Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group
- Reference: 1758107888
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/09/17/sky_plans_to_ditch_up/
- Source link:
Staff were told about the proposed changes on Monday, according to insiders who contacted The Register . In a message to the team in Britain - seen by us - Aarne Aho, group Chief Technology Officer, said that over the past three years the corporation has ploughed funds into platform, products and used Comcast's global scale to "fundamentally transform our business."
This includes "moving from satellite to IP with our global streaming platform," and in 2025 launching Sky Glass Gen 2 and Sky Glass Air. It also upped broadband capability via the [1]CityFibre relationship and updated the mobile platform and customer management systems.
[2]
As these products and services are "used by millions" of Brits and with an eye on the future, Aho said, "we need to shift our focus and investment to building digital-first customers service." He added: "For our products and platforms, that means less focus on creating entirely new platforms and more about enhancing the customer experience of the great products and services we already have.
[3]
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“As a result, we're proposing some changes to the structure and ways of working which will impact around 900 colleagues, with potentially 600 colleagues leaving Sky if the proposals go ahead. This includes moving more work to our trusted global outsource partners so that we can be more flexible and responsive in how we operate."
Sky operates three "mature" engineering centers in London, Milan, and Chennai in India. In a company-wide email, Aho said the proposals "would potentially see around 500 Sky colleagues exiting Group Technology in total across the UK," indicating that 100 will be shown the door in the consumer and COO areas.
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The Networks organization will undergo a balancing exercise across these three centers to "leverage time zones for change activities, and tap into a broader talent pool, and to build a stronger anchor to manage our partners.” In the case of India, Sky is may also be factoring in the lower cost of wages.
In a separate email, staff were told of the intent to consolidate all development of core network management tools into a single team. This is to create a "simplified user experience, helping us maximize efficiency, fully utilize productivity tools from Group Technology, and create a unified channel to benefit from the AI capabilities developed by Rachel Eccleston's team."
[6]Monty Widenius 'heartbroken' at the extent of Oracle's MySQL job cuts
[7]Red Hat back-office team to be Big and Blue whether they like it or not
[8]Microsoft CEO feels weighed down by job cuts
[9]Tata Consultancy enforces return-to-office mandate for all US staff, effective immediately
Eccleston joined the corporation in April 2021, according to LinkedIn, and is a director that is running AI strategy and transformation across the group.
A source claimed some staff in the Technology Group fear service quality will reduce for subscribers amid suspicions that more people will be hired in India, a location where there has also been AI trials that involved "critical network services."
"Networks are still under a UK hiring freeze for at least two years now and we have been actively prevented from backfilling roles of colleagues who left prior," our source said.
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"It is a shame we are not unionized, but many have tolerated below market-rate pay for so long."
As for the DevOps function, Sky is proposing to reposition the Service Desk under a Mobile and Broadband "guild" to "provide end to end continuity from design through test, implementation, monitoring and resolution." And to "streamline service and technology introduction processes using our new delivery framework."
The proposed changes are expected to be implemented by December. "It will be a sad Q4 [for staff in the offices] at Brick Lane, Brentwood, Osterley, Leeds, and beyond," said an insider.
A Sky mouthpiece told The Reg : "Over the past few years, Sky has launched a set of market-leading products including Sky Glass, Sky Stream and our full fibre broadband service.
"These products are now firmly established and used by millions of customers, strengthening Sky's reputation for innovation and great service. As we look ahead, we are shifting our approach to bring customers the next generation of experience by investing in digital-first service, unbeatable content, and even better performance from our products, powered by the best of global innovation." ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://cityfibre.com/news/sky-and-cityfibre-sign-partnership-to-bring-sky-full-fibre-broadband-to-the-cityfibre-network
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aMrbGtmUjrmuaI2OAFKBSwAAA8U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMrbGtmUjrmuaI2OAFKBSwAAA8U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMrbGtmUjrmuaI2OAFKBSwAAA8U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMrbGtmUjrmuaI2OAFKBSwAAA8U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/11/oracle_slammed_for_mysql_job/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/red_hatters_to_be_big/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_ceo_job_cuts/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/23/tata_consulting_returntowork_mandate/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMrbGtmUjrmuaI2OAFKBSwAAA8U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Not about
Profit at all is it?
The moment you're in bed with the another global company, like comcast, expect profit to be the driver and jobs for the local economy can go feck themselves!
Yet another brand that's only about the shareholder value, no CSR at all.
Its a shame, but remember, the mega rich owners don't have enough money yet!
whose going to buy products
with this continued offshoring, there's going to be no jobs left in the UK & within a generation we'll have zero skills.
"Business leaders" are genuinely fucking morons. After offshoring manufacturing in the past & now bitching about being reliant on China for everything, selling our last steel blast furnace to China for £1.
now offshoring high value technical skills to india, poland south africa....
whose going to be left earning the big money to buy the products when we're all earning minimum wage in tesco?!
Re: whose going to buy products
whose going to be left earning the big money to buy the products when we're all earning minimum wage in tesco?!
Wouldn't be surprised if there weren't talks about including subscriptions to such services in TV Licence or as part of income tax. We already had an idea floated about national ChatGPT subscription.
Don't worry. There is nothing that steak, wine and gullible minister cannot fix for the shareholders of foreign corporation.
Re: whose going to buy products
>> when we're all earning minimum wage in tesco
A few years ago, some top Tory was talking about red tape and how he wanted to get rid of it. The words on the tip of his tongue were regulations concerning shoe blacks. That was the bee in his bonnet. Next up presumably is selling matches on street corners.
"and more about enhancing the customer experience of the great products and services we already have."
That would be the "great" IP product that I have to reboot once a day because it shows "there is a technical fault" most days and cannot show me the channel until the box it restarted?
The same "great" IP product that has a navigation / UX interface that's pants vs the "old" satellite / sky box interface that was fluid and quick. Now it feels like a browser... with pauses while it loads the next menu etc... oh wait, it is a F*&&(* browser.
When Sky made me redundant in June it was one of the more honest and straightforward redundancy processes that I have been through. Good luck to all those being booted out this time round.
Vote with your feet
Maybe UK Comcast customers might like to vote with their feet and cancel their Sky subscriptions?
When my local cable provider here in Sweden got sold off to the investment arm of the Republican Party was when I largely stopped watching TV.
I hope they factor in their losses because of this
I hope they are factoring in to this offshoring saving the customers they will lose as part of this? I have recently moved four mobile phone contracts and my broadband contract away from Sky due to their terrible customer service and high prices for existing customers.
When attempting to negotiate my new fibre broadband package price to something even close to what they were offering new customers, one of their customer service "advisors" genuinely told me, "Well it's only fair, you would have got a great deal when you were a new customer with us". So now I'm PlusNets new customer.
If Netflix can pull their finger out and get the live broadcast rights for the F1 following their Drive to Survive success, I'll be able to leave Sky entirely, and be all the happier for it.
There may be trouble ahead....
Sky are in big, big trouble.
They're attacked from all sides. The most obvious threat being that TV is now fragmented. 30 years ago you looked through the Sky schedule and it was wall-to-wall chock full of the latest movies, big name US TV shows and unique content you couldn't find anywhere else. Now all that stuff is on Disney Plus/Netflix/Amazon Prime/Paramount (etc..) Content is being bought up left, right and center and turned into streaming services. Their output is increasingly b or even c level content, the stuff rejected by the big streaming platforms (HBO programs being the exception, but they have their own streaming platform due for release next year).
Take Sky Movies for instance.. they used to promise a movie premier every day. 365 new movies a year. Almost always with a big movie appearing on a Friday night, some big franchise movie that had appeared recently at the cinema - the "movie premier every day" claim was dropped ages ago, all the movie franchises are now owned by Disney and their Friday night big event is now often a "Sky Original" crapfest that wasn't even shown at the cinema because it's of such low quality no bugger would pay to watch it!
It's now nay on impossible to get a satellite system from them (Sky-Q), and if you do, you're paying through the nose for it. They push Stream/Glass onto everyone, and they're some of the worst consumer electronic products on the market! They're completely under-powered, not in the slightest bit suitable for processing 4K/Dolby Atmos (despite them charging you a subscription fee to use them), and they crash/lock up constantly, and of course, they're reliant on your internet connection (fine if you live alone, have a wired connection and gigabit internet - almost certainly not so if any one of those don't apply - get used to buffering!). The TVs are cheap, crappy displays. You can tell which websites get paid for reviews, because they review Sky Glass as being a decent TV when its a pile of crap but lives in the price range of some decent LG/Samsung sets.
Unlike other streaming services, you can't just subscribe to Sky as an off-the-shelf product at a set price. You have do a stupid dance every time your contract ends where you threaten to leave, wait it out, get called by the retention team and then get the subscription at half the price it's advertised at. Except, this price rises each and every time you play the game. It's not so long ago Sky was charging £30 a month for everything (all the channels - movies, kids, sport). Now you've got to pay for no-adverts (and you still see adverts constantly), you need the HD addon, the 4K addon, yada yada... and your subscription is now the best part of £100. WTF would you pay >£1,000 per year for something that crashes constantly and has no content? They're literally bundling the streaming services (Netflix, etc) as part of the subscription.. erm thanks, I can get that without paying you by using Apple TV/Google Chromecast/Amazon Firestick, and those products work properly, and ut doesn't cost me the same as a week's holiday for my family, and I don't need to spend a week on the phone trying to persuade you to give me a fair price. Jokers.
Football is the one thing that keeps people subscribing, but the cost of that rises each year, whilst Sky are hemorrhaging customers. Costs are rising for them on the one side, subscriber numbers falling on the other, so they just keep lumping the deficit onto existing subscribers when their contracts end, so yet more people leave, exasperating the problem and further increasing subscription costs.
Talking about football, like movies/tv, that market has now fragmented. 30 years ago, you had Sky, you could watch everything that was broadcast. Now you need Sky, Amazon, Netflix, DAZN, TNT, yada, yada... They're on a hiding to nothing when pirate streams exist. At some point, football goes the way of all the major US sports and migrates to their own "League Pass" style subscription service and cuts out the broadcasters.
Like him or loath him (and I firmly sit in the latter category) Murdoch is no fool. He saw the way the wind was blowing, which is why he dumped this failing enterprise onto gullible Comcast.
Anyone dancing to Sky's tune and handing over £100 (or more!) a month to them is a bloody fool and needs their head examining.
Re: There may be trouble ahead....
Funnily enough I was playing this game last night. 20 year customer.
My contract had expired in May or something but I hadn't set a reminder and was busy so didn't notice their emails.
For Signature, HD, Multiroom and Netflix on Sky Q it shot up to £66 or thereabouts.
They sent me a letter very generously offering to let me recontract for £64, couple of pounds off.
Called them and most they would come down to was £55 when I knew others were getting same for £25-30 pm so cancelled.
Offered me the Sky Stream but I didn't fancy it compared to the Sky Q box.
Needed to send Q and mini box back by 20/9 so finally got around to calling them again last night.
First operator tried to push broadband on me which I specifically said I didn't want.
Tried to transfer me to someone else, got cut off.
Called them back later - Offered signature, multiroom and Netflix for £44.50. No chance.
Asked about Sky Q Essentials (ability to record free-to-air) so she transferred me to another dept. which turned out to be the real retentions team.
Actually someone in UK this time and with no massive call centre background noise.
He tried his best to get my original requirements for a decent price but computer said no and couldn't get below the £44.50 level (probably because I didn't want cinema and sport).
He actually got quite irate with his system and Sky corporate about it.
So have taken out Sky Q Essentials with Mini box as a holding thing with a months cooling off period on a contract. (Can't do rolling monthly if discounted for reasons apparently)
£7 for main box and £8 for mini which is just crazy for the latter. Mini is probably costing me that in power actually it runs so hot.
I'll probably still cancel again anyway, I'd bought myself an Apple TV box for main TV and Firestick for bedroom TV in the interim so really just need NowTV for the main Sky channels.
This is a meaning of "enhancing the customer experience" of which I was previously unaware. Thanks in part to this warning I shall continue to not be a customer.
"fundamentally transform our business."
This includes "moving from satellite to IP with our global streaming platform,"
Note I am not a Sky customer (do have a satellite dish and access the free channels).
However I do live in the sticks with dismal broadband.
Quite a few people I know are Sky users & still on Satellite & if / when they are forced to sky glass (or whatever it's touted as now) they will be ending their contract as their rural broadband is even more dire than mine & not up to the task of streaming Sky content so for them its satellite or nothing. Moving from satellite to IP does not benefit all existing Sky users.
Sky (& many other companies) seem to forget that although % of UK population with OKish broadband speed for streaming looks reasonable, that does not equate to a good % of the area of the UK having good broadband - areas with high population density are (usually) reasonably well served on broadband speed as relatively cost effective to roll out - in rural areas, where economics of enabling good connection quality / speed per subscriber are far more challenging, then general approach is "screw you rural people it's not happening anytime soon (ever?)". For many rural areas mobile connectivity is fairly poor* so the option of a SIM based router as a workaround for better broadband is mot viable*.
* though EE, with helps of lots of government cash, is (glacially slowly) rolling out improved rural mobile signal quality (arguably creating a dubious mobile provider monopoly issue in rural areas) many areas still struggle. e.g. a mast near us (takes about 10 mins to walk there via footpaths, however close "as the crow files") but it is bizarrely not on a particularly high point (hilly area, some higher hills block any line of sight to the mast from where I live) so quality not that great (can be affected by weather, time of year (tree leaf cover) etc. as non line of sight (NLOS) quite dependent on signal bounce & absorption) - not an expert in mobile mast antenna technology but given the proximity of the mast I would have expected better NLOS signal than we get.
>>>"It is a shame we are not unionized, but many have tolerated below market-rate pay for so long."<<<
As is being demonstrated, the market rate is the price that Indian IT types will work for, soon the helpline & interface development will be direct to AI and everyone will be out of a job.
Modern Slavery
What a [1]beautiful waffle .
So many nice words and noble intentions.
If you've got the time for that bullshit, you're not working hard enough.
[1] https://www.skygroup.sky/about/our-governance#modern-slavery
Ties in nicely with ringway Manchester's latest YT vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Qg6exDBAI
Lessons
This includes moving more work to our trusted global outsource partners so that we can be more flexible and responsive in how we operate.
Does the plan include the lessons learned stage and cries for a taxpayer bailout?