Sky flexes muscles for broadband deathmatch

[Steve]

BSkyB has released its annual results, parading its weapons-grade financial clout for the upcoming triple and quadruple play tussle.

http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6321

[DR]

Shocking amount of money...

... for sure one a force which you wouldn't want to be up against.

Would be interesting to see if they do a "Set-top Box" which does Sky+ and also allows you to route it around the house with Cat5 or something for multi-room.... Maybe an MCE/Viiv/AMDLive Layer?

One reason I suspect they want to explore and go the BB route is to tie people in, and the other is I suspect its a lot cheaper than Satelite broadcast - oh and means you don't need engineers on sides of houses etc...

[Funkstar]

certainally a BB connected STB makes sense. Means it doesn't have to dial a phone line for interactive serivces.

[arthurleung]

If I'm not wrong the service is up to 16Mbps not 6Mbps, with the fiver per month one being 8Mbps /w 40G cap.

Not all ISPs can run at a loss, Sky is basically screwing up most (if not all) budget ISPs now.
If the FUP of the unlimited 16Mbps is more clear, it could potentially suck up many high-usage users (actually it attracts both light and heavy users, probably resulting in cost neutral)

In my case, since I don't even have a TV license (too expensive and useless, paid to broadband instead), moving to Sky+BB won't be any cheaper than my Zen 2Mbps uncapped connection.

One more thing. What if Sky offer FON boxes to the users to build up a large Wifi network, that could bring Sky into the mobile market too (Better than the Openzone and GRPS rip-off)