Broadband ISP WightFibre Start Charging for “Free” Phone Line Service
Internet service provider WightFibre, which is deploying a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband network across the Isle of Wight – just off the South Coast of Hampshire (England), have begun informing existing customers of their full fibre packages that they’ll now have to pay a monthly fee to keep their “free” phone line service.
Just to recap. Until recently WightFibre had been bundling a “free” fibre-based phone line service with any of their full-fibre broadband packages and also with flexible plans for international calls, anytime calls or evening and weekends. But other customers would have typically paid £6.25 per month for this service, which also includes features like voicemail, call forwarding, rejection, caller ID and more.
However, existing customers of the service have informed ISPreview that WightFibre has emailed them to say, starting in December 2025, they will be ending the free service and instead “introducing a small £2 monthly charge for your telephone line.” In fairness, that’s still incredibly cheap for such a service, particularly given how others can charge several times that amount for the same sort of product.
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The provider states that this is because “our costs in providing this service have risen significantly over the last 5 years“. Existing customers who make use of this service will thus find that WightFibre adds an automatic £2 charge for the phone line service to their bills from 1st December 2025.
Customers who no longer wish to use the service can instead request its removal by responding to the provider’s email, but they must do so before 23rd November 2025. But naturally WightFibre adds that “removing your telephone line means you’ll lose your home phone number and you won’t be able to reclaim it later if you decide to add a line again“.
“We understand that price changes aren’t ideal, and we’re committed to keeping costs fair while continuing to improve your service. If you have any questions or would like help deciding what’s best for you, feel free to call us on 01983 24 24 24 – we’re happy to help. Thank you for being a valued WightFibre customer,” concluded the email.
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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“removing your telephone line means you’ll lose your home phone number and you won’t be able to reclaim it later if you decide to add a line again“. I thought you were supposed to be able to recover it as long as it was within 30 days of termination.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the WightFibre customers currently use the service and what percentage of those will surrender the service over the next year.
I imagine a lot of people don’t care about a phone line. This puts them in an awkward situation where they will require those to actively cancel the service to avoid paying the additional fee for a service they never wanted in the first place.