EE and Sky Removing Netflix Basic Plan from UK TV Packages
In an unsurprising development, both Sky TV (Sky Broadband) and EE (BT) have now confirmed their separate plans for withdrawing the old Netflix Basic (£7.99) plan from their various bundles. The move follows on from last year’s decision (here) by the video streaming giant to replace Basics with their “Standard with adverts” plan.
Just in case anybody has forgotten. Netflix stopped offering their old ad-free Basic plan to new or rejoining members in October 2023. But this raised a question mark over the fate of the service for those TV and broadband providers that have been bundling it with some of their packages, often as part of a special agreement with the streaming giant.
Sky actually stopped offering the original Basic plan last year on its bundles (e.g. Ultimate TV), although until now it wasn’t clear what would happen to existing customers with a related bundle. Meanwhile, EE has continued to offer the Basic plan, but Cord Busters reports that this is all coming to an end.
Advertisement
Firstly, Sky have confirmed that customers with Netflix’s Basic plan on their related bundles will, from September 2024, be “automatically” changed to the ‘Standard with adverts’ plan. However, you won’t pay any less, despite the ads tier costly less than the Basic’s one, which seems a bit unfair. Customers can alternatively upgrade to Standard by paying an extra £6 per month or cancel.
Finally, EE has just joined Sky in withdrawing the Basic plan from related packages for new customers. New customers will instead get the ‘Standard with adverts’ plan on related bundles (e.g. Entertainment or Big Entertainment), while existing customers have been warned that they can only keep the Basic tier until they renew their contract, or until late 2026 if they’re out of contract.
One catch here is that the new Standard with Ads plan is currently only supported on EE TV’s latest 4K Pro (inc. Mini versions) and the 4K Apple TV boxes. But EE has pledged to upgrade customers on older boxes, at no extra cost, to the latest kit if they’re affected.
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.
« Three UK Expand Free Community 5G Broadband and Tablets Scheme
So, Sky want their cake and eat it. Pay the same, get less, with them pocketing the change. Want more, pay more.
It’s worth phoning Sky the minute your contract with them ends. The longer you’ve been w5them, the better the deal and never accept what you’re first offered
Technically not true… you are getting more simply by changing from one to the other. The new plan will have 2 streams / devices and also full 1080 HD. So your claim of want more pay more does not stack up entirely.
I had Netflix for a while and quickly lost interest the service for me wasn’t worth paying for. I didn’t like any of the content I didn’t find anything I liked worth watching so I decided to unsubscribe from Netflix and I don’t miss it.
All ISP in this country are hopeless and charge the earth for what you get. I’m with Sky at this time but my contract ends in November. I will be ending the contract with them and go elsewhere. I however will now just switch to Freeview and not bother have any other TV contracts as there’s nothing worth watching and all a waste of money. Netflix went downhill when they started producing their own rubbish.
Except that’s demonstrably incorrect. I’m no Netflix lover and the way they’ve been hiking prices constantly while being any consumer at the same time leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. However their own content is generally 100% in alignment with every other content producer except maybe Apple who have a slightly higher hit rate.
All content producers roughly follow a standard bell curve 10-80-10. 10% of their output is pretty much regarded as rubbish by everyone. 80% of it will appeal to some and not to others but there’s enough variety that everyone finds something they like. Then the top 10% of the shows will be huge success and pretty much universally appeal to most people. Studies have been conducted on relative quality and all content producers are broadly similar with Apple at the top and Amazon Prime at the bottom.
As for ISP’s charging a lot what do you class as “a lot”. Most old school broadband is about £20-30 a month depending on who you go with and that’s all unmetered. If you are lucky enough to get gigabit that is more of a lottery on cost. It generally ranges from £30-100 for a full gigabit depending on who the provider is and where you are in the country. That said it’s a gigabit! I still don’t think £100 a month for gigabit is extortionate considering it’s, well, a gigabit. If you’d told me 20 years ago I’d be getting gigabit for as cheap as £30 a month to my house I’d have laughed at you but now, for many, it’s a reality.