Sky Broadband Becomes Latest to Hike the Price of Phone Line Rental

Just like clockwork Sky Broadband will shortly become the latest of the big broadband ISPs to announce a hike in the monthly price of their standard phone and line rental service, which is set to rise from £16.40 to £17.40 per month from 1st December 2015. But that’s not the only change.

The move, which follows shortly after a July 2015 increase in the standard cost of Sky Broadband Unlimited from £7.50 to £10 per month (here), is admittedly somewhat predictable as all of the major ISPs tend to follow BT’s annual increases (here). Take note that Sky doesn’t offer an annual pre-paid discount option for line rental, unlike their rivals.

Otherwise we’ve summarised the latest increases below.

Sky Line Rental
From 1 December 2015, the standard monthly price of Sky Line Rental will increase from £16.40 to £17.40.

Connection Fee
From 1 December 2015, the connection fee for non-inclusive calls will increase from 15.9p to 16.9p, unless a separate connection fee or minimum fee is specified. Connection fees do not apply to:

* Free, inclusive or unlimited calls (including those that commence within an uncharged period but end in a charged period)
* Fixed fee calls
* Calls charged by timed duration that start with a fixed fee
* Calls to service numbers (084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers)
* Calls to personal numbering chargeband pn7

UK Mobile call rates
From 1 December 2015, the charge for non-inclusive calls to UK mobiles will go down from 12.7p to 11.5p per minute at any time of day.

UK Landline Rates
From 1 December 2015, the charge for non-inclusive calls to UK landlines1 will increase from 9.5p to 11.5p per minute

Access Charge for NGN
From 1 December 2015, access charge for non-geographic numbers (NGN) will increase from 9.5p to 11.5p per minute.

Call features with Sky Talk Line Rental – Voicemail
From 1 December 2015, the charge for the Sky Voicemail 1571 feature will increase from £1.00 to £1.25 per month. If you don’t want to continue using voicemail, you can switch it off at any time.

At this point it’s worth noting that the rate of inflation has been effectively flat this year, which means Sky can’t use that as an excuse to explain why this year’s rise is on the same level as last year.

Under Ofcom’s guidelines mid-contract price hikes, particularly those that run above the level of inflation (most such increases usually do), should give subscribers the option to exit their contract penalty free within 30 days of receiving the price notification letter.

Take note that most of Sky’s customers are currently unaware of the above increases, although subscribers can probably expect a letter to arrive within the next few days or weeks.

On top of all this most of Sky’s customers with legacy products will soon be moved to an equivalent current package unless they opt to change to a different one online (this can apparently be deferred for 1 month). This is a reference to their refreshed voice products, which saw Sky scrap their free call allowances for new customers in July (here).

We expected that something like this would happen and Sky certainly hasn’t wasted any time, which is unlikely to make for a happy customer base. Some customers may also have to pay an extra £4 per month if they wish to keep their calls package, but it depends what service you already have.

Sky Talk packages being closed include:

Sky Talk Weekends
Sky Talk Freetime
Sky Talk Anytime
Sky Talk Anytime UK
Sky Talk Anytime International
Sky Talk 24/7
Sky Talk 24/7 International
Sky Talk Super Unlimited

Our new Sky Talk packages are:

Sky Pay As You Talk
Sky Talk Anytime Extra
Sky Talk International Extra
Sky Talk Evenings and Weekends Extra