July 18 2006

Sky's new broadband package

Pity the broadband resellers are Sky enters this crowded, margin-free market with a very competitive, good quality bundle. Since Sky already reaches a third of UK families who's going to be able to afford to out-market them?

The full announcement is available here as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat reader may be required).

The packages on offer are excellent - from a solid 'base' layer (2Mb connection, 2Gb download limit a month) up to the top end of 16Mb connection and unlimited downloads - "ideal for video downloads" or gaming. This top end package is £10pm on top of the basic £15pm Sky package, so the total of £25pm is still less that you'd pay for this level of connectivity.

Customer service has been the bane of broadband companies' existence. They have to deal with lines they don't own, computers they can't see and customers they can't train... Sky, however, is offering wireless modems to all, engineer installation of the top packages and with its existing customer service capabilities the (unspoken) promise of a better customer experience. Wither, now, companies like Bulldog who have spent so heavily acquiring customers only to frustrate them with the quality of the operation (disclosure: I'm an ex-Bulldog customer).

This announcement gives us a glimpse of the home of tomorrow: multichannel interactive TV; a SkyPlus (or Tivo) digital recorded (and ad-stripper!); downloadable movies on demand; online and interactive (integrated) shopping and all the email, web and messenging the new household can consume.

I haven't, of course, mentioned the High Street. I'm trying to work out when there's going to be time to get out and about!

Ian Jindal