Nearly £1billion was wiped off the stock market value of BT Group yesterday after Sky struck a deal with one of its biggest competitors to supply fibre broadband to households throughout Britain.
Sky currently uses BT and its OpenReach internet division to supply fibre broadband to six million customers. From next year, it will start using CityFibre's network as well.
CityFibre is the UK's largest alternative network provider, and its new deal with Sky was seen as a potential blow to BT.
Greg Mesch, the founder and chief executive of the London-based CityFibre, told The Times that winning Sky as a customer “had been our game plan for 13 years."
Mr Mesch said Sky "were always clear that they liked what we were doing, but they needed us to have scale and we’ve proceeded to go about that."
CityFibre currently reaches 3.8million household nationwide but hopes to increase its customer reach to eight million by the next of next year.
BT's shares fell by 8% in afternoon trading before closing down 9.30p, or 6.4%, at 136.30p. Over £909million was wiped from its market valuation which stood at £13.3billion.
FTSE 100
The UK's flagship share index, the FTSE 100, was down 68-points at 8,273 shortly after opening this morning.
Brent crude oil futures were down 0.09%, trading at $77.13 a barrel