Sky has launched Sky Fibre Ultra in Ireland, utilising the infrastructure of both Eir and SIRO. The company has said that it hopes to increase its availability to over a million homes over the next 3-5 years. The service is already available at over 400,000 homes to new and existing Sky customers, with thousands more to be added in the coming months. Prices start at €40 per month, with the company hoping to make use of its partners and the National Broadband Plan in order to expand in the future.
SIRO is an ultrafast fibre network built on the ESB’s network and is the product of a partnership between Vodafone and the ESB. Today, it’s live in 30 towns and available to 200,000 homes. The beauty of SIRO’s implementation is that generally speaking, users will get around 1000Mbps. This is because your house is directly connected to a fibre optic cable. Typical technologies still use a copper cable for the connection between your house and the cabinet, which can drop speeds drastically.
“With Sky Fibre Ultra, customers can get speeds that are up to ten times faster than our standard fibre broadband, meaning it’s perfect for people that want instant, multi-device access for everything from boxset binging to non-stop gaming,” said Ann-Marie MacKay, Director of Products and Marketing, Sky Ireland.
SIRO has partnered with 10 internet service providers in Ireland thus far. Those are Sky Ireland, Vodafone, Digiweb, BT, Carnsore Broadband, Rocket Broadband, Kerry Broadband, eNet, Airwire, and WestNet. More are expected to be added in the next few years, in an attempt to finally meet the demands of the National Broadband Plan. The National Broadband Plan aims to provide everybody in Ireland with high-speed internet. High-speed internet is defined, at a minimum, as having a 30Mbps download and a 6Mbps upload. Today, 7 out of 10 homes have access to high-speed internet as defined by the National Broadband Plan.
