Broadband ISP Hyperoptic Increases UK Mid-Contract Price Hikes to £4
City-focused alternative broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which claims to have already deployed their full fibre (FTTP/B) network to cover 1.9 million UK homes passed, has just become the latest telecoms provider to increase the customer cost impact of their existing mid-contract pricing policy.
The internet provider, which is home to 400,000 active subscribers (9th Jun 2025), previously increased the monthly price that broadband customers paid by a flat £3 extra in April every year. But they’ve now followed recent changes at BT and other major ISPs by raising the level of this increase from £3 to £4 for new customers (existing customers remain on the old policy).
Annual price hikes are of course nothing new in this market, as well as many others. Often there are strong reasons for prices to go up, not least because providers are frequently adding all sorts of new services (e.g. 5G SA, FTTP), developing new systems, facing higher charges from suppliers and energy usage, implementing costly new Ofcom rules and dealing with tax hikes from the government etc.
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Nevertheless, there is a growing feeling among consumers that broadband and mobile providers are becoming increasingly unfair in their pricing practices, and often hitting those who can least afford it the hardest (e.g. you get the same £4 hike regardless of whether you’re paying for the cheapest or most expensive plan). Much of this is being driven by Ofcom’s own policy change (here) and even the government seems to be struggling with how to respond (here).
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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Why was the old RPI+ a percentage scraped. All providers have used this to up the mid term rates by excessive amounts
Presumably because it fluctuates so is less predictable for consumers.
Though I’d much rather these rises be banned altogether. If your costs are going to rise in the future enough to require this then you shouldn’t be selling such long contracts in the first place.
Exactly. £4 increase on a £20 contract is ridiculous,
Yeah but you’ve got to remember that £20 starting price already factors in the £4 increase. It’s not a £20 contract to begin with. If/when in contract price rises are banned that £20 base price will become £23 or something like that.
A further question is, if price increases framed as in-contract price rises are banned are they going to ban differently worded promotions like “Pay £20 for 12 months and then £24”? It’s the same thing. Or “Half price Offer! £15 for 12 months, then £29”. No difference in total amount paid for any of these things.
John – Those are NOT the same thing. They are the same final price, but they obviously sound different to consumers. And obviously, the reason why in-contract price rises became standard is that it tricks people (idiots perhaps, but the law is there to protect idiots too…) into thinking it’s cheaper than it is.
Using your logic, they could all advertise free internet with surcharges in the small print. It’s the same price after all, so what’s the problem?
I think this could be solved by requiring them to prominently display the average monthly cost during the contract. They could still do the “you pay nothing in the first 2 months and then 2 kidneys per week” pricing, but it would be much easier to compare these with the offers from honest providers who just have a price for the whole contract.
Lower initial price then higher price later. It’s the same fundamental structure and same total price, just different words used to sell it. If a consumer is tricked by one they’ll be tricked by them all. We’ll probably have to agree to disagree on this. I do agree these offers are all illusions and designed to trick people into thinking something is cheaper than it is, not unique to telecoms though.
“Using your logic, they could all advertise free internet with surcharges in the small print. It’s the same price after all, so what’s the problem?”
No that actually is different because you’re both hiding key pricing information and using misleading advertising. All of these offers, including “in-contract price rises”, are upfront and prominently displayed to the customer in advertising and at the time of purchase.
IMO they only need to do 2 things:
1) Outright ban what O2 did where they cancelled price guaranteed contracts. The commitment needs to go both ways.
2) Display prominently the average monthly price in advertising and at the time of purchase. Save the customer the job of manually working it out. Easy to compare then regardless of any offers.
Presumably hurried along by RPI hitting double digits in 2022 but in general there’s a move to expressing things in monetary terms rather than percentages, and it’s a little unreasonable for large companies to shift the burden of predicting inflation onto consumers.
When stating “existing customers remain on the old policy”, is this for the remainder of their contract or are they permanently excluded from the new policy if joining before the introduction?
I would imagine existing customers would move to the new terms when recontracting, meaning the policy would apply for new *and* recontracting customers. The alternative wouldn’t make any sense in my mind.
Recontracting will put you on the new terms.
It’s insane greed to punish loyal customers. No operator should ever be allowed to have a monopoly in a building
After Covid, unchecked corporate greed has no limits.
They aren’t; existing customers remain on the existing increase amount it seems. How many buildings does Hyperoptic realistically have a monopoly in? The vast majority will surely have Openreach services at the very least.