Satellite broadcaster Sky Italia has finally launched its fixed broadband offer in an initial 26 cities throughout the country, rising to 120 by the end of the summer. The service is called ‘Sky Wifi’ and will first be available to Sky subscribers only, although the company said it plans to offer it non-subscribers in the future. It comes with a 1Gbps download and 300Mbps upload connection via Open Fiber’s FTTH network, a ‘Sky Wifi Hub’ developed by Comcast designed to fully optimise bandwidth availability and a dedicated app to manage the service.
Sky Italia said a triple-play service (voice, broadband and Sky Q TV) can already be contracted in the cities of Ancona, Bari, Bologna, Brescia, Bresso, Cagliari, Catania, Cinisello Balsamo, Florence, Genoa, Messina, Milan , Modugno, Monza, Naples, Padua, Palermo, Pavia, Perugia, Pescara, Selargius, Sesto San Giovanni, Sondrio, Turin, Varese and Venice.
Sky subscribers can choose between the ‘Sky Wifi Smart’ plan with FTTH, TV and calls on a per minute basis for EUR 29.90 a month and a one-time activation fee of EUR 49, or ‘Sky Wifi Ultra’ with the same conditions plus the ‘Sky Wifi Pods’ mesh network for EUR 32.90 a month and a EUR 99 activation fee, or ‘Sky Wifi Ultra Plus’ with unlimited national calls to fixed and mobile numbers for EUR 37.90 a month plus EUR 99 activation.
By way of a promotion, the company is offering the first 3 months of all the plans for free to existing subscribers, waiving the activation for ‘Sky Wifi Smart’ and halving the activation for ‘Sky Wifi Ultra’ and ‘Sky Wifi Ultra Plus’. Sky Italia said a team of over 200 engineers built the 'Sky Ultra Network' fibre infrastructure from scratch using the technological know-how of Comcast in the US and Sky in the UK.
In a statement, the company’s CEO Maximo Ibarra described Sky’s decision to enter Italy's fixed broadband market as “an important step both for our company and for Sky family members”, adding that the company also wanted to “make a significant contribution to the expansion of ultra-broadband [in Italy], a need that the emergency we have faced in recent months has made clear to us all.”
Earlier this year, Ibarra revealed that Sky would also be accessing Fastweb’s FTTH, FTTC and fixed-wireless access (FWA) infrastructure to reach the parts of the country not yet covered by Open Fiber’s networks.
