Sky’s Broadband Boost add-on gives you guaranteed wi-fi in every room, daily line checks and a parental controls app.
If you’re joining Sky’s Superfast or Ultrafast fibre broadband service, you can add Broadband Boost for an additional £5/month. Alternatively, this is included in the price when you choose Essential Plus Broadband.
Customers signing up to Sky’s Broadband Boost service will get guaranteed wi-fi in every room of their home, or money back on their Broadband Boost subscription. You’ll also get daily checks on your phone line, flexible engineer visits and access to the Sky Broadband Buddy parental controls app. Broadband Boost doesn’t change the underlying download speed or upload speed of your broadband connection.
In this article, we’ll review Sky’s Broadband Boost service and the features that are available on it. We’ll also look at Sky’s plans with the Broadband Boost feature, before asking whether it’s worth paying the extra £5/month. Finally, we’ll discuss a couple of alternatives to using Sky Broadband Boost.
Contents
What is Sky Broadband Boost?
There are five features within the Sky Broadband Boost service:
- Guaranteed wi-fi in every room of your home: Speeds of at least 3Mbps in every room, or money back on your Broadband Boost subscription.
- Daily line checks: An automated check on your line each day to ensure your broadband service is working correctly.
- Parental controls app: Access to the Sky Broadband Buddy parental controls app which is designed to work both on wi-fi and on a mobile data connection.
- Flexible engineer visits: Free evening and weekend appointments with the Sky Broadband Tech Team (normally £15).
- 2GB mobile data for unplanned outages: An extra 2GB will be added to your Sky Piggybank if there’s an unplanned broadband outage. Only available to Sky Mobile customers.
Broadband Boost doesn’t change the underlying download speed or upload speed of your broadband connection.
In the following section, we’ll look at each of the five Broadband Boost features in more detail.
Wi-Fi Guarantee
The leading feature of Sky’s Broadband Boost service is their Wi-Fi Guarantee. This gives you a minimum guaranteed wi-fi connection speed of at least 3Mbps in every room of your home.
To start with, you’ll be sent Sky’s Broadband Hub router (Sky SR203). This is Sky’s standard broadband router and it’s supplied to all customers regardless of whether they sign up for the Boost.
If you’re unable to get the minimum 3Mbps connection speed in every room of your home using a Broadband Hub alone, you’ll be sent a Sky Wi-Fi Booster (Sky SE210). Alternatively, an engineer will be sent to your home to try and resolve the problem. If you’re still unable to get the minimum connection speed after this, Sky will refund the money you’ve already paid for Broadband Boost. They’ll also give you Broadband Boost for free for the remainder of your contract.
According to Sky, their Wi-Fi Guarantee covers all of the main rooms of your home including living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. It also includes the garage if you can access it without going outdoors, a converted loft (providing it is furnished and has a fixed staircase) as well as the conservatory. Full details of what is covered by the Wi-Fi Guarantee can be found on the Sky website.
In our opinion, Sky’s Wi-Fi Guarantee is a convenient feature if you live a large home where getting Wi-Fi in every room has historically been difficult. However, it will cost you an extra £90 over the course of an 18-month contract. For this reason, buying your own wi-fi repeater can sometimes be a cheaper option. Alternatively, you can buy your own mesh wi-fi system like BT Whole Home Wi-Fi for around £150. This is potentially a more comprehensive solution that can work with any ISP.
Daily Line Checks
Customers with Sky Broadband Boost will get an automatic check on the operation of their phone line between midnight and 5am each day. This is designed to find potential issues with your phone line or broadband connection so an engineer can be sent out to investigate if necessary.
Whilst the check is ongoing, your broadband service will be unavailable for around 2 minutes. You’ll be sent a text message if a fault is found with your connection during the line check.
Sky Broadband Buddy
Broadband Buddy is a parental controls application from Sky, designed to work both inside and outside the home. Unlike the standard parental controls from Sky and from other broadband providers, Broadband Buddy is designed to work with your mobile data connection as well as with your home wi-fi connection.
The application allows you to set up individual content filters for every member of the family along with time limits on using certain applications. You can also pause or black out the internet at certain times of the day (e.g. overnight when the kids are sleeping or during family meal times). It’s also possible to monitor your children’s internet usage history, as well as the current location of their device using the app.
To use Sky Broadband Buddy, you’ll need to install the Broadband Buddy app for iPhone or Android.
Flexible Engineer Visits
Sky has a team of broadband engineers known as the Sky Broadband Tech Team. Typically, there’s a £15 charge if you want an evening or weekend appointment but this is waived for customers with Sky Broadband Boost.
Sky’s broadband engineers can help you to install new broadband equipment and can optimise your home network set-up to give you a stronger wi-fi signal or faster speeds.
Mobile Data For Outages
If you’re a Sky Mobile customer, you’ll get 2GB of data added to your Sky Piggybank whenever there’s an unplanned broadband outage lasting for more than 30 minutes. To qualify, the outage must have occurred between 7am and 11pm. Data won’t be added for planned broadband outages or for broadband outages that occur overnight.
The idea of getting extra mobile data whenever there’s a broadband outage is that it can help tide you over until the broadband service is fixed. For instance, you can tether from your mobile phone to other devices such as your laptop or tablet to get them connected to the internet.
The downside is you’ll only get 2GB of extra data for each outage, which isn’t a huge amount if you’re sharing it with lots of other devices. For instance, watching just one hour of high-definition video would use up the entirety of your 2GB allowance. Additionally, there’s a delay of up to 24 hours for the data to be added to your piggybank, which can limit the usefulness somewhat if you want to use it straight away.
According to Sky, extra mobile data for outages is capped at a maximum of three times per month and at a maximum of 18 times over your 18-month contract. This makes it a lot less competitive than BT’s Keep Connected Promise (unlimited data during broadband outages) or EE’s Smart Wi-Fi (250GB of data for broadband outages).
Sky Broadband Boost Plans
You can pay £5/month to add Sky Broadband Boost to any Superfast or Ultrafast fibre broadband plan. Alternatively, it’s included in the price of Sky’s Essential Plus broadband plan.
The following table shows how much you’d pay for each Sky broadband plan with Broadband Boost added:
| Service | Average Speed | Contract Length | Upfront Price | Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Sky Essential Plus | 11Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £30/month with Broadband Boost |
Sky Ultrafast | 145Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £35/month with Broadband Boost |
Sky Superfast | 59Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £39/month with Broadband Boost with 7 months half price |
Sky Superfast 35 | 36Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £39.50/month with Broadband Boost |
Sky Ultrafast Plus | 500Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £53/month with Broadband Boost with 7 months half price |
Sky Gigafast | 900Mbps download | 18 month contract | £0 | £63/month with Broadband Boost |
View latest Sky Broadband offers (sky.com) →
For a full list of available deals and offers, please see Sky’s official website.
Alternatives
If you’re looking for another broadband internet provider with a similar offering to Sky Broadband Boost, consider the following alternatives:
BT Complete Wi-Fi: If you’re a customer of BT Broadband, you can add Complete Wi-Fi for an extra £10/month. This gives you a guaranteed download speed of 10Mbps in every room of your home, or a credit of £100 towards your next BT Broadband bill. You’ll get a BT Smart Hub 2 router and up to 3 Wi-Fi Discs that extend the range of the wi-fi network through your home.- BT Halo: If you upgrade to a Halo plan on BT Broadband, you can benefit from BT’s “keep connected promise”. This kicks in whenever there’s a fault with your home broadband service, giving you unlimited data on all BT Mobile SIM cards as well as on a BT 4G Mini Hub which is sent to you through the post. You’ll need to get a broadband plan with both Halo and Complete Wi-Fi if you’d like to benefit from both Complete Wi-Fi and the keep connected promise.
EE Smart Wi-Fi: On EE broadband, you can pay an extra £10/month to add Smart Wi-Fi to your plan. This gives you an upgraded EE Smart Wi-Fi router and up to 3 Wi-Fi Discs that extend the range of the network through your home. You’ll also get a 4GEE WiFi Mini hotspot with 2GB of data per month. You’ll then get an extra 250GB of data if there’s a fault with your home broadband connection.
Another alternative to Sky Broadband Boost is building your own custom solution. For instance, you can buy your own wi-fi repeater or mesh wi-fi system to extend the wi-fi coverage across your home. Parental controls are also available through apps such as Google Family Link and something like a 4G home broadband router can offer a backup for when your broadband service goes down. Alternatively, you can also tether from your mobile phone to share your data allowance with other devices.
Switching to Sky Broadband
If you’re currently using another broadband provider, it’s a straightforward process to switch to Sky Broadband.
Start by signing up online with Sky, making sure to provide your current landline number if you’d like to keep it. You can decide whether to add Sky Broadband Boost during the online order process.
Sky will give you a switchover date for your new broadband service, which will typically be in around 2-3 weeks time. They’ll also send you a new broadband hub through the post which you’ll need to set up when the broadband service goes live.
For step-by-step instructions on how to switch to Sky Broadband, please select your current provider from the drop-down menu below:
Switch to Sky Broadband
Your step-by-step guide to switching
For more information, see our in-depth guide to switching broadband provider in the UK.
More Information
For more information, see Sky’s official website. Alternatively, you can read our in-depth review of Sky Broadband.
Anthony Baldwin said:
How do I buy BB with sky without boost? Seems to be defaulted to buy it!?!?
Otto said:
The “daily line check” is a complete misnomer. They only check if the line is active. There are no other line check parameters, so you’ll still need to call and book an engineer even for an external fault. I’ve cancelled my Boost subscription, and raised a mis-selling complaint with Sky, as there’s nothing in the terms detailing the very limited scope of this so-called “daily line check”.