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It is time to look at the speeds that people are getting from our speed test on another broadband provider. This time it is the turn of Sky Broadband who sell three main products, Sky ADSL2+, Sky Fibre and Sky Fibre Pro which are all unlimited. There is also the off-net ADSL product, but as there is no simple way to split that product out, those results will be in the ADSL2+ analysis.

The results plotted here cover the same period as the TalkTalk speeds (April 2013) we blogged about back on 9th May.

Sky do not release information on how many fibre customers they have, but we know that Openreach has only sold 200,000 to non-BT customers, and 73,000 are with TalkTalk, but what proportion of the remainder is with Sky is anyones guess. Overall only 3% of the Sky speed tests were from people on the Fibre Pro (80/20) product, 19% on the Fibre (40/10) and the vast bulk of tests on the ADSL2+ service.

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The reason for pushing forward with looking at Sky Broadband, is the ongoing complaints on some forums that people are seeing odd speeds from the fibre services. The shape of the graph is a little odd on the Pro service. The upstream speeds hold up well, but compared to other FTTC providers there does appear to be an odd bulge in the downloads speeds, where you would have expected a smoother drop off. This tends to fit in with the half speed complaints that Sky Fibre users are complaining off, and is believed to be down to some Alcatel hardware in the Sky network, rather than a configuration issue on the Openreach side of things. We can be pretty sure that this is not mis-identified connections because their upload speeds are so much better than the 9.5 Mbps maximum you should see from the slower fibre product.

There is a small caveat to the Fibre pro results and that is with the product obviously not so widely sold by Sky, and thus only counting for 3% of the tests, it is possible that data may be skewed, we will obviously continue with periodic plots and share the results.

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The 40/10 (known as this because it is a 40 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload profile) product seems to fit the profile that we have commonly seen for providers selling a 40 Mbps FTTC based service, reflecting the fact that not everyone lives on top of their green street cabinet. For those trying to pick between Sky and TalkTalk as their chosen provider, Sky wins on upstream, because their entry level fibre service is using the up to 10 Mbps variant from Openreach rather than the fractionally cheaper 2 Mbps product TalkTalk use.

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With some 78% of the speed tests carried out on connections that are obviously ADSL2+ based, we get a very nice graph that shows the classic shape for ADSL2+ speeds, i.e. that a small percentage get very good speeds.

The statistics that we can pull from the data are as follows:

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For those who were hoping that we would be saying that ISP X is faster than ISP Y, so far it is proving difficult to make such a simple statement. What we can clearly say though is that if you are able to get a FTTC based service and are continuing to complain about your ADSL2+ speeds, then look at the difference it can make and bite the bullet and upgrade. For those who create content, or just want their digital camera backups to a cloud storage service to be faster, FTTC is certainly the way to go.

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By the end of 2014, almost every Surrey property is set to gain super-fast broadband access.

BT has unveiled a new super-fast broadband project that looks set to make Surrey the best-connected county in the UK.


The telecoms giant has signed a contract with Surrey County Council to roll out next-generation broadband to almost 100 per cent of local homes and businesses by the end of 2014, surpassing the government's target of 90 per cent coverage by 2015.


Up to one-fifth of properties not included in commercial deployments are set to benefit from the £33 million deal, which is expected to boost Surrey's economy by around £28 million per year.


Customers will be able to access speeds of up to 80Mbps as a result of the work, with BT also due to launch an ultra-fast on-demand broadband service delivering download capabilities of up to 330Mbps.


In comparison, the UK's average download speed stands at 9Mbps, while in Surrey the figure is even lower at 7.4Mbps, according to Ofcom.


Bill Murphy, managing director of next-generation broadband at the BT Group, said: "This project puts Surrey well ahead of the game.


"It goes further than the government's national aim for fibre broadband by 2015 and brings the county within a whisker of 100 per cent fibre broadband availability."

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While online viewing of sport is the fashionable way to watch an event, there are still plenty of people who enjoy actually going to watch their favourite sport being played and with The Cloud rolling out free WiFi to Lord's Cricket Ground people will find it easier to stay online.

The ground before now only offered free WiFi in the hospitality areas, but extending it to all of the 28,500 seater ground will make keeping up to speed with the statistics and other sports events happening around the UK easier for spectators.

We look forward to seeing what speeds people are getting over the free WiFi, so if you want to show others the sort of speeds available remember that the postcode for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is NW8 8QN.

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