What is Sky Gigafast? | Sky Gigafast cost, packages & information

Tuesday 25 July 2023 by Jonathan Victoria Guides

Information on Sky’s fastest broadband.

What is Sky Gigafast?

Sky Gigafast is the company's fastest broadband offering, bringing incredibly fast and reliable speeds to every device in the household.

With Sky themselves amongst other TV providers switching to become streaming-based, the need for faster broadband is increasing, thus making Gigafast a must-have.

As Sky’s first venture into the gigabit-class broadband market, they have provided a very complete and competitive product here that will bring many benefits to those who decide to choose it for years to come.

How fast is Sky Gigafast?

Gigafast is said to be Sky’s champion to rival Virgin Media’s 1130Mbps package, with it coming in with speeds of 900Mbps download and 90Mbps upload.

While its download speeds may be down on its Virgin Media counterpart, it beats in upload speeds by almost double, making this the perfect option for content creators or anyone who relies on uploading for their job.

Is Sky Gigafast full fibre?

Sky Gigafast is a full fibre (FTTP) package which means it provides the best and most reliable speeds available from the provider.

However, this does also mean that it isn’t available nationwide yet, as not every household has access to full fibre.

As it currently stands, Sky Gigafast is only available to around 25% of UK households, though that number is set to rise over the next few years, with it slated to be at 80% by the end of 2026.

What is included with Sky Gigafast?

Sky Broadband Hub

Sky Gigafast comes with the company's premier router, the Sky Broadband Hub. It is one of the best among the large broadband providers, with eight antennae providing stellar wireless coverage to all parts of the household and a low latency connection.

The smart hub is known as such for a reason. It employs various ways to ensure your devices are always connected to the fastest wifi channel and frequency available, and regularly performs checks on the network connection and its own performance to check all is ok and will automatically reboot itself if not.

Over 120 devices can be connected wirelessly to the hub, as well as four wired connections via the four Gigabit ethernet ports.

The final selling point for the router is that it features 4x4 MIMo (Multiple input, multiple output). This means that it uses four antennas for four simultaneous data streams, providing more seamless communication between devices and the router, thus improving latency.

Other extras

As well as the premium router, Sky Broadband Shield is also included, which are free tools allowing you to set up parental controls and has its own protection against dangerous websites.

There is the Sky Broadband Speed Guarantee as standard, where the minimum guaranteed speed is 600Mbps and should it drop below that for a certain amount of time, you can claim a full month’s money back.

What is the difference between Sky Gigafast and Sky Ultrafast?

The difference between Sky Gigafast and Sky Ultrafast is quite large if talking purely about speeds.

Gigafast is Sky’s top-of-the-range broadband offering now, boasting near enough gigabit download speeds.

Ultrafast Plus is the next best, offering average download speeds of 500Mbps. If you’re talking just the standard Ultrafast, though, then that has average speeds of 145Mbps.

This difference in speed does come at a price, though, with Gigafast being £10 a month more than Ultrafast Plus and Ultrafast Plus being a further £10 a month more than Ultrafast*.

*Currently, there is a Sky Ultrafast Plus deal that sees it down to £35 a month for 18 months.

How much is Sky Gigafast?

As mentioned, with Sky Gigafast being the top-tier broadband package, it does come with the highest price point.

Sky Gigafast's standard cost is £58 a month for 18 months and comes with a £0 set-up fee, although be sure to check Sky or Digital TV regularly for any deal prices (prices may change during contract).