The deal — which will now be taken to Sky shareholders for their consideration — would enable Philadelphia-based Comcast to access millions of homes in Europe through Sky. With 31,000 employees, Sky sells satellite-TV and high-speed internet services to 23 million subscribers in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Comcast has roughly the same number of cable-TV customers in the United States, though residential high-speed internet services are a bigger business now for the company.