EE, BT and Plusnet to Reintroduce UK Home Broadband Activation Fees
New customers looking to take a home broadband package from one of BT Group’s retail ISPs, including EE and Plusnet, will from today find that they’ll also need to start paying for a one-off broadband activation fee again. The providers haven’t charged an activation fee for the past few years, partly to help boost take-up (a common practice).
The reality is that Openreach do levy connection charges against ISPs that sell their FTTP tiers (sometimes reduced by special discounts) and so it’s often a retail decision around whether or not those are absorbed or recouped through monthly rental fees. The competitive environment means that bigger providers, as well as some smaller players, have typically tried to find ways of removing activation charges to help attract new customers.
However, such charges don’t just help to cover the cost of installation and can also play a role in funding the cost of bundling other features, such as a wireless broadband router. Crucially the cost of the hardware that BT, EE and Plusnet ship to customers has also been rising (e.g. DDR memory has risen 300% since last year), which we understand to be main reason why they’ve now opted to reintroduce activation fees for new customers.
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The change means that, from later this morning, new customers of BT and EE will need to pay a £30 one-off activation fee, which drops to £20 for Plusnet customers. The lower price for Plusnet probably reflects their greater use of older and often re-branded BT/EE kit.
History tends to show that were BT leads on pricing, others will follow. So don’t be surprised if we slowly start to see other ISPs following their lead and giving the same reason.
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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Great news,for altnets who will be able achieve higher renewal rates for customers now facing a cost if they want to switch back to Openreach after new-customer deals expire.
Agree, this is excellent news in making ALTNETS more price favourable and just the shot in the arm they need. I congratulate EE/BT on helping ALTNETS. Customers do tkae this into account as well as some Openreach providers charging a cessation fee of £45+.
The Altnets will be savvy enough to start offering “Use my own router” for those that currently don’t meaning additonal savings. Router fees rather than activation fees should be charged. Of course EE/BT/Plusnet hoping all the other Openreach based providers will follow suit.
Another rip off once again in UK
Yes and no.
I think since people are shoved into a 24-month contract then yes the installation charge should be absorbed. If they are going charging people then they need to offer 12 months contract at a decent price. I know Plusnet have 12 months contract, but the prices are already high and they have the activation fee,
If they have people in a 24-month contract then they can’t get out unless they pay.
So I can understand a connection fee for a short contract, but not for a long contract.
It will, I hope push more people to alt networks if they are looking at changing providers, the only problem is, if they are already on FTTP, they will need another box stuck on the outside of their house and another cable.
What gets me is also the price rise to pay for the bundling other features, such as a wireless broadband routers. Not all of us ask for a router, but they still insist on pushing their bloated routers. Well in BT and EE case they are bloated. Plusnet was not too bad.
The same complaint for my provider as well, pushing their routers, while the new ones are better, the older ones were awful and was the reason and still is the reason for a lot of complaints from people.
I realise that it is easier for them to sort out issues with a standard router, but still
If the BT lot is doing this activation price thing, then maybe others will on the Openreach network.
Just a lazy accusation of rip off again. It costs them to onboard you as a new customer. Just look at the total contract price over a period. You can pay it as a one-off or every month whilst you’re a customer.
Any decent company has onboarding automated. Activation fees ARE a rip off. A physical install fee is different for actual dropwire install and cabling work. If you already have that, an activation fee should not be required as its the company’s process for onboarding and should just come out of their service cost they charge not an additonal charge. It’s just another wy to get more money for shareholders and stuff the customer, but its the customer who has money and can walk if competition around…..If that happened more, that activation fee would suddenly evaporate.
“which we understand to be main reason why they’ve now opted to reintroduce activation fees for new customers.”
One problem I have with this is that you have to return the router at the end or face a charge.
I would suggest supplying older models for free or making the router optional like some other ISPs….but then I thought ‘would the typical BT customer just mess up and blame BT?’.
Only reason I ever used their router back when I was with them was because of the Digital Voice switchover and they (at the time AFAIK) didn’t give the details to able to use your own ATA.
Not a chance that any major ISP is going to move to a true BYOD model (as in, they don’t send any equipment). Customers will find ways to get themselves in trouble even with the router they supply, but at least it removes a lot of variables and ultimately a factory reset will clear anything the customer might have done.
Its bad enough having to diagnose the issues that they can’t avoid, such as when a badly behaved no-name IoT device won’t work properly. At least with their own router they have a lot more options to diagnose potential line faults and such without having to send someone out.
Have prosumer and consumer models then. Prosumer is bring your own router, consumer is for those who don’t understand routers and need one. Olilo ISP is one example of using that model.
Not everyone is dumbed down and Ive never used an ISP router, apart from when on Virign Media as its the modem and you can’t get a DocSIS one in UK as they control registration on their network, bu then I had it in MDOEM MODE to use my own router. My parents use their own router at their address and other family and friends use their own router. I simply wouldn’t trust using an ISP router that they control let alone they are peices of garbage in most cases. tey want you to use their router though at end of day so they can monitor and profilee the household, thats why ISP’s always have unencrypted DNS, so they can snoop on url strings and such…..
While it adds it as default, you can (or could when I ordered earlier in the year) easily remove the router when ordering from Plusnet and they will happily supply set you up connection without one.
The one time I’ve needed to speak with them they just confirmed I didn’t have a Plusnet router and carried on with support as normal.
How much RAM is in your typical ISP-supplied router? I can’t imagine it’s in the gigabytes. Meanwhile, Zen give you the equipment and as long as you’re paid up on your contract at the end, you can keep it. They “suggest” you return it for recycling, but nothing happens if you don’t.
That isn’t the case any more – https://www.zen.co.uk/return.
Looks like they charge a lot more than BT would too, which makes sense as BT isn’t paying retail prices nor Amazon or AVM’s margins.
ram and nand has increased in some cases by x3 …….
Also routers now tend to have far more memory than before ie “EE Smart Hub Pro (Wi-Fi 7): “Flash 8GB RAM 2GB””
Whilst thats the flagship model……. there is inflation in the system
Normally 2GB. They have become quite expensive in the last year.
Sadly, it’s no longer true. I had to return it when I cancelled, despite I wanted to keep it and use it with OpenWRT. They would have charged 3-4 times more to keep it compared to how much the same router costs on eBay.
Router prices have increased over the last year or so, I went with a mate to get one at the start of the year, and it was the model below mine but cost the same as I paid for mine.
Zen routers are pretty expensive and as BTIvor posted, they ask for them back now.
I have 3 routers here from 9 years with Plusnet, the hub zero? which was connected to a modem, then they updated to a Hub one, I think it was, the one with the LED across the bottom. That would not work, so they sent my a Zyzel, which also did not work, until I put an old Huawei modem in line.
They updated the old hub zero because something happened with the network and things stopped working. The only thing that sync on FTTC was an old Huawie modem that I borrowed from my neighbour, even my original ECI one would not sync.
I still got them all here, apart from my next door neighbour Huawei modem, I got one myself from Ebay and i still have that.
So many routers and modems here, including dial-up modems.
I don’t think I have ever sent anything back, I still got the thing the roof I used when I went Wireless for a couple of years.
The needing to collect stuff back in is the result or recycling and corporate waste laws. Pretty sure they’d prefer to leave a 5 year old router for the customer to deal with.
@gg, no doubt you are correct, sadly a lot of electric cal stuff will go in black plastic bags.
I am starting to sort things out and a lot of it will be dumped. I don’t drive and I really don’t want to bother people to take it to the tip.
Nearly a million subscribers expected to leave BT this year (BT estimate). When will they ever learn? I took my broadband to another provider last year after decades with BT. New service costs a third less, is twenty times faster (fttp) and came with decent fully featured WiFi6 router.
Oh and the price reduced in April instead of BTs annual inflation plus gouge!
Your apparent hatred for BT seems to overlook the fact that the number you mention is in relation to potential losses at *Openreach*.
BT’s retail businesses are doing pretty well. They don’t need to lower prices to unsustainably low levels in an attempt to build market share in the way your chosen ISP has done. They’ll only be able to do that for so long before investors finally pull the plug.
Why is anyone questioning or disagreeing with either BT or Openreach seen as “apparent hatred for BT”?
Why don’t you BT fanboys (or shareholders!) understand not everyone out there is happy with the largest provider’s offerings to date, when we have seen competition offer much better products?
Can people just not be happy with the strategic choices made by BT without “hating”?
Why do people have to be diversive and label people into stupid things like “hate” – which is a very strong word to use?
If BT offered a decent product I would buy, I wouldn’t fantasise about the company either or have some odd over the top loyalty in defending it!
Most of those losses are where Openreach don’t offer FTTP but an Altnet does
@FANNY ADAMS, I was happy, well, I was with Plusnet, but I was with them for over 9 years. Granted most of that was being lazy and Plusnet kept giving me good offers. I was only going to stay with them for 18 months and then move on, but the service was okay and the price was good.
I expect I would have been with them still if they did not try to push me onto full fibre and a 24-month contract and more cost.
Still not a fan of Openreach and have not been for years, mainly because I don’t think one money making company should have control over so much of the phone and broadband network.
I hate domination, which is why I was not a fan of Sky,
@Mark
I work (part time) for a charity that supports vulnerable folks, with physical and/or learning disabilities.
Does this Activation Fee also apply to those switching to BT Consumer’s social tariffs do you know?
Previously there was a one off £10 charge IIRC.
T.I.A.
Liz
I have my own router already. My EE one is still shrink-wrapped. Since I have a working ONT and no need for an ISP router nor an engineer visit, I hope that there will be the ability to waive this charge should I ever switch between an OR FTTP ISP, especially given the administrative work to do so is pretty nominal. Oh but of course that probably won’t be an option so I’ll be paying for them to send me a box that’ll go in the loft untouched until I leave when it’ll have to be shipped back to them. So wasteful!
This only applies to BT group ISPs. If you want to swap from say, Aquiss to Zen to Sky to Vodafone, there will be zero fee unless they implement their own.
Hi Mark,
I noticed on the BT website the charges don’t apply to all plans yet. The 900Mbps is showing as £63.99 for the first month, and 74Mbps is £57.99. But for some reason both the 150Mbps and 500Mbps are just £30.99 with no mention of the one-off fee.
I presume they’re just in the process of updating the site?
Scandalous! I don’t even use their grubby routers, give an option not to and not need to pay the £30 ‘activation’ fee
I would like this also, not used an ISP router for years, and never will
I would prefer cheaper cost options without a router, as I haven’t used an ISP provider router for years, they stay in the box until they aa for them back
They will be going all out for a 3 year contract soon
What these greedy sods need is a million customers to call their bluff with cancellations if they think they can push their luck again
Wages inflation energy and rent all gone up so asking for a few pounds during installation is very reasonable for a service they are providing to your property.
I have no idea what the obsession is with changing router boxes when remaining with the same company. I am with Go Fibre up here in North Northumberland and I have a ZYXEL box with a 1GB service and it stretches throughout the entire house and garden, which is all I really need
They did offer me a new box when I upgraded from 500mb to 1GB but I said no, this one is fine and it would mean resetting the solar panel inverter etc which is a right hassle
If you use your existing wifi network name and password with a new router then you shouldn’t have any device wifi connection issues.
BT makes some strange decisions sometimes but there is usually a sound commercial or behavioural reason.
If BT charge for something then they can give it away “FREE” where appropriate. e.g changing from an existing OR ISP can be free (just post out kit) or from another network it will contribute to the OR install. This way the offer price doesn’t include the full OR install costs being incurred by BT and spread across all customer offer pricing.
Going forward ISPs also need to deter the contract merry go round, especially if there are engineering changes that impact the install cost each time.
BT really need to stop the inflation and particularly plus nonsense. That is what is killing them.