Sky offers 'secret', faster broadband to new customers

Sky is offering an up-to-76Mbps fibre broadband connection to new customers who call its sales hotline, but not to existing subscribers.

New customers who call Sky's hotline can buy a fibre broadband package with a topline speed of 76Mbps, faster than the package offered to existing subscribers.

The media company began selling the Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro service on Wednesday, it told ZDNet UK. The move follows closely the public rollout of Sky's first fibre packages, which have topline speeds of 40Mbps, in mid-April.

However, the faster fibre option is yet to appear on Sky's website, and at launch is restricted to new subscribers only.

"[Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro] offers speeds of up to 76Mbps and is available for customers calling Sky," a company spokesman said in a statement. "It is currently only available to customers who do not already have Sky Broadband or Sky Fibre, although we are working on making it available to existing Sky Broadband customers who would like to experience these faster speeds."

Fibre Unlimited Pro costs £30 per month and comes with no cap on bandwidth usage. As with any Sky Fibre Unlimited package, customers must also subscribe to Sky's calling and line rental service. Line rental adds £12.25 per month to the total cost, and the call package is either free or an additional £5, depending on the bundle.

ZDNet UK understands that the service cannot be offered to current customers because the development work required to switch them from the old speeds to the new still needs to be carried out.

Sky launched its other fibre-based packages, which use BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology and offer up to 40Mbps downloads, on 12 April. At the time, Sky said it had no plans to introduce any other services "anytime soon", despite the fact that BT and other broadband rivals are in the middle of a speed-doubling programme.

Virgin Media, which does not use BT's super-fast fibre network, is also in the process of increasing the maximum download and upload speeds of its higher-tier connections, currently maxing out at 120Mbps.