UPDATE2 ISP Sky Broadband Confirms Line Rental Price Hike to £18.99

Last week news broke that Sky Broadband intended to raise the monthly price of Phone Line Rental from 1st March 2017 (it’s currently £17.40), although the ISP refused to say by how much. Today we’ve had it confirmed that the price will rise by 9.14% to £18.99 per month.

The increase is much more significant than the +£1 extra that we’ve become familiar with seeing from Sky each year. This is arguably an even bigger frustration for Sky Broadband’s customers because they, unlike most of the other major providers, do not offer a pre-paid annual discount (Line Rental Saver) option to help subscribers save money.

Meanwhile if anybody doesn’t like the change then they may still have the opportunity to exit their contracts penalty free (i.e. Ofcom’s rule for mid-contract price hikes), although many existing customers look set to be safe, at least for a little while longer, as the increase currently only affects new subscribers.

A Sky Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“There are no changes to our existing headline pricing for Sky TV bundles and the vast majority of customers will see no change at all to the cost of their TV package. We are also keeping line rental prices at their current level for customers who only take a landline from us.”

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

On the other hand it’s worth remembering that such price increases exist because the ISP will also be facing higher costs of its own, not least from diminished call revenues and higher data usage from their broadband subscribers.

At the same time there’s the extra cost from having to implement new industry regulation and rules, such as the new system for sending subscriber email “alerts” when Internet piracy is detected (here) and the need to support the Government’s Internet snooping law (here). Further changes, such as a new system for automatic compensation, are also on the way.

UPDATE 11:49am

Added a comment from Sky above. We also understand that Sky may soon be introducing a new line rental related product for their customers that will offer better value, but at present there are no official details to share.

UPDATE 12:44pm

A quick look into the depths of Sky’s website has also revealed that the connection fee for non-inclusive calls will increase from 16.9p to 19p on 1st April 2017 and we also spotted these:

UK Mobile call rates

From 1 April 2017, we’re changing the way we charge for non-inclusive UK mobile calls by introducing a daytime rate and an evenings & weekend rate. From 1 April 2017, you’ll be charged 19.35p per minute for non-inclusive UK mobile calls made during the day and 14.25p per minute for non-inclusive UK mobiles calls made during the evening & weekend (previously 11.5p per minute any time of day).

UK Landline Rates

From 1 April 2017, the charge for non-inclusive calls to UK landlines increased from 11.5p to 12.54p per minute.