Sky UK Publish Details of Broadband, Phone and TV Price Hikes UPDATE
Last week we revealed that UK ISP Sky Broadband and Sky TV were set to increase their prices from the 1st April 2019 (here), but at the time we didn’t know the details. Sky has today published this detail, which for example confirms that their FTTC “fibre broadband” packages will increase by +£2 monthly.
Broadly speaking all of Sky’s current broadband, calling (phone) and TV out-of-contract (standard) prices will be going up by either £1 or £2 extra per month across the board. This doesn’t effect initial discounts for new customers, but only applies if you stay with the provider after the end of your initial minimum contract term.
Naturally if you have a bundle of these services and add-ons then you may be hit by a much more significant rise. We’ve pasted the new and old prices below, although it’s possible we might have missed some.
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Sky’s 1st April 2019 Price Rises (Old Price in Brackets)
Sky Entertainment £27.00(£25)
Sky Multiscreen £13.00(£12)
Sky Sports HD £6.00(£6)
Sky Q Multiscreen Pack £13.00(£12)
Ultimate On Demand £12.00(£10)
Sky Cinema With Sports £11.00(£10)
Sky Cinema Without Sports £19.00(£18)
Cinema With Sports (Migration) £11.00(£10)
Sky Talk Anytime Extra (Anytime) £10.00 (£8)
Sky Talk Evenings and Weekends Extra (Free time) £5.00(£4)
Sky Talk Anytime Extra (24/7) £10.00 (£8)
Sky Talk Evenings and Weekends Extra (Weekends) £5.00 (£4)
Sky Talk Anytime Extra (Anytime UK) £10.00 (£8)
Sky Talk Evenings and Weekends Extra £5.00 (£4)
Sky Talk Anytime Extra £10.00 (£8)
Sky Fibre Max £27.00 (£25)
Sky Fibre Unlimited £22.00 (£20)
Sky Broadband Unlimited £12.01 (£11.01)NOTE: The broadband prices appear to have split out the standard Sky Talk Line Rental charge. Once you add this Sky Broadband Unlimited becomes £31, Fibre Unlimited is £40.99 and Fibre Max goes to £45.99.
As we said last week, prices usually rise because operators are adding new services or content, developing new systems and consumers are also gobbling more data every year. Providers are also under pressure to adopt lots of new rules, such as having to cater for the costly automatic compensation system (here) and end-of-contract notification letters (here). Suffice to say that such changes cost money and customers naturally end up paying.
Many of the above increases go above inflation and may thus be subject to Ofcom’s rule against mid-contract price hikes, which means that existing customers are often able to exit their contract penalty free (you need to do this within 30 days of receiving Sky’s formal notification letter). Just remember that other major ISPs will also be increasing their prices.
Alternatively customers could try contacting the operator directly and haggling for a lower price (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill). However at the time of writing the above price increases only applies to new customers, although in past years they have tended to filter down to existing subscribers at a later date.
A Spokesperson for Sky told ISPreview.co.uk:
“We try to keep costs down and provide greater choice for our customers to pick the package that best suits them. We know price increases are never welcome, but we hope customers can see that our innovation, great content and our industry leading customer service provide good value.”
UPDATE 10:25am
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Added a comment from Sky above.
UPDATE 1:44pm
Sky has published a new Tariff Guide, which shows that the cost of calling is also set to change for Sky Talk customers, albeit from 1st May 2019 instead of April. For example, the charge for non-inclusive calls to UK landlines will increase from 14.65p per minute to 15.5p and its a similar story elsewhere (calls to mobiles etc.).
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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HD should be standard by now – disgusting to charge the customers for to view in HD. Glad I quit Sky last few years ago.
They’ll just add £5 across the board in that case.
@Sky I have to agree with you.
SKY have been broadcasting in HD since 2006 (correct me if I’m wrong) I would hardly call it a Premium service anymore, the trouble is they are still broadcasting in SD too so they’ll still get away with it (not everyone wants a nice shiny SKY Q box broadcasting in UHD/4K – where applicable) …..
In comparison it would be like charging me a premium for ADSLMax, that’s been around for about the same amount of time!
Don’t all the TV providers charge extra if you want Sports channels in HD or better?
I have just checked my future bill on sky.com and I will be paying an extra £4 per month for TV. I really cannot justify subscribing anymore – most of the channels I watch are available on Freesat and I tend to watch a lot of content on Netflix or Amazon. Think I would rather divert my Sky TV subscription to something more useful, like overpaying my mortgage.
THREE UK £20 a month unlimited hotspot sim and iptv save you lots of money eachyear.
I quit Sky Broadband ADSL 17Mbps last month after an 18 month contract following a price spike without being informed via email. All of a sudden we checked our bills and saw from only 2 months a price jump from £22.50 to £30 without notice.
18 months ago I was on the process of switching over to SSE as it had a 2 year free offer. The Sky Broadband Unlimited 17Mbps package was £33.75 per month just for broadband+phone and no TV. Sky quickly reduced the package price saying we were loyal and didn’t want to lose us. They scrapped the £5 fee for not having Sky TV. But following 18 months later it was reverted back silently to £30 per month.
What I hate about Sky is that they charge you £5 extra per month for not taking their Sky TV package as part of their broadband and phone package. This is unacceptable, broadband package is a separate thing from TV. It is my choice if I want to subscribe to their Sky TV package. I already have a satellite receiver Technomate TM-5402 HD and I receive mostly all channels and even alternative HD channels via other satellites without the dependency of Sky. There are free to air channels that broadcast premier league football without the Sky Sports dependency!
But yet Sky try to rip you off with silent price hikes, considering this isn’t even FTTC. So in essence if you were to see a package advertised as £18 per month for their Sky Broadband Unlimited you know you’ll have to pay another £5 on top making it £23 instead should you choose not to take their TV package.
I switched over to Plusnet for a 12 month contract with £75 cashback. Service pretty much very similar but much cheaper. If we didn’t check the emails for November and December we wouldn’t have known the change. Initially £21.50 and few months mid contract it became £22.50 and then after 18 months £30. That’s dishonesty even though they may publish those details they still don’t inform you via email that they’ll increase their price. You have to be very alert and check your bills to spot the price change.
We currently have Sky Q Silver with 2 mini boxes. We’ve been paying £42 a month for everything but the sports and netflix (as our package predates netflix on sky).
Looking at this it would go up by about £6, an increase of nearly 15%. As it is, our deal is due to end in March and we were going to go up to £69.50…..
One relatively painfree phone call later and we’re at £44 for the next 18 months, immune to this impending price rise, and all we’ve lost is the Kids channels (no kids in the house)
Similar here no problems (as a Sky VIP customer) my charges for everything will go from 134 to 127 PM from April until the end of March 2020 …
Will NowTV also be hiking?
I think they might have already done that as I saw the out-of-contract prices increase last week, but with all the special offers these ISPs run it’s not always easy to be sure which way is up. Either way they usually do trickle down to Sky’s sibling brand.
@Mike I think they are raising the price of some of the Sports passes but at the moment I think the Entertainment and Kids passes are due to remain the same, keep an eye out though….
Impossible to comment about NowTV if you look at their website and go through the procedure of entering details and looking at the broadband and phone packages all the OUT of contract pricing on their website is screwed up.
Hi can I cancel sky TV because of increase I don’t think they will let me do that?