Report Criticises BT, Sky, Virgin, Vodafone and Others for Confusing UK Social Tariffs
A new study has highlighted how some of the UK market’s largest fixed broadband ISPs, including BT, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media and Vodafone, appear to be failing in their commitment to making cheaper Social Tariffs easier to access (available to those on state benefits). Instead the providers were found to make the tariffs and their details hard to find and often with unclear contract terms or pricing.
Social Tariffs are typically only available to those consumers in receipt of certain state benefits (e.g. Universal Credit), which can vary between providers. But as both Ofcom and the National Audit Office (NAO) have previously pointed out (here and here), one of the biggest obstacles to take-up remains a lack of awareness (only 34% of eligible broadband users were aware of such tariffs in April 2026).
Little wonder then that Ofcom’s last annual report on this subject estimated that, out of households in receipt of UC, just 532,000 had taken a social tariff (8.6% of those eligible). A standard commercial broadband plan usually costs an unemployed person claiming UC an average of £27 per month (8.3% of their monthly disposable income), while a social tariff costing c. £15 reflects just 4.6%.
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Both Ofcom and the government have long been putting pressure on ISPs to improve awareness of such tariffs, not least via the recent Telecoms Consumer Charter (TCC). The TCC required member ISPs (BT, Virgin Media / O2, Vodafone, Three UK, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, KCOM, CommunityFibre, WightFibre, Hyperoptic and Olilo) to ensure such tariffs are “easy to find and signposted to eligible customers in communications“.
The new Thinkbroadband study set out to test this by ranking a number of broadband ISPs with Social Tariffs by how easy the packages themselves were to find, the quality of details they make available to consumers (i.e. pricing, T&Cs, contract limits etc.), download speed, price and how flexible each tariff was when it came to eligibility (i.e. some are more accessible than others).
The results found that four of the market’s largest providers delivered some of the lowest scores, although they weren’t the worst. “We would challenge anyone here to go to bt.com and find where social tariffs are without using a search engine. Once you find it, tell us how much it costs? Even if you think you found the answer, you didn’t as BT offers multiple packages, and the details aren’t on that page! This isn’t just a BT problem, but their page is one of the most difficult to find,” said the study. By comparison some of the markets smaller players, such as B4RN, B4SH and CommunityFibre, were the highest rated.
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Finally, a quick reminder. We know social tariffs can be a divisive topic for some, but that is not an excuse to abuse the comment system in order to post offensive remarks toward those who take state benefits. Such posts are against our rules and will be removed.
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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As someone who works in the NHS and sees how poverty affects peoples health. Everything is either online or requires it, yet the poorest are having to go through this, so frustrating.
Not blatantly obvious but from the BT homepage scroll down to Here for You – Supporting your needs, then down to Financial support, then home essentials.
Plans start at £16.50, presumably for 40/10. I guess you have ring up for more price info
The takeup figure would need to be viewed alongside the percentage of UC recipients that subscribe to a fixed-line broadband service to get a feeling for how relevant it was – perhaps a significant number only use mobile data, or use shared Wi-Fi provided with their housing etc.
Asking providers to take a loss to provide these tariffs is one thing, expecting them to advertise it front and centre so that the near 20% of the adult population that are eligible are steered towards them is a bit much.
If half of all UC claimants took out a social tariff that’s a subscriber base larger than TalkTalk’s, at some point the discussion has to be whether the DWP run an ISP themselves or resell it so the costs of doing so can be seen, rather than asking nicely if others fancy taking a loss.
When I worked for Virgin it was rather poor having to explain to someone (especially elderly) that the only way to take the social package was by going through Live Chat. A lot of them barely understood how to navigate the website or only had “dumb phones”
Id be interested to understand how these social tariffs stack up to wholesale network line rentals. Is that sustainable? No it’s not. Hence it’s no surprised they are hidden tariffs.