ISP Plusnet Confirm 2018 Round of Annual Broadband Price Rises
Customers of low cost UK ISP Plusnet are facing another round of annual price rises on their broadband and phone bundles, which will see the monthly cost of related packages increase by +£1 from 5th June 2018. On top of that the cost of making phone calls is also set to increase.
In a statement Plusnet said, “Over the past year we’ve been working really hard to make improvements to our products and services that will make your experience as a Plusnet customer better than ever. We’ve continued to win awards for our customer services and our great value products and we promise we’ll continue to do you proud. Investing in our customer service to make sure we’re available to answer your calls or chats at our UK call centres is a priority for us. We’ll soon be expanding one of our UK sites to make sure we’re on hand when you need us the most.”
On the upside their ‘Caller Display‘ feature, which manages nuisance calls for 99p extra per month, is becoming free of charge from the same date. Furthermore if you have the BT Sport App then good news, from the 3rd April 2018 you should also be able to use the app when you travel to the EU, as well as when you’re in the UK. Plusnet’s monthly line rental cost also remains the same at £18.99 per month.
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Calling Changes
| Current charge | Charge from 5th June 2018 | |
| Call Set Up Fee (if not included in your line rental) |
21p per call | 22p per call |
| Landline (standard rates for calls to UK landlines and non-geographic numbers) | 12.54p per minute | 13.5p per minute |
| Mobile (standard rates for calls for UK mobiles and non-geographic numbers) | 14.65p per minute | 15p per minute |
Changes to Early Termination Charges?
This is the price you will pay to terminate your contract within the minimum term, which is calculated based on your service and the amount of time you have remaining on your contract.
| Product | New charge per month from 5th June 2018 |
| Plusnet Essentials (Contracted) | £6.49 |
| Plusnet Unlimited (Contracted) | £3.66 |
| Plusnet Essentials Fibre | £8.49 |
| Plusnet Unlimited Fibre | £3.12 |
| Plusnet Essentials (Contracted without Phone) | £7.32 |
| Plusnet Unlimited (Contracted without Phone) | £11.85 |
| Plusnet Essentials Fibre (Without Phone) | £10.55 |
| Plusnet Unlimited Fibre (Without Phone) | £9.63 |
| Plusnet Essentials (Contracted) | £6.49 |
| Plusnet Unlimited (Contracted) | £3.66 |
| Plusnet Essentials Fibre | £8.49 |
| Plusnet Unlimited Fibre | £3.12 |
| Unlimited (Contracted without Phone) | £11.85 |
| Unlimited Fibre Extra (Without Phone) | £9.63 |
| Unlimited Fibre (Without Phone) | £9.46 |
| Unlimited (Contracted) | £3.66 |
| Unlimited Fibre Extra | £3.12 |
| Unlimited Fibre | £2.80 |
| Line Rental – All packages affected | £8.49 |
Most of the major ISPs have already announced similar price increases for this year and in fairness Plusnet’s rise is smaller than many of those. One reason for price rises like this is because we’re all consuming much more data than before and providers have to compensate for the flexibility of their “unlimited” allowances somewhere. Likewise the loss of revenue from calling (a service in decline) has a role to play too.
At the same time providers are also under lots of pressure to adopt various new rules and regulations, such as the system for sending millions of copyright warning emails / “subscriber alerts” (here). Not to mention new internet snooping measures (here), plans for automatic compensation (here) and tougher requirements on broadband speeds (here), as well as the need to introduce new content or services.
As usual customers could also use such increases as an opportunity to haggle for a lower price (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill Without Switching ISP), although your success here may vary. Alternatively you could decide to leave penalty free and switch to a different ISP (this must be done within 30 days after you receive their price rise notification) but remember that other providers tend to adopt similar increases.
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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 and Linkedin.
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Been waiting for this to dump them. cheers
Who are you going to switch to? And why do you want to dump them out of interest?
Not sure yet- I am with EE so might give them a try as they are the same price and will give me 50GB extra on my phone. other networks with high limits just fail for me, so 75GB a month on EE would be lovely.
Or maybe even AAISP – the 1 month contract appeals.
Their service is flaky, it’s all to do with this gateway crap, it has to be. Infinity can run flawlessly but suddenly when I am using their gateways it’s slower and keeps rebooting.
Its the same network until it reaches them, right?
Might just drop the line, even if it costs me £30. i use mobile more than fixed thesedays anyway.
FWIW SSE broadband offer one month contracts, £68.25 cashback(Topcashback – ends in two days), £30/month 80/20 fibre(£30 activation) – so effectively a free month/activation, also have UK based support. Might be worth checking out.
Cheers Bob
It’s interesting to see them say, “we’ve been working really hard to make improvements to our products”. Yay. I didn’t notice anything they improved – isn’t it Openreach’s job?
it’s got worse than infinity was – so that’s an improvement how?
BT and Plusnet have been advertising the addition of UK call centres for approximately the last 3 or 4 price rises. No-one should be fooled at this profiteering.
Would be interesting to have a summary of which providers have had which price increases over the last 2 years. I’m with Zen, and haven’t had a price increase for more than 2 years. The last thing to change was call charges, early in 2016, although even then the net effect of the changes for me wasn’t a net increase.
Well I know Sky TalkTalk BT and Plusnet have, aslong with some smaller names. Virgin have too but they are in a different league as we know
Just keep switching and getting cashback, Plusnet router and support is crap, ages to answer there phone and don’t try and help, just say we don’t guarantee Wi-fi, joke of a company
Not had any real issues myself, but if they’re going to jack up prices and let me leave for big cashback elsewhere ……. that’s their problem.
Im going with EE – not only do they have the 10 day fix or leave policy, they will give me 50GB a month more – as well as £125 on a card – theres no cashback site offers but that’s good enough
Not had any real issues here either, but I understand this isn’t the same for everyone. I’ve been a Virgin Media, BT & Plusnet customer, and had no problems with any of them, so maybe I’m lucky and live in a good area?
I use Plusnet because I like their TV package (I can add BT Sport for a fiver) and £1 isn’t a huge increase, compared to some other big providers.
However, it’s fine to find the best provider to suit your needs – but something always goes wrong (usually minor) when I move – so I’m sticking with Plusnet for now.
Rang them up earlier and asked them if this price rise would apply to me, which they confirmed so I asked if I were to leave for another ISP, would they charge me any fees and they said no. Off I went to Vodafone, with some cashback and saved £13 a month, results ! lol To be honest I wanted to dump Plusnet for a while after they left me to my own devices with OpenReach to deal with ‘ Tree encroaching on phone pole situation ‘ where I was made a project manager to deal with the situation just to have to wait 3 months and having to cough up for Three Fixed Mobile Broadband until the situation got sorted.
I just signed up for a new contract because of a house move
can i leave them without penalty?
If your new contract already include the new price then no. If the new contract is at the old prices so your price will increase then yes.
BUT you need to wait for the email/letter from Plusnet notifying you of the price increase. All communications of the price rise will be received at least 30 days before the 5th June. Plusnet send them out in batches so as not to add too many people onto the support phone lines.
For more on your consumer rights go to https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/broadband/2018/04/plusnet-to-hike-broadband-prices-
I’m leaving them and rang them to see if I was after by the increase. They’re sending emails notifying people righ now do need to wait for a letter, me think. I was assured that I wouldn’t be charged termination fees.
I went with Vodafone!