Vodafone and Three UK to Increase Mid-Contract Price Hikes on Broadband and Mobile UPD
Mobile and broadband provider Vodafone (inc. Three UK) is preparing to follow BT (inc. EE and Plusnet), Virgin Media and O2 by becoming the latest telecoms provider to increase the customer cost impact of their existing mid-contract pricing policy, which will be introduced on 9th November 2025 for Three UK and 12th for Vodafone. But existing customers are safe, for now.
Just to recap. At the start of 2025 Ofcom began requiring telecoms providers to adopt a new approach to mid-contract price hikes, which did away with the old percentage and inflation-based model – replacing it with one that sets out such price hikes “clearly and up-front, in pounds and pence, when a customer signs up” (here). This made annual price hikes clearer and more transparent, but not necessarily cheaper.
In response, many providers later followed BT’s lead by setting out a new pricing policy that would increase the monthly price that broadband customers pay by a flat £3 extra from March or April each year (this can vary a bit between providers). However, inflation has remained higher than originally anticipated and, partly as a result of that, BT (inc. EE and Plusnet), Virgin Media and O2 have since announced that they would increase their annual hikes (e.g. both BT and Virgin increased it from £3 to £4 on their broadband plans).
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The latest provider to join this club is Vodafone, which today informed ISPreview that they will be taking a slightly different approach to the above when their latest pricing policy change is introduced for new customers from 12th November 2025. In short, fixed broadband packages will now rise by £3.50 annually (up from £3 under the old policy), while SIM-Only Basics plans will rise by £1.50 (up from £1) and other SIM-Only products (inc. handset airtime, mobile broadband) will rise by £2.50 (up from £1.80).
A spokesperson for Vodafone told ISPreview:
“We know no one likes price rises, but they are essential for us to keep investing, innovating and providing best-in-class service. This year we launched Just Ask Once which means one specialist owns your query in the My Vodafone app and keeps you updated until it’s sorted. While VeryMe Rewards in the app continues to bring weekly treats, discounts and prize draws. There are no price increases for customers registered as financially vulnerable or those on our social tariffs — Vodafone Essentials and VOXI For Now.”
There are no price increases for customers registered as financially vulnerable or those on our social tariffs, such as Vodafone Essentials and VOXI For Now.
A different approach for Three UK
The changes for Three UK will actually come first, on 9th November 2025, and are a bit different because pre-merger the operator adopted a fairer approach. Just to recap, the existing policy advises customers that, each April, their Monthly Charge will increase by a fixed amount depending on their plan’s data allowance: “Plans 4GB or less & Smartwatch Pairing Plans will increase by £1.00 per month. Plans from 5GB to 99GB will increase by £1.25 per month. Plans 100GB or over will increase by £1.50 per month. All Home Broadband plans will increase by £2.00 per month.”
The changes coming on the 9th follow the above trend and are as follows:
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New mid contract price rises (Three):
Low (4GB and below): £1.80
Mid (5GB and above, below 100GB): £1.90
High (100GB+): £2.30
FWA/HBB: £3.50
At sign-up, customers will see the exact cost of their plan — in pounds and pence — and the date any change will apply, so they know upfront what they’ll pay over the full term.
One other key point to make, for both Three UK and Vodafone, is that they will not be following by O2’s poor example and imposing this change on existing customers with current plans. At present this change only impacts new customers, although of course existing customers that optionally choose to upgrade (re-contract) to a different plan in the future may still be hit.
NOTE: The information above only relates to consumer and SoHo plans.
Closing Thoughts
Annual price hikes are of course nothing new in this market, as well as many others. Often there are legitimate reasons for prices to go up, not least because providers are frequently adding all sorts of new services (e.g. 5G SA, FTTP), developing new systems, facing higher charges from suppliers and energy, implementing costly new Ofcom rules and dealing with tax hikes from the government etc.
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Nevertheless, there is a growing feeling that broadband and mobile providers are becoming increasingly unfair in their pricing practices, and often hitting those who can least afford it the hardest. So far, Ofcom’s policy has thus succeeded in making mid-contract price hikes more transparent for consumers, albeit seemingly at the same time forcing them to pay more – often way above the current and forecast levels of CPI inflation.
However, the Government did this week direct Ofcom to review their approach (here), which many people may be hoping leads to a better solution and possibly one that even bans mid-contract hikes. But history tends to show that we often end up with policies that end up creating more problems than they solve. Perhaps this time will be different.
UPDATE 7th Nov 2025 @ 10:36am
We’ve corrected the price rise for Three UK as it does in fact scale across different packages.
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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A lot of the old price increase policies were “inflation plus” anyway – the major operators have been imposing above-inflatoob price increases for a long time (presumably to make the initial price cheaper and therefore appear at first glance to be better value for money).
What we need now is for Ofcom to grow a backbone and ban mid-contract price increases for consumer contracts. If Ofcom is impotent to act then the government should legislate appropriately.
Why is it that energy companies can nail down prices for the term, but internet and phone companies can not. I believe that mortguage companies nail down payments for three years
The thing is they can. I’ve never had a price increase on a business contract. We’ve always paid the same, even when the initial term expires.
The price is nailed down if you think about. If you pay £25 for 12 months and then pay £28.50 for the next 12 months then the total paid is £642. This total price is known and guaranteed at the start of the contract and can not increase. (Unless they do an O2 and cancel the contract altogether which they should not be allowed to do!) If Ofcom said each payment over the contract period must be equal then you’ll just pay £26.75 (let’s be honest £27) per month for the full 24 months instead.You pay the same either way (or maybe a bit more if they round up the average price).
I know the only reason they do it is because of the psychology of it “Ooh look! Low price upfront” which everyone sees and then not many people look beyond that to the “But watch out we’re gonna make up for it at the end”. It’s a bit deceptive I guess but that kind of marketing is widely used across the economy not just in broadband. So I don’t think Ofcom should make a special case for broadband. There are plenty of ISPs who offer a fixed price across the contract period for those that prefer that – I’m with one myself!
No business can plan for this government’s policies, which give no thought to the impact they will have.
So it begins. O2 have opened the flood gates.
All of this nonsense is coordinated. Choice in this country is an illusion.
I can understand if they can actually justify these price increases by offering solid coverage and speeds. But nope. Not-spots everywhere, congestion, fake 5G, often speeds so low you can barely send a WhatsApp message.
Where is all this money going? What are they investing in? When do we start to see the benefits? Why are their services only getting worse?
Funny how they all copy one another. If people didn’t renew their contracts with these networks but went to the MVNOs they may change their stance.
It begins becouse of the people they raise we pay and as long as we pay they raise its an item people have learned not to be without so they will take and we will just keep paying until we the stronger stand together and say enough is enough we are not paying any more, problem is no one is man enough to join together and stand upto them imagine if everyone did not pay for there phone bill or tax bill or any bill what would happen i will leave this to your immagination.
Everyone complained with the previous percentage based model but at least it meant you get out of your contract penalty free. Now you’re agreeing to be screwed every year
The RPI/CPI+xyz didn’t let you leave contract early.
So they increase prices, but then they have rubbish like VeryMe Reward, offer stuff that most people will not doubt have no interest in.
I am glad I changed to MVNO monthly services years ago and glad I am on a 12-month contract for my broadband.
It is time Ofcom grew some and stopped this nonsense, like the other regulators, they are a waste of space, time and money.
This has nothing to do with inflation, it’s just greedy, ofcom won’t do anything because they are a corrupt & greedy also the rich and politicians do not care for the poor and just keep sending them deeper into debt, everyone on benefits now spend all their benefits paying off that debt, UK is dying due to rampant greed
Nonsense.
Contract comes to an end with Vodafone.. I have had a number of problems with them do will not renew.. openreach haven’t rolled out fttp here so gone with an altnet.
I don’t get fttp via openreach and Vodafone charge me a higher price than they offer fttp customers. I understand there doing it to promote fttp but its not my fault I cant get it.
Fortunately I was already planning on switching to an MVNO when my Vodafone contract is up at the end of the month anyway thanks to their mid-contract price rises.
I did just over a year ago, First with Smarty then with Lebara. While there are rolling 1 month sim only contracts with the MVNOs I won’t be touching the main networks again.
Been using MVNO for a few years now, 3 years with Plusne and five years with smarty, who I am still with now.
The only time I ever had a phone on a contract was with Bt, many years ago with a HTC s710, they had this thing called internet anywhere or something like that and had a system that allowed people to us their routers in different places to connect. So in theory, if I was in town and someone in a flat above a shop also had this BT anywhere thing, I could use their router or a part of their bandwidth anyway. It never really worked for me. you are looking at around 2007 or 2008.
That is the only time I had a phone contract, I did have a sim only contract with Vodaphone for a year, but then changed to Plusnet.
Vowed never to go back to Vodafone and now look what have happened. Still, I will keep using MVNOs, just need to buy a new phone.
Thanks ofcom.
Yet another parasitical public sector body we’re forced to pay for that are utterly useless. Yes, the inflation+4% rises were too high – all they had to do was state in-contract price rises were limited to RPI only.
Instead, we’ve now got this utter rip-off – i’ve now got a 33% increase on the O2 SIM I pay for my mother, and about 12% on the Three SIM for myself.
Ofcom will all get their christmas bonuses and go back to badgering GB news about using the wrong colour of ink in their pens.
Surely if your entering an agreement or contract then the price should be fixed for the duration of that contract, or am I just being naive?
Yep, if they know what it is going up by just average it all out over the contract and give a fixed price.
And if the company doesn’t want to “risk” a 24 or 36 month fixed price, don’t do contracts that long.
Everything about the existing annual price rises feels “wrong”, and these new increased after the event price rises seem “even more wrong” to me. I don’t like being conned and I feel this is what these companies are ultimately doing to us.
BT/EE/Plusnet then Virgin/O2 now Vodafone/Three blimey what sad state of affairs looks like these companies not worth going with now all they care about is money and nothing else
It boggles the mind as to why ofcom allowed any form of price increase. A contract should be for the price agreed at the start and that should be that
Like OFGEM, I firmly believe OFCOM exist to protect the providers, not the consumer. They claim they’re innovating competition and transparency, yet these changes only benefit the providers, not the users and of course, with the new pounds and pence price changes, many applied a blanket increase regardless of the price the end user is already paying which I’m convinced exists solely to get rid of the cheap SIM only deals.
They could atleast make sure they aren’t upping prices right after national outage of service.
Ofcom another useless quango like Ofwat.Welcome to Treasure island, where consumers
are ripped-off.
Price controls never work; we saw the impact they had the last time they were tried in the 1970s.
No one’s calling for the government to truly control prices, just ban mid-contract price rises which they could easily do, especially now when they have to present the rise in sterling.
@tech3475:
It is the government and Ofcom that have created the policy to control price rises.
Yes and no IMO.
The policy is that they have to present it in sterling as opposed to the old RPI/CPI+10%. Note that other utilities do have actual caps.
However, as they now have to fix the increase anyway the networks could more easily just include the price increase into regular prices by averaging it out and the practice could be banned even if consumers end up paying the same anyway.
@ tech3475:
The requirement to express price increases in terms of an actual amount is an attempt to decouple those increases from the inflation figures.
The government’s umbridge at the increases demonstrates that the policy is about price control, not transparency.
Except they could also work off the actual figures at the time the contract is made on their own volition, again they just have to present the figures at the time of the contract in sterling.
I won’t see this as true government price control unless they mandate rise restrictions e.g. max 2%…..which I wouldn’t be surprised by as opposed to the desired outright ban.
Note that I’m not saying the networks won’t take the Mick, e.g. increase prices and have the above hypothetical 2%.
@tech3475:
… which is not possible – especially so when you have a government that has no grasp of the economic impact of its policies.
@ tech3475:
It is a government exerting control over prices.
@tech3475:
RPI is running at 4.5.pc p.a. Services inflation is even higher. Given that broadband providers are providing a service, their price increases should be considered in the region of 6pc to 7pc p.a., not at RPI/CPI+ rates.
They get to have their cake, and eat it. Blame inflation, yet broadband is in the inflationary measure, so they’re actively contributing to said inflation.
I suggest you make the effort to read their financial reports before making unfounded allegations.
“clearly and up-front, in pounds and pence, when a customer signs up”
But the prices they quoted, ‘when a customer signs up’ aren’t the ones they are now saying. I’m not signing up today, I signed up months ago, under contractually agreed different ‘pounds and pence’ price increases.
It’s time Ofcom, and the companies doing this, realised they are actually in the wrong.
They are not in the wrong. No one has broken the rules set by Ofcom.
They got away with 18pc price rises during COVID, we all showed we can pay, so they want to continue
Funny companies like Lebara, smarty, VOXI not increasing prices instead they offer more data for cheaper prices big name companies are just greed does this increase apply to existing customers hope they do so I can request my pac code and leave three only joined up this June £16 pounds unlimited data sim.
Same with ID mobile my contract is month to month but been with them few years and price does not rise for me. I pay £8 and get 120gb data…i only use about 30 a month though but its best bang for my buck as cheaper prices than that go less than the 30gb that i use i thibj
MVNOs will not escape the price increases.
Thats why i am glad i am with connect fibre zero price hikes while in contract also id mobile….again no price hikes while in contract
.and my contract with them is month to month but stays same price!
Boo, hiss. Hoped Three would do a mid-term hike for existing cuatomers so I could could escape for free
What needs to happen is the Internet should be done away with altogether its more trouble than its worth we never had it years ago and dident have the trouble we have today but if that was to happen people would act like little baby’s as if they had there toys taken off them as people and especially kids wouldn’t live without there phones and people rely so much on computers today rather than using what we were all born with a BRAIN
These ISP’s all drink from the same poison water (.I’d contract price increases) they all think it’s ok (bankrupt morals) to squeeze and squeeze. Sigh…..