Community Fibre vs Sky

Community Fibre is a dedicated London full fibre broadband provider offering cheaper prices and faster speeds than Sky.

Sky on the other hand are more widely available with 98% coverage in London, and 97% in the UK. They also offer a more premium TV service which can be bundled with broadband for extra savings.

Both providers are head to head for customer service, and overall, it's a tightly run race, but for Londoners who can get it, Community Fibre is our top choice for their lower prices.

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At a glance

Verdict: Who is best for...

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Price

Winner: Community Fibre offer cheaper prices overall than Sky, especially for broadband only deals.

Community Fibre broadband deals are competitively priced and beat Sky at every level when we're considering broadband only packages.

Their entry-level 50Mb deal is cheaper than Sky's 59Mb plan at less than £20 per month, and these differences extend to the faster ultrafast plans too.

Plus, Sky sometimes charge set-up fees for their broadband and these can be much higher if a customer decides to bundle Sky TV as well.

Of course, both providers frequently run special offers, so it's worth keeping an eye on the tables at the top of this comparison guide for the latest information or sort by special offer when comparing the best broadband deals.

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Broadband deals

Winner: Community Fibre offer cheaper prices across all of their broadband deals, compared to Sky broadband.

Community Fibre and Sky offer a range of superfast and ultrafast broadband deals, allowing customers to choose between the lowest prices on superfast plans and faster download speeds for larger households on ultrafast deals.

Here's how their cheapest superfast packages look side-by-side:

Because of their current special offer on 150Mb Fibre Broadband, Community Fibre customers can access speeds over four times faster than with Sky and for less money each month.

There are a few things to note here, some of which we'll go into more detail about later in this Community Fibre vs Sky broadband guide. For a full breakdown read our reviews of Community Fibre and Sky broadband here.

The Community Fibre deals listed above are on 24-month contracts, but 12-month deals are also available for a couple of pounds extra per month.

Plus, while the Sky deals come with a home phone included, Community Fibre customers have to pay £10 to add a phone line and calls. This could make a big difference to price if customers definitely want a home phone line.

Both providers currently offer free setup so there are no upfront costs to pay.

Overall, Community Fibre are an easy choice for people looking to save the most money, whilst also providing a full fibre connection.

Ultrafast broadband

Community Fibre and Sky both offer an ultrafast broadband package, although Sky's is faster at 500Mb average, in comparison to Community Fibre's middle-tier 300Mb plan.

Here's how their ultrafast packages look side-by-side:

Again, Community Fibre is the cheaper option here, especially for people happy to go without a home phone. Although, Sky's ultrafast broadband plan is faster.

Gigabit broadband

Lastly, customers can also choose a gigabit-capable plan from Community Fibre, although Sky is no longer promoting their gigabit deal to new customers.

Here's Community Fibre's gigafast package:

Overall, Community Fibre offer a wider range of download speed choices and cheaper prices across all equivalent deals compared to Sky broadband.

Where Sky might win out however is for customers looking for a TV bundle deal.

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TV

Winner: Sky TV remains the service to beat and is streets ahead of the Netgem TV service offered by Community Fibre.

Sky TV is the champion of pay TV in the UK offering over 400 channels in their base package along with access to Sky Cinema, Sky Sports and more through their channel add-ons.

Sky TV costs from £26 per month, but it can be taken in a bundle with Sky broadband saving customers £5 per month over taking the services separately:

As the table shows, it's also possible to save more by opting for Sky TV without Netflix, or Sky Stream the provider's new satellite-dish free service that sends the TV signal over the broadband line.

There are more Sky TV and broadband bundles available with faster download speeds and more content on our Sky TV bundles page.

Sky TV does come with some associated costs due to the installation of the service and the provision of the Sky Q box or Sky puck.

Meanwhile, Community Fibre have partnered with Netgem TV to offer their broadband customers a pay TV service starting at £10 per month.

Community Fibre TV customers receive:

• 215+ live channels, plus an extra 100 Freeview channels
• Premier Sports
• 60,000 hours of on-demand content
• 40+ TV apps
• Free 4K TV box with Alexa
• Unlimited use on multiple tablet and mobile devices

Community Fibre customers can also use the box to access apps from other services in the same way the Sky Q box can.

Overall, there's simply no contest if we're looking at the most comprehensive TV service with the largest number of options: it's Sky TV every time.

However, customers could take Sky TV without Sky broadband, potentially taking their broadband from Community Fibre instead. That may be a useful option for customers who like the look of Community Fibre's broadband but want a full TV service too.

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Broadband speed

Winner: Community Fibre offers faster download and upload speeds than Sky broadband, with the option of a gigabit-capable package too.

Community Fibre currently offer five broadband speed choices to customers:

There is a sixth option, but while fast the 3Gb plan isn't available to all homes on the Community Fibre network and also costs nearly £100 per month, meaning most customers would be better suited to their 920Mb plan.

Meanwhile, Sky's four broadband speed choices include:

It's easy to see then that even though Sky offer a full fibre broadband connection with their Ultrafast and Ultrafast Plus plans, Community Fibre offers the fastest service with their 920Mb and 3Gb options.

Community Fibre also use full fibre connections for all of their broadband packages, including the superfast 50Mb and 75Mb plans. Whereas Sky's superfast plans use the Openreach fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) network, which can see more attenuation (slowing down) depending on how far a customer lives from their nearest street cabinet and exchange.

This means customers opting for the slower Community Fibre packages are likely to receive a more stable connection that delivers the headline speed more reliably, in comparison to equivalent plans with Sky broadband on FTTC lines.

To illustrate, here are Ofcom panellist tests for Sky's 59Mb plan in their latest package analysis:

We can see that Sky's superfast plan slows down at peak times when the network is busier, whereas the Ultrafast plan more reliably delivers the same speed.

Read more about the fastest broadband providers in the UK.

Upload speeds

Community Fibre offers symmetrical download and upload speeds to their customers. This means their entry-level package offers both 50Mb downloads and uploads to customers.

Symmetrical speeds can be a feature of full fibre broadband, but it's worth pointing out that some other providers, including Sky, don't offer them.

The maximum they offer on their Ultrafast Plus plan is 60Mb.

If upload speeds are important to a household, for example for gaming broadband, Community Fibre is again the winner.

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Routers

Winner: Community Fibre offer more advanced routers designed for delivering the fastest home WiFi experience.

Customers signing up to the slowest 75Mb broadband plan from Community Fibre will receive a Linksys Velop Dual-Band Intelligent Mesh while customers on higher plans will receive the Linksys Velop Tri-Band Intelligent Mesh (those on the 1Gb plan will receive two).

The Linksys router is the same one used by Gigaclear who offer up to 900Mb speeds. Anyone taking the 3Gb broadband plan from Community Fibre, will receive a WiFi 6 Zyxel router able to handle the increased speeds.

The Linksys Velop Intelligent Mesh routers can be paired to extend wi-fi coverage

The Linksys routers support mesh, so they can act as their own wi-fi booster system when multiple devices are used together.

Sky provide their broadband customers with the Sky Broadband Hub, a dual-band WiFi 5 router with 8 internal antennae and 4 gigabit ethernet ports.

Sky broadband customers get the Sky Broadband Hub

Overall, while Sky's broadband router is sufficient, the Linksys devices offered by Community Fibre are more advanced, particularly for customers taking the 150Mb and upwards plans.

WiFi guarantees

Both Sky and Community Fibre offer a WiFi guarantee add-on. While Community Fibre's WiFi in Every Room service costs twice that of Sky's Broadband Boost, it also promises faster download speeds too.

Sky customers can add Sky Broadband Boost to their package for £5 per month. Boost promises minimum download speeds of at least 3Mb in every room by providing additional mesh boosters for a customer to install.

Sky will refund the cost of the Broadband Boost add-on if customers are unable to get the 3Mb speeds in every room in their home.

Community Fibre offer customers the choice to add the WiFi in Every Room service. It costs more at £10 per month, but also promises faster minimum download speeds of 10Mb in every room.

WiFi in Every Room is installed by engineers specifically, using additional Linksys mesh routers to extend the wireless coverage around a home. If the service fails to deliver customers get three month's broadband subscription refunded and the add-on cancelled.

Overall, while both providers offer a reasonable WiFi boosting service, Community Fibre's is better than Sky's because it promises faster minimum download speeds.

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Call plans

Winner: Sky has more call plan options available than Community Fibre, their broadband deals also include a home phone line as standard.

Community Fibre broadband comes without a home phone unless customers pay £10 extra per month to access a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) line.

For this £10 they receive:

• Unlimited calls to UK landlines and mobiles
• Features such as 1471, 1571 Voicemail and call barring

However, the line doesn't support calls to premium numbers or international calls, so customers making a lot of those may not be satisfied by the Community Fibre call plan.

Sky's call plan options are more comprehensive and a Pay As You Talk phone line is included with every broadband deal as standard.

Customers can add the following call plans:

While anytime calls are slightly more expensive on Sky, the option to add international calls or simply take a cheaper evening and weekends plan may appeal to some customers. Note also that Sky call plans come with an 18-month contract.

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Customer service

Winner: Tie - both Sky and Community Fibre have great customer service records.

The best information we have on Community Fibre's customer service comes from Trustpilot where they are the top provider in the broadband category.

With a 4.9 score of Excellent from over 24,000 reviews, Community Fibre have 96% of reviews labelling them as Excellent while only 2% say they a Bad provider.

We don't have any independent analysis of Community Fibre's customer service, however, since they are such a niche provider.

On the other hand, Ofcom include Sky in their customer service reports and quarterly complaint figures.

From these, we can see their most recent complaints history is market-leading with only 4 broadband complaints per 100,000 customers in Q3 2022, less than half the industry average of 11.

So far in the first three quarters of 2022, Sky's overall complaint levels are the lowest in the market, and they performed well in several customer service categories including satisfaction with complaint handling and successfully resolving complaints on first contact.

Given Community Fibre's strong record on Trustpilot and Sky's good figures confirmed by Ofcom, we can't choose between them on customer service.

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Availability

Winner: Sky broadband is more widely available than Community Fibre, although faster speeds may be more limited.

Community Fibre is a London-based ISP, but their network only covers 642,800 homes across the capital as of January 2023.

They also have a presence in nearly all 33 London boroughs, with plans to expand into the remaining borough of Havering soon. In addition, they say they have a more extensive presence Brent, Camden, Croydon, Hammersmith & Fulham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Westminster.

However, this means Community Fibre won't yet be an option to everyone in London, even though they aim to connect 2.2 million properties by the end of 2024.

Sky's superfast broadband on the other hand can be access by the vast majority of homes across London with Thinkbroadband data saying 98% of Londoners can access superfast broadband of 30Mb or more.

It becomes more complicated when we look at Sky's ultrafast deals as these are delivered via the Openreach fibre to the premises (FTTP) network which so far only covers 23.17% homes in the capital.

This means customers may not be able to access Sky's ultrafast services right now, although they will still be able to sign up to their superfast deals for now whereas Community Fibre is full fibre or nothing.

Availability remains an issue for ultrafast broadband services, something that will frustrate customers who like what they've read in this guide but can't sign up just yet.

For more see this guide to the best broadband in London.

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Special offers

Here are the latest special offers available from both providers:

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Summary: Community Fibre or Sky?

Overall winner: Community Fibre triumph in most categories over Sky, despite being exclusively available in London and even their availability is still limited.

Community Fibre and Sky are very different providers.

Community Fibre is a specialist London ISP, so their deals are only going to be available to customers in the capital, whereas Sky is a nationwide provider.

Yet Community Fibre has an extremely strong proposition for customers. They offer:

• Cheaper broadband deals than Sky
• Faster broadband
• More advanced routers
• Full fibre connections as standard

Plus, while they may be inferior to Sky's deals, it's also possible to get a home phone and a TV service with Community Fibre too.

On the other hand, Sky has some key strengths too:

• Superfast broadband is available to over 98% of London homes
• TV service is comprehensive
• More call plan options

Ultimately, if customers have a choice between these two providers, those favouring speed will often opt for Community Fibre while those who want a comprehensive TV service from their broadband provider will opt for Sky.

Most customers will be lucky to get the choice right now though, so it could come down to whether Community Fibre is available in an area yet.

Virgin Media is another strong option for Londoners. Find out if Virgin Media is available in your area.

We look at Community Fibre vs Virgin Media and Sky vs Virgin Media to see which is the best option.