BT and Virgin Media to face tough competition from Sky

‘Sky’ has decided to offer a broadband speed of 40 Mbps to 33% of the UK homes, adding new headaches for ‘BT Broadband’ and ‘Virgin Media’.

Its latest plan, ‘Sky Broadband Unlimited Fiber’ will be inaugurated in April at the rate of GBP 20 per month to counter ‘Infinity’ fiber offer of BT.

The fiber service has been made possible because of Ofcom’s instruction to BT that it must make available its network infrastructures for other service providers on payment.

Sky informed that its broadband plan will grow just like that of the BT’s programme.

Broadband of fiber optic cables will offer reliable service at higher speeds in comparison with DSL over copper network of BT.

Virgin Media is considered to be the leader in providing fiber broadband to customers. It has plans to double its speeds. In fact, it is even ready to increase the speed to 120 Mbps in selected areas.

Since taking over the internet service provider company EasyNet in 2006, Sky has achieved a market share of 17%, equivalent to 3.6 million, broadband customers. 29% of the Sky home customers avail the services of ‘Sky TV’, ‘Sky Talk’ and ‘Sky Broadband’.

Sky wants to increase its broadband customer strength in the UK by one million before June 2013.

Sky took the possession of ‘The Cloud’ in January 2011. This enabled it to attain access to Wi-Fi hotspots in almost all cities and towns throughout the country.

Sky Broadband Unlimited subscribers will be able to access about 10,000 hotspots in venues like Pizza Express, Wagamama, Caffe Nero etc.

Stephen van Rooyen of Sky is thrilled that the customers are extremely happy with the company’s home communication products. They are able to appreciate the good quality and reliable service which the company provides. Accordingly, the company is in a position to introduce new products and the customers will have more choice of selection.

Sky is determined to remain as the best choice for home communications. The tasks like installation of the network in the whole country, conversion of the existing copper cables with fiber optic cables, providing free Wi-Fi to the public etc have been accomplished superbly by the service provider.

As per its report, Sky Broadband and Sky Talk increased their customer base by 166,000 and 159,000 respectively during the final quarter of 2011. The figure for Sky line rental rose by 214,000.