Survey Claims Quarter of UK Broadband Users View £4 Price Hike as Unmanageable

Over the past few months a number of broadband ISPs have announced an increase to their annual mid-contract price hikes policy of £4 (BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk etc.). But a new Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, which was conducted during December 2025 for Uswitch.com, claims to have found that 24% of broadband users view such a rise as “unmanageable“.

Not that anybody needs reminding, but at the start of 2025 Ofcom began requiring telecoms providers to adopt a new approach to mid-contract price hikes, which did away with the old percentage and inflation-based model – replacing it with one that sets out such price hikes “clearly and up-front, in pounds and pence, when a customer signs up” (here). This made annual price hikes clearer and more transparent, but rarely cheaper.

In response, many providers later followed BT’s lead by setting out a new pricing policy that increased the monthly price broadband customers pay by a flat £3 extra from March or April each year (varying a bit between providers). However, as above, inflation has remained higher than originally anticipated and, partly as a result of that, many of the markets largest players have since announced that they will increase their annual hikes (e.g. several have jumped from £3 to £4).

Suffice to say that there is a growing feeling among consumers that ISPs are becoming increasingly unfair in their pricing practices, not least by hitting those who can least afford it the hardest (e.g. somebody on the cheapest plan gets hit with the same £4 rise as those on the most expensive ones). The new survey estimates that some mobile and broadband customers could thus be set to face hikes of up to 13.4% as a result of the recent changes.

The survey claims that 24% of broadband customers would view a £4 monthly mid-contract increase as “unmanageable“. On average, consumers say they would only tolerate a £2.70 broadband increase before considering switching. But we know from real-world data that, in reality, only around 1.62 million consumers actually switched their fixed broadband and phone provider between Sept 2024 and 2025 (here).

Mobile users face a similar squeeze. Some 19% of bill payers say they would struggle with a £2.50 monthly rise in their bill, whilst 17% say they would not accept any rise at all. Finally, a third of respondents (32%) say they now spend more mental energy worrying about utility bills than they did two years ago, while 19% say they tolerate such increases but are also actively looking for a reason to leave.

The good news is that there are plenty of fixed and mobile providers that have shunned the trend toward mid-contract price hikes and instead used fixed price contracts. But this often comes from smaller providers and alternative networks, which are often unfamiliar brands and, in some cases, may not be available to every location.

The Government did initially appear to be taking a tougher line over all this and even seemed to hint that the practice could be stopped (here), only to later retreat by saying they had “no plans to ban in-contract price rises” (here). Despite this, Ofcom have still been directed to take another look at the issue, although few people expect the regulator to tackle the issue effectively.

In case anybody has forgotten, before the global COVID-19 pandemic, it was often normal for mid-contract hikes to push up prices by around 5-7% per year (averaged), which ran for many years while CPI itself typically fluctuated between around 1% and 2.5%. Suffice to say, it’s hard to shake the feeling that some providers may have realised they can get awake with even larger hikes and appear to be continuing the trend.

However, it is still important to recognise that network operators often do still have to increase prices due to costs rising in other areas, such as for service provision, regulation, energy and the need to invest in new network upgrades etc. But it’s not strictly necessary for this to be done mid-contract, and such pricing only makes the market more complex and confusing.

On the bright side, switching between telecoms providers has been made significantly quicker and easier in recent years, thanks to systems like One Touch Switching (OTS) on broadband + landline phone or Text-to-Switch (Auto-Switch) on mobile. Consumers can often vote with their feet if they choose, but many remain wary of doing so.