Sky Online Tests

Sky Group Limited is a British media conglomerate with operations in Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Spain in addition to the UK. Since October 2018 it has been part of the US corporation Comcast. Its core business is satellite television. It was formed in 1990 by the merger of British Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting under the name BSkyB. In 2014, the name was changed to Sky plc after expansion into Italy and Germany. As of 2018, the company had 23.6 million subscribers and is the largest satellite TV operator in the UK and Italy, third in Germany. The company owns a number of satellite TV channels, such as Sky News, Sky Sports, Sky Movies, Sky1, and Sky2.

Activities

Sky has a presence in four of the five largest pay-TV markets in Western Europe: the UK, Italy, Germany and Spain. Pay-TV is the company's core business and is distributed both via satellite and cable networks, predominantly by third parties, although the UK has its own. In Spain and Switzerland, services are only available via the internet. Several channels (Sky News in the UK and Ireland, Sky TG24 in Italy and Sky Sport News in Germany) are broadcast free-to-air.

The divisions are formed on a geographical basis:

• UK & Ireland - 170 channels, 13 million subscribers, £8.9bn turnover;
• Germany and Austria - 44 channels, 5.2 million subscribers, £2bn turnover;
• Italy - 84 channels, 4.8 million subscribers, turnover of £2.6bn.

In the UK, the company has a virtual cellular operator, Sky Mobile, operating through the Telefónica network.