Sky Broadband UK clarifies impact on users as Yahoo cut email storage to 15GB

After over a week of trying to get a clear answer, Sky Broadband has now confirmed to ISPreview that Yahoo Mail’s recent move to introduce new storage limits on their free UK email platform, which slashed the previous limit of 1 TeraByte (1,000GB) to 15 GigaBytes, will NOT apply to their own Yahoo based email platform (Sky Yahoo Mail); despite customers being told otherwise.

Sky originally migrated from a Google to a Yahoo! based email platform all the way back in 2013 (here) and in recent years the service has appeared to apply a 1TB storage limit. This is more than a little generous, particularly given how most modern free email services tend to adopt storage limits of anything from 1GB and up to around 65GB (e.g. GMX).

However, the situation changed in May 2026 after Yahoo announced that their free storage in the UK would be cut to 15GB, which is also to be more strictly enforced. In short, users that hit this limit would now find that they could no longer send or receive email until they either cleared some of their old messages or paid to upgrade their plan (e.g. the Yahoo Mail Plus plan gives you 200GB for £4.99 per month).

What’s been less clear is whether or not this applies in the same way to Sky Yahoo Mail because the broadband provider has not issued an official notice. But Sky’s customers did receive a general message directly from Yahoo in early 2026, which indicated that Sky’s customers would be impacted by the change. The difficulty is that Yahoo! has sometimes had slightly different policies for different regions and platform arrangements.

The good news is that, after a fair bit of back and forth (including some discussions between Sky and Yahoo), the broadband ISP has confirmed to ISPreview that customers with Sky Yahoo Mail accounts are NOT affected by storage changes in Yahoo Mail, and there are “no plans” to extend these changes to Sky Mail (remember to take the use of “no plans” with a pinch of salt, as plans can and do change, often unexpectedly). Sky added that they’re continuing to work closely with Yahoo Mail to support Sky Mail, a legacy service used by a small proportion of their customers.

The reality is that most of Sky’s Yahoo Mail users wouldn’t even be close to a 15GB limit or exceeding it, but it’s certainly possible that such a change might have caught the odd long-time customer out, if it had been applied to them.

Admittedly only a very few broadband providers still include a free email service these days and, of those that do, only a tiny portion of the customer base tends to use such services (usually the most loyal long-term subscribers).

As we’ve said before, it’s always wise to use a separate email service from the one provided by your ISP, not least because becoming too attached can make it harder for you to switch providers (i.e. you’ll often lose access to your address) and Ofcom doesn’t regulate email services (i.e. there’s no support). In general, it’s better to sign-up with one of the many free email providers.