BT, EE and Plusnet Give Broadband Price Hikes Reprieve to New UK Customers
Broadband ISPs BT, EE and Plusnet have tweaked their policy on annual price rises so that new customers who join after 1st March 2026 will not immediately be hit by their latest +£4 monthly price hike (first announced in July 2025), which is due to be introduced a month later in April 2026.
The same temporary measure was also adopted for last year’s annual price hikes, although unfortunately the latest change won’t do anything to help those who joined slightly earlier than 1st March 2026 (i.e. hard luck if you joined in February as you’ll still be hit by the 2026 hike).
In the past, there have been plenty of complaints from consumers who signed up just before the introduction of an annual price hike, since it meant the monthly price they paid increased only a short period after joining the service for the first time. Many people view this as being both confusing and unfair.
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We should point out that a number of other broadband and mobile providers may adopt a similar approach to this one (e.g. Vodafone did so last year too), but we still think the gap should be bigger than a month.
Separately, new customers looking to take one of BT’s full fibre (FTTP) broadband packages should note that they’ve just introduced some of their highest ever Virtual Reward Card values (pre-paid Mastercard’s worth up to £200 on some packages) and have also discounted monthly prices, with 900Mbps now starting at £34.99 a month.
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 not have the annual rise, on the 12 month anniversary of the user signing up
Better still, not have it rise at all in the contract.
That’s the way it should be but they make more money with 2 price rises during the contract. Personally I think in contract price rises should be banned full stop and the contract priced properly in the first place.
I agree Big Dave.
They’re doing it on BT to Home Essentials social tariff users. BT raised it £1 last year but didn’t introduce it until the start of the new 12 month contract for existing customers.
I’m glad there are ISPs who don’t raise prices for the whole of the minimum term.
Brother in the process of jumping from Talk Talk to Zzoomm, 24-month contract, no price rise, and they will buy out his remaining contract with Talk Talk. Talk Talk was going to rise the price in April again.
I don’t normally like long contracts, but If Zzoomm offer me a good deal on 24 months when my 12-month one ends, I will certainly think about it, as long as it don’t cost me anything if I move to somewhere that Zzoomm is not available
Yeah they’re expensive to begin with.
You’re welcome.
@Captain Hindsight, £24 a month for 200Mb/s is expensive? He is paying more than that for FTTC from Talk Talk.
I pay £34.95 a month for 500Mb/s the only one that is cheaper is Vodafone, the others look cheaper until you check how much they will go up to, and then they cost more. Also, Openreach network, so asymmetrical speeds.
There may be some altnets that are cheaper, but not available here.
They should set the “gap” to the number of months the contract is (eg: no price rise, within contract)
“plenty of complaints from consumers who signed up just before the introduction of an annual price hike”
… which just demonstrates that people don’t read the details of what they’re signing up for. You see a big headline figure of £X per month: you sign for two years, and a month or two later you find you’re paying £X+4 per month. You’ve been suckered.
The solutions are obvious: either prominently show the average monthly cost over the whole term, or get rid of the in-contract price rises entirely.
These rises *only* exist to make the headline price look cheaper than it actually is – they serve no other purpose. In particular, it’s nothing to do with covering the provider’s increasing costs, because while you as an existing user are paying £X+4 or £X+8, new users are still being signed up at £X (or less).
Yeah this stupid marketing works because most people simply dont read, they just see the headline number and sign up.
Ofcom have made it mandatory that price rises are stated clearly and prominently in pounds and pence, for each year, as part of the purchasing and signing up process. Customers literally have it in black and white on the website (or a sales agents tells them), their contract summary (which they should see before they are bound by their contract), and in the contract itself – and it tells them exactly when the rise is going to take place.
If you can find a provider that doesn’t do price rises – fab. If not, don’t complain that you haven’t read the terms – you had enough opportunity to do so.
Don’t be fooled, BT is now one of the worst customer service companies in the UK, engineers miss appointments without as much as an apology, weeks without service again without apologies, they will tell you they have customer compansation scheme but still waiting 18 months later. I would rather have Evri deliver all my parcels than have to deal with BT again.
BT artificial incompetence fraudbots couldn’t understand that BOTH my broadband line AND router were faulty. Repeatedly ignored what I and Openreach told them, hallucinated line faults, and repeatedly sent Openreach to fix already fixed line fault. Wasted countless hours of my time. Repeatedly ignored my preference for e-mail and phoned instead. Complaints just sent to more fraudbots which couldn’t even understand anything. BT deny it but refuse to explain how any human could have done what their fraudbots did. Seems to be CRIMINAL offences under Data Protection Act and GDPR. Say that they are going to do this to ALL their customers attempting to use online chat (that means EE and Plusnet as well).
Looks like Vodafone are also exempting new joiners (at least as of today) from their April 2026 price increase.
Recontracted with Virgin Media recently and even they allow you more time (recontracted in mid February and next price rise will be April 2027). These price rises ought to be abolished imo.
Existing customers who recontract also skip the price increase
Nothing about this is a “reprieve”. It should be banned to change the price within a sensible first period of the contract – at least 6-12 months.
Actually any in-contract price rise should be banned, frankly. If the provider can’t forecast their costs enough to fix the price, they shouldn’t be demanding such long contracts from people.
As an example, why are 24 month contracts even a potential thing on SIM only? There is zero fixed cost that needs to be recovered, so it’s purely nothing more than profiteering by forcing people into unfair price rises.