Sky Gigafast broadband isn't

prowla

The prefix Giga means 1000 Mega.

Sky's "Gigafast" broadband's published speed is 900 Mbps with a guarantee of 600 Mbps; that's not 1000.

EssexExile

"Giga" just seems to mean "lots" or "big" nowadays, as in "gigafactories" and "gigafast".

iniltous

Over Openreach, the top tier is 1Gb , but because ( presumably because of pedants ) most providers that offer it , call it a 900Mb service, while in reality measured downloads are around 960Mb , the ‘gap’ is down to transmission overheads , better to under promise ( 900Mb ) and over deliver ( 960 Mb ) than have the ‘disappointed’ moaning that 1Gb in reality is ‘only’ , 960Mb .
As far as Sky , the only ‘label’ I’ve seen attached to their higher speeds is Ultrafast and Ultrafast Plus , 

flaneurs_lobster

iniltous said:

...
As far as Sky , the only ‘label’ I’ve seen attached to their higher speeds is Ultrafast and Ultrafast Plus , 

https://www.skygroup.sky/article/sky-broadband-launches-its-fastest-package-ever-gigafast-with-speeds-of-900-mb-s

400ixl

Its a marketing name and there will most likely be speeds over 1Gbps in the future. They have clearly stated the speeds that apply, so are not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes.

We have for years had Fibre broadband where it is only partially fibre and uses copper to the premise. That was also just marketing.

Neil_Jones

prowla said:

The prefix Giga means 1000 Mega.

Sky's "Gigafast" broadband's published speed is 900 Mbps with a guarantee of 600 Mbps; that's not 1000.

I think you'll find giga is defined as "denoting a factor of 2 to the power of 30."  Giga is derived from the Greek word γίγας (gígas), meaning "giant". Doesn't mean 1000 anything.

[Deleted User]

The whole reason ISPs advertise 1Gbps packages with an average speed of c.900Mbps is because of the ASA's rules. The watchdog requires them only to advertise the average speeds delivered at peak times, which must be a median and not a mean average.

https://www.asa.org.uk/news/new-standard-on-broadband-speed-claims-in-ads-comes-into-force-today.html

The connection is "technically" capable of 1Gbps but as per above, doesn't always deliver that. "Average" speeds are based on the download speeds that at least 50% of customers get at peak time.

Interestingly if you go with the much-maligned Virgin Media, they do the opposite, their 1Gig package averages 1.1Gbps, M500 = 516mbps etc, they actually undersell and overdeliver. I get 568mbps on the M500 package.

Leemo2305

Virgin media do certainly undersell and to be honest so do many other gigabit broadband providers. You do have to be careful with a lot of this gigabit marketing at the moment. Sky, Plusnet and even Virgin takes the mick a little and as mentioned above, its all to do with marketing with the assumption it will probably be "giga" completely in the near future. Im with Giganet in Portsmouth and it's the same. My average download speed it between 900Mb/s and 1000Mb/s and sometimes even more.