Millions of Sky and Vodafone users could see broadband speed supercharged, no thanks to BT

With the television firm purportedly poised to announce a new set-top box and a 4K Smart TV that offer the same experience as its satellite Sky Q box over a broadband connection, internet speeds could be about to become even more crucial to its business model. With more than double the number of users nationwide who are able to access some of the fastest home broadband speeds via Virgin Media O2 compared to Openreach, it’s easy to see why Sky could be tempted to strike a new deal for its customers.

Of course, it’s not only about its telly offering. With millions of people still working and studying from home, the dire state of the UK’s broadband infrastructure has been thrown into sharp relief. The average broadband speed across the UK is 70Mbps …that doesn’t compare particularly well against some European nations, including an average download speed of 211Mbps in Liechtenstein, 191Mbps in Iceland, and 151Mbps in Gibraltar.

Videoconferencing, boxset streaming on Netflix, back-ups of photo libraries, music streaming, and mammoth update files for PCs, smartphones, and video games have all put some strain on broadband speeds than ever before. And that’s before a number of bandwidth-hungry emerging technologies, like 8K video quality, Virtual Reality (VR) games and applications, and more become mainstream in the coming years.