Utility Warehouse Claims to Launch Cheapest Broadband Deal in the UK

Energy and telecoms provider UW (Utility Warehouse), which is also known as Telecom Plus, has today issued a press release where they claim to have “launched the cheapest broadband deal in the UK” for new customers, with prices from £19.99 per month for 18-months. But there are some caveats to this, so take it with a pinch of salt.

The first caveat is that this is UW, which means that their cheapest broadband deals are only available when customers also switch their energy supply to UW and that immediately makes comparisons with other ISPs and packages rather tricky. The second caveat is that the deal is only available until 31st January 2024. The third caveat is that it’s not really the “cheapest broadband deal” at all.

Given the headline claim, it’s a little surprising to find that the body of the press release itself doesn’t spell out precisely what you get for £19.99 per month. But the Editors Notes at the bottom of the PR do state this: “Ultra, Fibre 40 or Full Fibre 100 only. Ultra, Fibre 40 for £19.99 or Full Fibre 100 for £26.99 is made up of a broadband tariff price of £24 (Ultra/Fibre 40) or £31 (Full Fibre 100) a month less a multiservice credit of £4.01. 18 month contract, then standard pricing applies.”

Stuart Burnett, Co-CEO at Utility Warehouse, said:

“Last year was extremely challenging for many people and while inflation is now falling, it’s still tough out there. Households shouldn’t have to cut back on essential services like broadband just to make ends meet and so it’s vital that consumers take the time to shop around for a better deal. January is a great time to do this and that’s why we’re launching our new market leading superfast broadband deal to help customers save even more on their household bills in 2024.”

Just to be clear, the relevant “Fibre 40” package appears to be an FTTC (Openreach) based plan that offers an average “superfast” download speed of 36Mbps (we assume c.9Mbps upload) and includes a router, which will indeed cost £19.99 per month for the first 18-months of service if you take their energy plan. But UW’s tariffs page reveals that the standard price for this plan returns to £35.99 post-contract (or £32.99 with their 10% energy discount).

Right off the bat, it’s clear that this is not the cheapest broadband deal in the UK, which is an honour that probably goes to CommunityFibre’s £12.50 per month plan – giving you 35Mbps (symmetric) speeds on a 12-month term, although there is a £14.95 one-off setup fee and CF’s network is mostly only available across a big chunk of London. Hyperoptic also does a 33Mbps tier for £17.99, but their coverage is similarly limited.

Quite a few other networks (e.g. Gigaclear, Box Broadband, YouFibre) also have similarly priced or cheaper and faster packages available and that’s before we consider the many Social Tariff options that also exist (mostly around the £15-£20 price point), although the latter are only applicable to those on state benefits.

Judging the ‘value’ aspect in all this is quite tricky given the many differences in speed, availability and reliability between providers and plans. In that sense, UW does have an attractive deal for those where FTTC is the only option, although it won’t be the cheapest option for everybody and the post-contract pricing is even further behind some significantly faster alternatives.

Not to mention that linking this to an energy plan makes any bold claims of being the “cheapest” quite tedious, since the vast majority of broadband ISPs won’t tie you to an energy service.