City fibre don’t have network in NI. If you need those speeds order a leased line.
Cityfibre isn’t in N.Ireland. Maybe Sky will convince them to start building. Hopefully!
Because CityFibre don’t operate in Northern Ireland
No City Fibre in NI.
Unless Fibrus is On CityFibre’s acquire Fibrus….
You can get 8 Gig with YouFibre here though…
It was a unexpected surprise from Sky
I would suspect Openreach will now lose Sky as a customer in areas where City fibre are now? Surely they will be allowed to lower there prices in those areas to be able to compete?
Not over night, but new customers will certainly be directed towards City Fibre as default. I checked earlier and the online ordering does do this.
At contract renewal for existing customers, Sky may waive a price reduction to re-contract onto those who can have City Fibre, especially if there is cost saving for them…
I’ve checked a few postcodes with OR and CF both available. Sky defaults to CF on every order I tried.
Question answered on why they wanted XGS on CityFibre.
Brilliant news for cityfibre. This should help get the debt refinance deal done. Now the race is on – how much churn can OR stomach, how quickly can cityfibre get to 30% in their locations. 2027 will be intersting! Equinox III comes to mind though.
Openreach’s stated expectation is that they expect 40-55% take up so if they build to 30 million premises as they say they will they will still have around 15 million customers. The real question is how much competition the market can stand. Personally I don’t see more than 2 operators in any location is really viable except for the most densely populated places. For 3 networks to work you would need an even split of customers and that is probably unlikely.
It will be interesting to see how much Openreach lose and if they can cope with it. They are a large company, so I say they should be okay, sadly
Well that is quite the surprise. Nice!
With their new plans with Sky, are they only being locked to Cityfibre, or are Openreach getting they new speed
Unfortunately, due to poor product choice, BT Openreach ISPs are limited by asymmetric service based on legacy GPON so the answer for a long time is No.
The current pricing of EE 1.6gbps asymmetric is around similar for 2.5gbps symmetric on a Cityfibre based network using more modern XGS-PON, which is better suited to handle congestion and as a result more capable of higher symmetric speeds.
I don’t understand why people are so obsessed with multi gig service when most devices are only manufactured with ports to handle 1GB.
The average user just doesn’t require it. I’d say 2% of the UK would actually pay the price for that speed.
I agree, if you have a large family then yes, but even then 500Mb/s will be fine for most or even less.
I know a family of four who went from 1gig to 200Mb/s as they wanted to save a bit of money, and they notice very little difference. Games are still played, streaming still work, and they can still do their business stuff online. Files are a bit slower to upload and download, but they are Quark and word files for the most part, so still very quick and that is the only difference they have noticed.
Wi-Fi will not reach the speeds and the further away you are from the router the slower Wi-Fi will be.
As already been said, it is about bragging rights, we can go faster than you type thing.
Sadly some people will fall for the marketing rubbish and think they need it, even the clever ones sadly.
And there are some of us with 10Gbps capable devices already up and running and consuming multigbps internet right now (At least two of us in the comments here are I know for sure)
Why are we so quick to stifle innovation? It’s getting boring.
PK
The main reason i keep 1GB is for the nephew downloading games on his XBOX. To correct you most PC motherboards over the last few years come with a 2.5gbit ethernet port. Although you are right that consoles and other devices only have 1gb or older wifi.
@Cognizant
You can add me to that. I have 2Gbps and a 1Gbps backup all running on the same router which has 10Gbps SFP+. I also agree about people trying to slow down the future. I personally think what Sky want for what they offer is cracking value. It’s likely to never be as expensive as OR will offer.
I don’t think people are trying to stifle innovative or anything, I’m all for multi gig Fibre etc. But the reality is that unless you have multiple people on multiple devices downloading huge files then multi gig fibre for the majority of people is a luxury and not needed.
Im on 1Gb symmetrical with Lit Fibre for 2 years now had 500Mb for a year prior. £32 a month for my 1Gb, I wouldn’t benefit from paying another £50 for 5Gb (Which I can get from Sky as its in my area now). My main data usage is via my PS5 Pro, Series X which both have 1Gb LAN. Both very rarely max out 1Gb anyway, I would have to be downloading on both at the same time to achieve this. Laptop connects via WiFi and probably gets anywhere from 500-700Mb.
If Sky or anyone else offered 5Gb and it was the same £32 aa I was paying now for 1Gb sure I’d go for it.
This is excellent news overall. It kicks BT into touch, because one major ISP has said your asymmetric slow speeds are not enough for our customer offerings.
BT will cry that they need a price review, but they shouldn’t be allowed as it’s too early. They’ve had unfettered access to existing customers from ADSL and FTTC that have been pushed up to FTTP and a brand that’s been around for decades to get the customers. They aren’t giving PIA for free, far from it to ALTNETS.
The BT fans on here were stating that until ISP’s started to tell BT that their product offerings were not good enough that there was no business need to offer symmetric and faster speeds. Well, Sky is the first one to tell them; unfortunately, it will fall on deaf ears, and the expensive tiered upload speed eventual approach of BT is the classic, too little, too late. Who knows what some of the ALTNETS may be offering by then, given that Netomnia are already 50PON ready.
Cityfibre fan boy
Please tell me who actually needs 5gbps down and up? Businesses – yes content creators – Yes normal user – No
Who is that then? I am not on any ONE particular ISP side.
Just love competition of new providers deploying decent offerings at decent prices, some with decent no mid contract price rises whilst long term, not being dependent upon crippled, out of date technologies from likes of the BT dinosaur.
Isn’t it great to have (expanding) choice? Perhaps not, if you are BT lol
A lot of businesses don’t need 5Gbps…
Home users, vast majority don’t need it either. However, please stop telling people what they want or don’t want. If I want 5Gbps, I’ll jolly well have it…
@Ryan
Need? No Want yes. Afford it yes.. who cares about the rest eh?
Wow – this is awesome!. I can’t get it but I am hoping it drives everyone else on. On a sidenote £80 a month for Symmetrical 5Gbps is a total bargain!
community fibre is £59pm for the same speeds
yes but they have a much smaller footprint – for a nationwide provider that IS a good price.
Seems pretty expensive compared to other CityFibre providers. For example Zen offer 2.5 with the eero Max 7 router for £65 (£55 with standard router) and they are not exactly the cheapest either. I’m guessing these base prices are set with steep “discounts” and 24 month contracts in mind.
To note: 2.5gbs symmetric with Cityfibre is broadly similar in price to BT EE’s 1.6gbps asymmetric service using legacy GPON, which is more prone to congestion if users were allowed higher speeds and mirrored symmetric speeds. There is a lot more for your money compared to BTs offering….
“and has been developed in collaboration with parent Comcast”. A rebadged Comcast unit with custom firmware then, the fact that the phone port is RJ-11 suggests that this was designed for the American market.
Comcast isn’t great and it might be the same one they use in the states to provide at present 7 gbits, think it’s frontier or something.
Does anyone have info on slower speeds than the 2.5gbit with sky? Eg how much is 1gbit symmetrical?
Same as openreach customer pricing.
Those that saying no one really needs 5 Gbps for residential usage are out of touch. We have console games over 250gbs and pc games such as Ark at over 450 gigabytes, that’s 11 mins on 5 Gbps or 55 mins on 1 gigabyte. On BT current 300 mbit service that’s close to 4 hours!
Then you have digital creators, youtube accepts raw video, these files are often over 1TB and it’s much better to allow YouTube to do the encoding straight to AV1, most people can’t encode in AV1 at home, it takes days.
Then you have cloud backups, I have 40 TB HDD and will soon be expanding, there is many cloud services like Blaze who allow unlimited storage online, I’d rather my backups be done quickly rather than it taking days to get the latest revision.
If your just watching Netflix, buying from Amazon, or simply reading emails, then fine stick with 76 Mbits but don’t assume your usage is the same as others.
Further it opens a lot of doors for people to host game servers, web servers and so forth, and before someone says SLA isn’t assured, it never is no matter what service you get, I’m on Vodafone, and it’s close to 97.5%, FTTP is so far more reliable, the only time it’s gone down for me is she scheduled maintenance.
Sweden broadband BBB.se had 1 gbit for residential customers over 25 years ago! And Hong Kong long before that. Everytime they increase the speed, it’s good needs for everyone, especially those on slower packages as it will be less congested, eventually as we move to 10 gbit and it’ll stick at 10 Gbps for a decade or longer.
I don’t think people are out of touch I think that people don’t need to be spending £80 a month to download something quicker once or twice a month.
Console games are massive yes but the latest consoles still have a 1Gb LAN and only the PS5 Pro has WiFi 7 out of the latest consoles.
I have 1Gb symmetrical with my PS5 Pro and Series x via LAN and both very rarely hit 1Gb download speeds for a considerable time, because you have to think of the servers at the end and what speeds they can actually give you at that particular time.
With the consoles having rest mode, sleep mode etc then my Series X even on the energy saving mode will download updates in the background. Remote installation from apps, so can install games earlier in the day if required.
So while there may be some people who would want to have 5Gb I don’t think majority of residential customers would need it and not at the cost it is. I can get the 5Gb with Sky but would I pay £48 more a month for it, and never hit anywhere close to 5Gb limit.
Just read Comcast is behind the router, eek, wish they would partner Netgear, Linksys, heck if tplink is better. Has the internal datasheet been leaked for the router yet?? Handling 5 Gbps pppoe unless they intend to use dchp or something else is a huge bottle neck above 1 Gbps. Also, cheap arses with the Lan ports! Those lan ports should be at least 2.5 gbit, and the 10 gbe as a uplink 10 gbit SPF+
Can’t imagine a lot of people buying the 5 GBE will be relying on the WiFi for 5 Gbps speeds, unless they have many devices using the WiFi at once.
So I have just had this fitted with 5gbps services with the XER10 router, it is indeed a Comcast router, it even shows it in the code in a few places, and there is even an undocumented bridgemode that’s fairly trivial to activate, and that’s what I’m doing as this router is a locked down POS