Sky Broadband Preparing UK Line Rental Prices Rise for 1st March 2017

Customers of Sky Broadband have been given an unusual early warning of a future price increase to the cost of Sky Line Rental (phone), which is due to hit on 1st March 2017. However Sky’s warning stems from a newspaper promotion for their service, rather than a direct communication.

According to This is Money, a newspaper advert that was posted by Sky last year included the following sentence in its small print: “Sky’s Line Rental prices increase on 1 March 2017.” At present customers’ of the ISP’s broadband service pay £17.40 inc. VAT per month for line rental (note: it’s £17.99 on their NOW TV Combo packages), which is merged into the total bundle cost (see October’s price change).

We also note that Sky’s German division (Sky Deutschland) will be increasing some of their prices on the same date.

A Spokesperson for Sky UK said:

“Whenever we review our pricing we work hard to keep any rises to a minimum. Any time we do introduce changes, we contact the relevant customers in advance to let them know.”

In fairness Sky Broadband resisted the temptation to increase their prices last year, while BT hiked their standard monthly line rental to £18.99 a month and Virgin Media jumped to £19.00 (a good number of other providers also chose to follow suit). On the other hand many of Sky’s rivals still offer an annual pre-paid discount for line rental, while Sky only adopts a standard monthly charge.

We suspect that Sky will either increase their rental to match the NOW TV Combo price or push it up by around +£1 extra to £18.40 per month. Such a move may also give subscribers the opportunity to exit their contracts penalty free (i.e. Ofcom’s rule for mid-contract price hikes). Sadly Sky is not yet willing to share their exact plans for March.

Speaking of the regulator, Ofcom is currently probing the ever rising cost of line rental (here) and they could propose changes as part of their Narrowband Market Review 2017, which is expected to publish its conclusions in September 2017.