Full Fibre ISP Truespeed Extend Price Freeze and Add Social Tariff

Broadband ISP Truespeed, which is deploying a full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of South West England, has once again bucked the industry trend of inflicting substantial price hikes on customers by extending their previous price freeze into 2023 and launching a cheaper plan for “financially vulnerable” customers.

The announcement simply means that Truespeed’s original price freeze, which was first announced in May 2022 (here), will now be extended to continue “for the entirety of 2023“, while also guaranteeing its existing “no in-contract price rise” promise.

On top of that, Truespeed are also launching a new package called ‘Truespeed Basic‘, which is targeted at “financially vulnerable customers“. This appears to be a social tariff, since it’s only available to pensioners and households on income support. The package itself offers speeds of 30Mbps for £20 per month.

We took a quick look at Truespeed’s website to see if we could uncover any additional details of the new ‘Basic’ package, but we struggled to find it mentioned anywhere, and the most recent residential T&C documents hadn’t yet been updated to include it. But hopefully this will change in the coming days. Poor promotion is a common area of weakness when it comes to social tariffs, as often highlighted by Ofcom and the government.

Nelson Missier, Chief Commercial Officer of Truespeed, said:

“We recognise that many customers are going through a stressful period with escalating household costs, limited connectivity options and price increases on many utilities. We are playing our part and supporting our customers by extending our price freeze throughout the whole of 2023 and ensuring the vital utility of ultrafast, full fibre broadband remains accessible to those who need it most. We’ve always been a part of the South West community and are proud to step up during this unprecedented situation.”

We should add that the operator, which has so far covered 60,000 premises (including around 12,000 customers connected) – mostly around Somerset, also holds an “ambitious” target to reach 500,000 properties by the end of 2026 and is being funded by a £175 million investment from Aviva.