Is Sky ultrafast broadband any good?
Our review of Sky broadband
It offers a good range of broadband speeds for all types of households. However, its set-up costs are on the high side compared to most other providers, and if you aren't planning to bundle Sky TV there are cheaper (and faster) providers.
Sky Broadband Ultrafast - Want to go even faster? Stream, game and download as much as you want, whenever you want, all at the same time. With average download speeds of 145Mb/s. Sky Broadband Ultrafast Plus – Get a game-changing 500Mb/s average download speed.
Is Sky broadband any good in 2023? Sky broadband isn't the cheapest around. But you get a good, reliable service for your outlay, as well as speeds that are well in line with the likes of BT, TalkTalk and Plusnet. Although not as fast as Virgin Media.
Sky Broadband Gigafast and Ultrafast Plus are provided as standard using Full Fibre. Sky Broadband Superfast, Superfast 35 and Ultrafast will use Full Fibre if it's available where you live. If it's not, they'll use one of our other fibre technologies instead.
Sky vs NOW Broadband: Average broadband speeds
Sky has the edge when it comes to speed as it is now able to offer fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) plans that bring fibre right into the home. That means you can get speeds of 500Mbps and 900Mbps – perfect for gamers and those who live in homes with lots of connected devices.
Broadband speed
BT wins here by offering not only a wider selection but a far higher top speed with its premium Full Fibre 900Mbps broadband package. Sky currently offers just one regular fibre speed, averaging 59Mbps.
Getting to the faster end of the spectrum, Sky Ultrafast and Ultrafast Plus use Openreach's full fibre network. As such, they boast average speeds of 145Mbps and 500Mbps respectively – perfect for streaming movies and playing games in crisp 4K quality, plus sharing large files for home working.
The big difference between Superfast and Ultrafast is the speeds that you'll receive from each of the packages - Superfast broadband can offer speeds anywhere up to 100Mbps, whereas a true Ultrafast package will provide your home with speeds up to 900Mbps, which is a staggering upgrade in terms of performance.
- Superfast broadband - average of 59 mega bits per second download speed.
- Ultrafast broadband - average of up to 145 mega bits per second download speed.
- Ultrafast Plus broadband - average of 500 mega bits per second download speed.
This includes box sets of many different shows as well as past one-off programmes that featured on Sky channels. The main downside is that Sky doesn't have the rights to keep all TV programmes that are broadcast on its channels.
Why does Sky Q shut down?
If your Sky Q box is switching itself to standby, it's taking a while to switch on, or you're having connectivity problems with your Sky Q Mini box before 5:45am, it may be because your Sky Q box standby mode is set to either Eco or Active. The energy saving settings for your Sky Q box are Eco or Active.
Sky Broadband Hub is the latest Sky router and marks a major upgrade on previous models. That's because it has excellent signal range, meaning it can stretch further into the home and provide stable connections whether you're working, streaming video, playing games or browsing social media.
Re: Ultrafast broadband installation question
Gigafast doesn't use the existing phone line or socket: it's a whole new connection using purely optical cabling, and so can be located somewhere different to the existing set-up. The main stipulation is there has to be a couple of power sockets available.
Sky offer three full fibre broadband packages, with Ultrafast as their entry-level deal offering 145Mb download speeds for £30 per month. Sky Ultrafast Plus with 500Mb speeds, and Sky Gigafast with 900Mb speeds, are also available.
When you order Sky Broadband & Talk, if you don't have a suitable phone line, we'll have booked an engineer to install your broadband. But if you already have a suitable phone line, we'll activate you remotely instead.
Getting to the faster end of the spectrum, Sky Ultrafast and Ultrafast Plus use Openreach's full fibre network. As such, they boast average speeds of 145Mbps and 500Mbps respectively – perfect for streaming movies and playing games in crisp 4K quality, plus sharing large files for home working.
getting the speed advertised
Superfast and ultrafast broadband are significantly faster than standard broadband. Superfast broadband offers speeds of 30Mbit/s or more, and ultrafast 300Mbit/s or more.
You can choose Ultrafast Broadband which costs £30/month for an average download speed of 145Mbps. For faster speeds, there's also Ultrafast Plus Broadband which costs £40/month for an average download speed of 500Mbps. Sky's Ultrafast broadband plans are currently available in around 29% of UK homes.