Sky Broadband review: Below par, unless you’re here for the TV bundles

It feels like the vultures are circling for Sky’s core businesses. The satellite TV business is being eaten alive by streaming, and on the evidence of our survey, its broadband offering is being easily outclassed by rivals.

To give you a taste of why Sky scores relatively poorly for value for money (71% of its customers were satisfied), you need only compare its tariffs with those of award-winning Vodafone. Sky wants £44/mth for its fastest “Gigafast” tariff while Vodafone will offer you the same speed for £8 less per month, a saving of almost £200 over the life of the standard two-year contract.

If you’re going to charge a premium for your broadband, it had better be good, but there’s little evidence of that from our survey. The second worst reliability score of the eight providers on test, combined with the second worst rating for speed is hardly a “take my money” pitch. The now outdated router equipment that Sky supplies as standard is hardly going to tempt new customers, either.

As always with Sky, the best deals might be on offer to those who already take TV or mobile services with the company. Here, we focus on broadband alone, but it’s worth exploring the bundle deals, especially if you’re already taking one or more of Sky’s other offerings.

Compare the best broadband deals in your area – LIVE!

Sky Broadband review: Superfast

Note: Prices were correct at the time of writing but are liable to change.

In the superlative bingo we play with all the broadband providers, Superfast is the Sky tariff that applies to fibre-to-the-cabinet connections for those not yet connected to a full-fibre network.

The £26/mth Sky charges for this tariff is by no means outrageous, but award-winning Vodafone is £2/mth cheaper for the same speeds.

Superfast tariff customers get the standard Sky Broadband Hub as part of the deal, but that is starting to show its age. It’s been around for a few years and is based on Wi-Fi 5, which is a couple of generations behind the latest Wi-Fi 7 gear. It might do fine for the relatively slow speeds on offer from Superfast, but it’s also used for most of Sky’s full-fibre tariffs, where that Wi-Fi 5 performance bottleneck and more limited range could really start to show.

Sky Broadband review: Full Fibre 75, 100, 150, 300, 500 and Gigafast

Nobody could accuse Sky of not offering a wide range of full-fibre tariffs, with no fewer than six on offer. Again, the prices are not scandalous – roughly on a par with Plusnet, the cheapest of the three BT-owned providers. But award-winning Vodafone is £8/mth cheaper for the fastest “Gigafast” connection, which it should be noted is not actually capable of reaching gigabit speeds.

Note too our previous comment about the age of the router equipment supplied. Only the Gigafast customers get the Sky Max Hub included with their deal, which is built on Wi-Fi 6 technology rather than the outdated Wi-Fi 5.

We won’t delve too deep into the bundle deals, but if you’re a Sky TV fan it’s certainly worth exploring the TV + broadband packages. For example, you can get Essential TV (which includes a streaming box, Sky Atlantic, Discovery+ and a standard Netflix subscription) and Fibre 500 for £44/mth, only £10 more expensive than the broadband alone.

Sky Broadband review: Coverage

Sky currently uses the Openreach network, which means that just over half of the country can benefit from full fibre and the vast majority of the rest will be served by fibre-to-the-cabinet.

However, in August 2024, Sky signed a deal with CityFibre, meaning it will soon start offering much faster connections in more areas, in a similar fashion to Vodafone and Zen Internet. The CityFibre lines should be available on Sky in the coming months.

Sky Broadband review: Performance and customer satisfaction

Sky struggled in last year’s Expert Reviews Broadband Awards and we’ve only seen minor improvement in this year’s survey.

Reliability is a concern. Only 53% of Sky customers were happy with the reliability of their connection, which may well feed into the middling 71% satisfaction score for value for money.

Customers aren’t blown away by the speeds, either, with 73% satisfied – only TalkTalk had fewer customers satisfied with their speeds. It will be interesting to see if the deal with CityFibre can bring those speed scores up in time for next year’s survey.

Customer service is relatively better, finishing joint third with a 53% satisfaction score. But overall, Sky finished second bottom of the eight providers on test, kept off the bottom only by TalkTalk.

That might be something to chew over for existing Sky customers. Four out of ten of them have been with Sky for more than five years. The grass may well be greener elsewhere.

Sky Broadband review: Verdict

It’s hard to find any reason to recommend switching to Sky Broadband. The most compelling reason to stick with its broadband service is if you’re already getting your TV and/or mobile phone service from the company, where there are bundle deals to be had. And a new deal with CityFibre could raise speeds significantly in 2025.

Methodology

Unless otherwise stated, all figures are drawn from a comprehensive survey conducted by Expert Reviews in December 2024, targeting a representative sample of 2,162 UK residents aged 18 and over. This sample size allows for statistically significant analysis across eight internet service providers, ensuring confidence in the results.

The figures are derived from responses to six survey questions targeting value for money, speed, customer service and reliability. We then take an average of these scores to produce an overall satisfaction metric, which we use to name our winner and runner-up.