Virgin Media & Sky Packages

Compare Sky versus Virgin Media

Choosing between Sky and Virgin Media as your TV, broadband or phone provider is a big decision. After all, it’s an expensive purchase which will tie you into a contract for at least a year - and you may end up staying for much longer. We want to help you make the right decision, and this guide is intended to tell you everything you need to know.

Sky and Virgin Media offer a great range of services, and the right provider for you may simply come down to availability. If you can get both providers where you live it will help you to understand how they differ in terms of TV channels, equipment and broadband options.

Provider	Sky	Virgin Media
Broadband	Up to 76Mb	Up to 120Mb
TV Channels	Up to 427	Up to 217
HD Channels	Up to 66	Up to 38
Home Phone	Weekend Anytime	Weekend Evening & Weekend Anytime
Line Rental	£14.50	£14.99
Prices From	£7.50 per month	£4 per month

TV channels

With Sky’s basic TV package you’ll get 240 free to air channels and entertainment channels, including the exclusive Sky Atlantic.

For an extra £5 a month you can add Entertainment Extra, which includes a further 80+ channels. The top package, Sky World HD, includes both Entertainment packs, the complete Sky Sports and Sky Movies collections and the UK’s only dedicated 3D channel.

Virgin Media has three core TV packages with 100+, 135+ or 135+ TV channels. Most of UK’s top channels are available in at least one Virgin Media TV package, and you can add the Sky Sports and Sky Movies packs to any of them. The top Virgin Media Collection, VIP, includes a total of 217 channels.

While Sky would seem to have a better offering, a lot of channels fall into niche categories that may not interest you, such as documentaries, kids or religious programming. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the quantity of channels is the most important thing here. Consider which channels you couldn’t live without, and then see who can deliver them for the best price.

HD TV

Sky charge an extra £10.25 a month to add HD to a TV package, but this includes the bonus Sky Sports F1 HD motor racing channel.

You can get up to 30 HD channels at no extra cost with Virgin, but it’s important to note that if you add Sky Sports or Sky Movies you’ll need to pay an extra £7 a month to access them in High Definition.

Set-top boxes

With Sky you’ll get an HD ready Sky+ digital TV recorder, which is usually provided free of charge to new customers. If you live in a flat or anywhere else that requires a “non-standard” installation or you can’t connect your box to an active phone line you may have to pay an extra one-off fee.

Virgin TV comes with a free 500GB HD TiVo. If you don’t want to record TV you can instead opt for the V HD set-top box and save £5 a month on your subscription fee.

TiVo is more advanced and has additional features that Sky+ lacks, such as the ability to record three channels at the same time instead of two, but for most people’s needs either set-top box would probably suffice.

Broadband speeds

Virgin Media currently offers the UK’s fastest fibre optic broadband service with speeds up to 120Mb in some areas, via a network that can reach around half of all UK homes.

Sky can deliver up to 14Mbps broadband to a large proportion of UK homes via the telephone network. Around a third of UK homes can also receive Sky fibre optic broadband at up to 40Mbps, and a smaller proportion can get up to 76Mbps.

It’s easy to be blinded by statistics when looking at broadband speeds. The fact is that you probably wouldn’t see much benefit from paying extra for 120Mbps compared to 40Mbps if your online activities don’t require much bandwidth such as browsing websites, using Facebook or streaming Netflix movies.

Having said that, if you are buying broadband to download a lot of High Definition movies or other big files then a faster option may suit you better, but even then it may not be essential.

Broadband usage limits

Sky’s Broadband Unlimited and Fibre Unlimited packages aren’t restricted by a fair usage policy or traffic management, so you’re free to download as much as you like. Both packages also come with unlimited usage at wireless hotspots in The Cloud network.

Virgin’s broadband packages are more or less unlimited, although traffic management is used to restrict some activities at peak times, especially file sharing. Usage above the fair usage policy can result in a slowing down of a connection for up to 5 hours, but the limits are set quite high so it’s unlikely that this would affect you unless you download a lot of HD movies at peak times. Virgin doesn’t offer free public Wi-Fi usage, at least for the time being.

Phone

Sky’s line rental is the cheaper of the two providers at just {} a month, and this includes evening and weekend calls. You can also pay extra for an anytime calls plan which comes with the added benefit of inclusive calls to 20 international destinations including Australia, France, Germany and the USA.

Virgin’s line rental is more expensive at £14.99 a month, and this includes weekend calls to UK landlines and Virgin mobiles. You have the option to upgrade to either evening and weekend or anytime calls.

On-demand

Sky is arguably ahead of Virgin in terms of on-demand content. Plug in any broadband connection you can access over 500 movies and hundreds of hours of TV shows with Sky Anytime+. If you’ve got a smartphone, tablet or laptop you can use Sky Go to watch a selection of your TV channels when you’re away from home.

With Virgin you can access catch-up TV services, and up to 3,500 hours of on-demand content, depending upon your package. If you’ve got a Virgin Mobile you can also watch an hour of TV a day on a portable device for free, though all other usage must be paid for.

Contracts and payments

As a Sky customer you can subscribe to just TV, just phone, TV and phone, broadband and phone or a bundle of all three services. Sky contracts have a minimum term of 12 months.

With Virgin Media you can take any one service, any two or a bundle of all three. Standard Virgin contracts have a minimum term of 18 months.

Whichever provider you choose you’ll be tied into a contract for the duration of their minimum term, and if you try to leave before that’s up you’ll most likely be charged an early disconnection fee.

Both providers let you pay your bill in a number of ways, but to avoid a surcharge you should use Direct Debit. Likewise, try to avoid paper bills as this too will lead to an additional monthly charge.

Availability

To subscribe to Sky TV you’ll need to be able to have a south facing satellite dish installed on the outside of your property, and to get their free or unlimited broadband you’ll need to live within their network area. Sky fibre optic broadband is only available in areas that are connected to the Openreach network.

To receive Virgin Media TV or fibre optic broadband services you must live in an area with Virgin cable coverage. Roughly half of all UK homes fall within the Virgin cable network.

You can check the availability of Sky and Virgin Media in your area with our postcode checker at the top of this page.