The question of how good Sky's core network is, compared to BT's is a very good one ... and probably not directly answerable by mere members of the public.
However, probably by chance, there were a couple of presentations at UKNOF earlier in the year that gave a hint of a comparison. One was a presentation by Tim Rossiter of Sky, and the other by Neil McRae of BT.
Sky's presentation described their newly-upgraded core network (with 4 core locations; two in London, one each in Birmingham and Leeds), including the migration process and the progression to 100Gb optics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQUoO4Wb7s4It sounds like a fairly meaty network, both router- and optical-wise, but it looks like the three (paired) routes down to London become an absolutely critical leg (in the questions, Tim mentions that most traffic comes into the south, and I suspect an awful lot of their total traffic gets squeezed down these legs).
Total traffic was running at 3Tbps at the start of 2015 (possibly up to 5Tbps by the end of 2015, 65-70% being online video), and the new core nodes (paired at each core site) are each capable of 8Tb, with a roadmap of up to 16Tb. Because of the recent upgrades, the core network doesn't sound overloaded to me, but there are perhaps possibilities every few years as new migrations will be needed. Sky are running on Cisco's bleeding edge, technology-wise, and in my (entirely amateur) opinion could do with some more diverse routes down the country and/or some more connections to the outside world in the north.
With the 4 core sites, there are 65 PoPs, each feeding (I guess) around 50Gbps into that core network, mostly via add/drop multiplexors on the inter-core routes.
However, I believe Sky need a good core network for a reason - that all being about their cash-cow of TV content. While I believe they see "broadband" as the cheap loss-leader to compete with VM & BT, they want their TV content to bring in the money. And I suspect they'll want to build up their IPTV capability more and more to work as an alternative to satellite distribution.
So ... I'm willing to believe that Sky are OK with investing in decent core network equipment, but less willing to believe they'll invest in the access network as much. If they did that, they'd be helping the competition too much.
BT's presentation doesn't tell you much about the capability of the core network, as it focusses on the new fibre build for the Scottish Highlands & Islands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZU5tvBUwZMHowever, it does give you a feel for the capabilities right at the edge of the core network: They mention having 10x10G, 100Gb, lit around the new parts of the fibre network. It appears this is in 4 separate legs (so I guess 10x10G along each leg), and the new legs seem to sprout from existing metro nodes around Inverness, Dundee, Glasgow and (somewhere near) Kilmarnock. It shows 30 new WDM nodes spread along these legs, which (if
Kitz' 21CN article still applies) probably promotes 30 medium exchanges into being Tier 1 MSANs.
From the 21CN architecture, we know BT have just over 100 Metro nodes; these 100 nodes will have multiple legs (of 10x10G, or presumably more for the more urban routes) that feed into the 20 core nodes, so I guess the overall capability could be huge. During Q+A at the end of the UKNOF presentation, Neil mentions that every Metro node has a single hop 100Gbps connection to London ... suggesting that metro <-> core capacity runs at over 10Tbps.
The original
Kitz page on 21CN shows 10G links from Metro nodes to the Core (and within the meshed Core too), but I guess things have definitely moved on on this front. I also wouldn't be surprised if the overall linking architecture has changed somewhat; in the original days, the fully-meshed core would have been important for the VoIP component. Nowadays, the internet component will dominate - so short-cuts to the inner-core internet PoPs would make sense.
For total utilisation, a different presentation (
mere PDF) suggests that BT are predicting 12Tbps traffic in the core network by 2020, and are talking of compound growth rates of 45% leading to that ... which suggests it is currently around 2 Tbps.
I pondered why Sky would have a higher amount of core network traffic compared to BT, and a higher growth rate, and the best answer I can come up with is that a good chunk of BT's customers will be using multicast TV streams. However, a good proportion of Sky customers will be using NowTV streams that will be unicast.
For comparison, TT hit a 1.4Tbps peak around the end of last year.