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- Good deals on pay monthly phones
- Strong customer service and satisfaction scores
- Useful perks and money-saving features
- Solid and reliable
- Other networks are faster
- No free EU roaming
Sky Mobile wins two prizes in this year’s Mobile Networks Awards, and if it didn’t win more it’s not for want of trying. In fact, it says a lot about the network that its results are so consistent, with Sky appearing in the top three for Value, Customer Service, Reliability, Multi-User Plans and Roaming, while winning in the Best for Handset Contracts and Best for Perks categories. Even when it’s not on the winners podium, it’s usually placed fourth or fifth.
As a result, Sky Mobile is the fifth-highest ranked network overall in this month’s survey, and it’s only a slightly disappointing result in the Most Recommended and Speed categories that holds it back. 47% of customers surveyed said they would recommend it to others, but 11% of customers would recommend others look elsewhere. Lebara, Giffgaff, Smarty and Tesco Mobile all had more promoters and the first three had fewer demoters, giving them a higher score overall.
Sky Mobile review: What do you get?
Where other networks try to baffle and bamboozle with their sheer range of SIM-only plans, Sky keeps things relatively simple. Plans start at £5 for 1GB (discounted to £2 at the time of writing) and £12 for 5GB (currently £6). From there, they go all the way up to 60GB for £22/mth or an unlimited plan for £29/mth. Unlimited calls and texts are inclusive on every plan, bar the usual premium-rate numbers.
Check around and you’ll see that you can usually get more data for less elsewhere, particularly from the cheaper no-frills networks, but Sky still has some bargains that are worth looking out for. The network also offers a Mix feature which enables you to change your mobile plan month-by-month. If you know you’re going to need more data or you want to save some money, you can adjust your plan upwards or downwards through the website or the MySky app.
Sky Mobile sells the latest smartphones on a contract, though with a slightly different approach. You buy your device on a 24-month or 36-month contract with a data plan on top, and can then swap to a new phone and contract after 12 or 24 months, without paying an early upgrade charge.
This can make Sky Mobile a good bet if you’re after a new handset. For instance, you could grab a Samsung Galaxy S25 for £22 a month on a 36-month contract, swapping your phone after 24 months. You’d then spend another £2 to £22 on your data plan, giving you a total cost of £24 to £44 a month plus a one-off payment of £12 upfront. This isn’t quite apples-to-apples with other networks on a 24-month contract as you’ll still have 12 months of device payments to pay off after two years.
On a proper 24-month contract, the cost of the phone rises to £30 a month plus £99 upfront. You could be spending £40 a month for the phone with a 40GB data plan, or £50 with unlimited data, plus the £99 one-off cost. That’s still pretty good when other providers might cost you £60 or more per month for an unlimited deal, but work out the total cost of your plan over your chosen term before signing up.
In many cases the sums must work out, as Sky took the win in our Best for Handset contracts category, beating Tesco Mobile and EE. It also came second place in our Best Value Mobile Network category. 93% of customers were either satisfied or very satisfied with the value of their package, and only 1% were dissatisfied. True, Lebara did even better with no dissatisfied customers, but Sky Mobile is clearly doing something right.
Sky Mobile review: Customer service
Sky Mobile polled third for customer service in this year’s awards survey, with 79% of the customers we spoke to who had needed support happy with the way the network provided it. 3% of customers were still left dissatisfied, putting Sky Mobile a little further behind Giffgaff and winners Tesco Mobile, but still ahead of Vodafone in fourth place.
Sky Mobile also did well in this year’s Ofcom Comparing Customer Service report, which found that Sky had higher than average levels of satisfaction with complaint handling, and that Sky had half the complaints per 100,000 customers compared to the industry average. Average call waiting times were below average, as were the rates of customer calls that were abandoned.
Sky Mobile review: Coverage, reliability and speed
Sky mobile ranks second for reliability in our survey, behind winner Tesco Mobile and ahead of EE. It had a higher percentage of users who always or often had fast enough speeds for web browsing than any other network (86%), and also had decent scores for streaming and online gaming. Users also seem happy with the network’s speed. 89% of users said they were satisfied with Sky Mobile’s performance, and 83% felt confident that it could reliably maintain a fast enough connection for demanding tasks, such as streaming or downloading.
Here, Sky Mobile scored slightly higher than its host network, O2, which is – according to the latest figures from the independent testers at Rootmetrics – the slowest of the UK’s four major operators. O2’s 5G coverage and download speeds trail those of EE, Three and Vodafone – it’s the only one of the four with a median UK 5G download speed of under 100Mbps – while its 4G/5G UK median download speed of 36.2MBps also leave it comfortably (or uncomfortably) in last place. Still, if this limits Sky Mobile, customers don’t seem worried. There’s precious little sign of any dissatisfaction.
Sky Mobile review: Roaming
Sky also comes second in our Roaming category, tying with third-placed O2 with an NPS score of 80%, but pulling ahead with more very satisfied customers (40%) and fewer dissatisfied customers (4%). Interestingly, it manages this even though its plans don’t include free EU roaming. Instead, customers can access their UK data, calls and texts in 55 destinations by paying £2 per day for the Roaming Passport Plus extra. This mostly covers European destinations, but also fits in New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand, the USA and a few other more far-flung destinations.
Other regions are covered by Rest of the World roaming charges, where you’ll pay between 7p and £12 per MB of data, 36p to £8.64 per minute and 12p to £1.08 per text. Often you’re looking at £2.16 to £4.32 per MB, so it pays to be sensible with data or set a spending cap.
Sky Mobile review: Other features, services and spending caps
Sky Mobile supports spending caps, and you can set up a different cap for each SIM on your account, which is useful if you’re covering multiple users like your spouse or partner and any offspring. You can set it to £0 or up to £100 online and Sky Mobile will send alerts by text when a user reaches 80% or 100% of their monthly cap. There’s also an optional 50% alert.
However, Sky’s strongest features have more to do with its Piggybank feature and how it supports using Sky’s own TV and entertainment apps. Basically, each account has a Piggybank which fills up with any spare data left at the end of the month. This can be used to buy rewards or get money off a new device, but it can also be shared with other members of your family on the same account.
Meanwhile, Sky Mobile doesn’t count any data used streaming on its Sky Go, Sky Sports and Sky News apps, along with other Sky apps, against your monthly allowance. You can effectively watch for free, subject to a fair use policy.
These features were enough to net Sky a win in our Best for Perks category, and also help explain why it polled third in Best for Multi-User Plans.
Sky Mobile review: Verdict
Sky Mobile is neither the fastest network nor the cheapest, but it’s consistently good across the board. What’s more, it’s great where it really counts: reliability, customer service and all-round satisfaction. It makes even more sense if you’re an existing Sky TV and/or broadband subscriber, where the perks come into their own, but it’s a good option even if you aren’t. All those satisfied customers can’t be wrong.
