Household Bills
BT customers braced for broadband, landline and sport price rises
Guest Author:
Paloma KubiakBT has announced a series of price rises for its broadband and landline customers, while BT TV users will need to start paying for the sports access.
The telecoms giant today announced a number of price rises taking effect from 2 April 2017.
Here’s a summary of what’s changing:
- Broadband (copper) up by £2
- Infinity fibre broadband customers will pay an extra £2.50 a month
- BT TV customers will start to pay £3.50 for BT Sport from 1 August 2017
- Anytime calls up 49p, to £8.99 a month while evening and weekend call plans will go up by 30p, to £3.80
- BT Broadband customers who watch Sky satellite service will see the price increase by £1.50 to £7.50 a month
- Non-BT Broadband customers who watch BT Sport on their Sky box, will be charged £1 extra so £22.99 a month
- Individual calling features are going up by 25p, such as Call Minder increasing from £4.25 to £4.50.
The provider confirms that it will allow customers to cancel penalty-free as a result of the price hikes. It adds that customers should contact it within 30 days of receiving the notification letter which details the price rises.
The good news
BT says it wants to offer customers “more for their money” and so later in 2017 it will launch a service to proactively give customers compensation if it fails to live up to service targets.
For customers who have BT Broadband and watch BT Sport via the app the cost will remain at £5 a month.
It’s also announced that it’s frozen prices for BT TV packages and added six new HD channels, including Universal, E! and Dave for no extra charge for customers who have the HD pack or Entertainment Plus and higher packages.
Line rental for those customers who only take a phone line from BT has also been frozen at £18.99 a month, while the BT Basic subsidised tariff for low-income customers on certain benefits, remains the same price at £5.10 per month.
John Petter, chief executive of BT Consumer, said: “Customers will get a better package and improved service from us this year in exchange for paying a little more. Millions will have the chance to upgrade to faster broadband and almost a million will be able to upgrade to enjoy unlimited usage for no extra cost.
“As usual, we’ve taken care of low income customers by freezing the price of BT Basic and capping call costs. We’ve also frozen line rental, which will particularly help customers who only take a traditional phone service from us.”
Other providers’ price rises
BT’s price rise comes in the wake of other major providers also announcing changes to costs:
Sky: put up TV prices by up to £72 a year in June, 2016. It has also increased its Original Bundle by 10%, from £20 to £22 and will put up line rental in March 2017.
Virgin Media: recently introduced its third price rise in a year when line rental was put up by £1.01 in November, 2016. Broadband and TV packages also went up by up to £3.49 a month.
TalkTalk: raised prices from November, 2016, hiking broadband, phone and TV packages by up to an extra £33 a year. It increased line rental by £1.25 and broadband by £1.50 a month.