Sky aims to double its ultrafast broadband base with Openreach partnership

Sky has become the first broadband provider to sign up to a discounted wholesaler deal with Openreach, reported The Telegraph. 

BT's former broadband arm, Openreach, announced in July that it would significantly cut the wholesale prices of its fibre-to-the-cabinet and fibre-to-the-premises services to encourage communications providers to speed up their deployment of faster broadband.

Sky is the first UK provider to take up the offer and has committed to sell superfast or ultrafast services to at least 84% of its broadband customers within the next five years.

"Openreach's deal, with lower wholesale pricing, enables us to accelerate take-up of ultrafast and full fibre broadband across the UK while ensuring that competition at a network level remains strong," said a Sky spokesperson.

The new packages will be based on G.Fast technology, with download speeds of up to 330 megabits per second using existing copper telephone wires. Openreach aims to have G.Fast in 5.7m homes within the next couple of years and the company is also offering Sky its full fibre services which will see copper wires replaced with more flexible fibre optics and speeds of 1gb per second.

Openreach said that by slashing prices for providers to use its network, the majority of homes and businesses will be using superfast and ultrafast broadband by 2023.

Katie Milligan of Openreach said: "There are still millions of homes and businesses that could take advantage of the better broadband network we've built, and these long-term discounts will incentivise service providers to upgrade their customers.

"The offer will also bring more choice for consumers and businesses, with more providers competing to offer faster, more reliable full-fibre services."

Last month, Sky offered partners the opportunity to use its infrastructure with the introduction of its 1Gbps ethernet services, which is set to become available for partners to deliver to customers later this year.