BT UK Brings Back Option of 12 Month Broadband Contract Term
UK ISP BT Consumer has today announced that they’re re-introducing 12-month contract terms as an option for new customers, although naturally you can expect to pay a few £ pounds more for these every month than their current headline deals, which sit on much longer 24-month terms.
A few years back minimum contract terms of 12-months were still considered to be somewhat of an industry standard, but over time that became 18-months and more recently there’s been a growing trend toward 24-months. The advantage of a longer term is that you should save money, but at the same time you also increase the risk of becoming tied to an ISP, which could make it harder and more expensive to escape when problems occur.
Suffice to say that 12-month terms may be more appealing to cautious consumers, as well as renters and those looking to move house (i.e. they may not want to commit for longer). As such, BT has decided to bring them back, although the initial contract term pricing is naturally a little more expensive than their 24-month packages.
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| Package | Price per month | One- off Activation fee |
| Broadband | £29.99 | £30 |
| Fibre Essential | £31.99 | £30 |
| Fibre 1 | £32.99 | £20 |
| Fibre 2 | £36.99 | £20 |
| Fibre 100 (G.fast) | £44.99 | £20 |
| Fibre 250 (G.fast) | £54.99 | £20 |
| Full Fibre 100 | £44.99 | £20 |
| Full Fibre 300 | £54.99 | £20 |
| Full Fibre 900 | £64.99 | £20 |
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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The whole point of contracts was to provide customers with some guarantee of a stable pricing for a fixed period. However as with all things, the sneaky price rises have all but removed any incentive for a consumer to be loyal to an ISP or a service provider in general.
What is the point of a contract even?
There are substantial up-front costs to the ISP when providing a new service, including the Openreach connection fee and supplying the router. Hence a contract on initial connection is perfectly reasonable.
However this also means that the costs should go *down* at the end of the contract period, not *up*, if you continue with the service.
I think the main purpose of a subsequent contract is to lock you in:
– if another ISP has a promotional offer, you are not able to take advantage of it
– if their service fails to perform up to standard, you are not able to take your business elsewhere
– to exploit people who don’t notice the contract has ended and don’t want the hassle of changing provider, or are unsure if they’ll be moving house in the next 2 years.
It’s a shame that the marketplace has not sorted this out. Of all the major ISPs, Zen is the only one I know of which lets you roll on after the initial contract period, with no price increase.
I think it’s becoming more difficult for ISP’s to hide inflation due to government money printing.
No real inflation from QE / money printing outside of housing and stocks yet. Many goods are purchased in USD and exchange rate is relatively good right now so no sign of Sterling being devalued.
High demand, lower relative supply and UK’s new trading arrangements seem more to blame for many price rises.
As far as ISPs go costs of silicon and higher wages from increased demand for staff combined with lower supply are the major input costs from what I’ve been told.
How can I get a 12 month contract because I cannot stand 24 months.
Find another ISP? ZEN has 80/20 in 12month contract for £34.99.
Aquiss have 12 month contracts, and not only is there no setup fee, the first three months are discounted.
who wants 24 month contracts all ISP should offer 1 month 30 day as standard
Bt Talk Talk Vodafone 24 months Virgin Sky 18 months
Virgin offer 30 days, you just pay more.
Nobody and they found it in their KPIs thats why they re-introduced 12month contracts.
I don’t like Zen at all. They are ripped off. G.fast 160/30 @ £59.99 per month for 2 years contract plus £55 setup fee! Zen say they no longer sold 160/30 but have to do on max 330/50 product, pretty pointless and waste of money if the line can’t support 330/50! I went to unchainedisp instead and got sensible 160/30.
UnchainedISP G.fast 160/30 @ £49.99 per month (12 months contract) including free setup and free connection fee, free migration fee, free one static ip address, free openreach gfast modem (you must have your own router)
Plusnet will give you 12 months if you ask (April 2021)
I was offered on renewal 24 but they relented and gave me 12 months at the same price
Looking on the PlusNet website they offer 12 month contracts. How do you find PlusNet when compared to BT?
Never had any problems with Plusnet in the 10+ years I have been with them
At least this way you only get one RPI increase and after the 12 months is up, negotiate another 12 months contract
Spoke to someone in new connections today. These new 12 month contracts will be availible 9th June 2021.