Sky to let Be Broadband customers use their own routers

Sky will allow Be Broadband customers to continue using their own routers – even though it doesn’t extend that courtesy to its own customers.

Sky bought Be Broadband and O2’s landline business from Telefonica earlier this year. That left many Be Broadband customers fearing that they would be forced to use Sky’s own-brand router, which Sky effectively forces on its own customer base.

However, in a letter sent to Be Broadband customers, Sky explains that it’s planning to support third-party router equipment. “We are also aware that some BE customers would like to keep using their own routers and certain features such as Static IP, which is why we’re working hard to develop support for these important features on Sky’s network,” the company writes.

The letter may be an attempt to stem the tide of defections from the O2/Be customer base since the Sky takeover was announced in March. Figures released earlier this week showed the two ISPs had lost more than 40,000 customers since the end of 2012.

Sky Broadband refuses to issue server login details to customers who want to use their own router equipment. Many customers instead use Windows software to extract the login details from the Sky router, and use them to operate their own equipment, although this isn’t supported by Sky and breaches its terms and conditions.

This month’s PC Pro – on sale Thursday 16 May – compares the performance of ISPs’ own-brand routers with third-party models. It doesn’t make pretty reading for Sky.

(Thanks to PC Pro reader Colin Brooks for the tip-off.)